Eleni’s Kouzina Is Moving to Henley Beach Road, and I Have Been Waiting Years for This
Updated August 2026
A Greek deli is opening on the road that raised half of Greek Adelaide. I went to school on that road. My father shopped on it. It has been losing its Greek shops for years, quietly, one sign at a time. Here is what is coming, and why I am taking a deli relocation personally.
Eleni’s Kouzina & Grocer is a Greek deli and kitchen run by Harry and Eleni Alexiou, currently at 23 Duthy Street, Unley. It is moving to Shops 1 and 2, 34 Henley Beach Road, Mile End, opposite the Mile End Hotel, with renovations under way and opening expected four to six weeks from late July 2026, so early to mid September. Expect house-made moussaka, pastitsio, gemista and dolmades, charcoal lamb and chicken yiros, meat packs, Greek cakes, and a much larger imported grocery and freezer range.
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The best Greek shops in Adelaide are almost never the ones that set out to be Greek shops.
Harry Alexiou has run Funky’s on Duthy, a free-range rotisserie chicken shop in Unley, since 2011. The Greek food turned up as weekly specials. A moussaka one week, a spanakopita the next. Then a Greek day with a lamb on the spit, which went off well enough that people would not stop asking when the next one was. When Funky’s shifted a few doors down to number 59 in early 2022, the original shopfront came free, and in early 2023 it reopened under his wife’s name.
Chicken paid the rent for 12 years while the Greek food waited to be asked for. I cannot think of a more Greek-Australian sequence of events. My dad ran Greek restaurants around Adelaide for most of his working life and would recognise every step of it.
What is moving, and what gets bigger
The shop ran out of room. That is the whole reason for the move, and Eleni has been straightforward about it. The pressure is on the grocery shelves and the freezer, both of which come in from Greece through a Melbourne supplier.
The imported side already runs to extra virgin olive oils, biscuits, pasta, organic herbs, jams, capsicum spreads and cheeses, several lines exclusive to the shop in Adelaide. Eleni’s husband distributes some of them on to other stores, which tells you how deep the supply goes.
The freezer is where the extra space will show. Greek sausages, vegetables, seafood, pita, the kitchen’s own ready-made trays, and the Cypriot smallgoods no supermarket has ever stocked and never will: sheftalies, koupes, pastourma, all preservative free.
The cooking does not change. Moussaka, pastitsio, gemista, dolmades and the Greek cakes stay house-made, alongside the lamb and chicken yiros off the charcoal, the meat packs and the marinated meats. There is a vegan moussaka in the range, which I mention for the one person at every Greek table who needs it.
The pita has a paper trail
One detail I love. Eleni’s carries Alexakis pita, exclusively in Adelaide. The company has been baking in Greece since 1956, founded by Ilias Alexakis and handed to his son Ioannis in 1996, and it now supplies souvlaki counters the length of the country plus around two dozen export markets.
Bread is most of the difference between a yiros that reminds you of a Thessaloniki souvlatzidiko and one that reminds you of a food court. Sourdough in the dough, soft, built to hold meat and chips without splitting on the third bite. If you want the wider argument about what belongs on a proper Greek table, we have a guide to Greek food beyond souvlaki.
The olive oil rule
Eleni has been firm that the kitchen cooks in extra virgin olive oil and no seed oils, that Harry marinates the meats in olive oil, and that the chips go into tallow.
Half of that is simply how Greek kitchens work. My father cures his own olives and would look at you strangely for raising it. The seed oil half is the 2026 part, a position that has moved out of the wellness internet and onto shopfronts, while Australian dietitians go on holding that seed oils are fine in normal amounts. Taken as a health verdict it overreaches. Taken as a flavour and provenance decision it is unimpeachable, because olive oil tastes like something and tallow makes a better chip.
Cycladic Spaces tip: taste the oil before you trust the label. Any Greek grocer selling extra virgin by the tin will let you have a go, and the good ones want you to. If it catches at the back of your throat, that is the polyphenols, and that is the tin to take home.
The road I went to school on
For a Greek deli in Adelaide, Henley Beach Road is the address.
The 1950s wave put Greek and Italian families into Torrensville, Thebarton and Mile End, and by 1966 Greeks were 13.4 per cent of Thebarton. The parish organised itself in 1960 and built St George in 1965, still the largest Greek Orthodox church in Adelaide. In 1983 came St George College, the first Orthodox college in South Australia, junior campus on Rose Street and senior campus on the corner of Henley Beach Road and South Road.
Kalymnos Pastries opened on the same road in 1995 and is still the benchmark for Greek sweets in this city, run by a fourth-generation pastry chef whose family line starts in 1918 on the island itself.
Church, school, bakery. Between those three addresses a person could conduct most of a life, and for a long time the shops in between filled in everything else.
What the road has been losing
Stan the Man has closed. The tiny music store up around 128 Henley Beach Road, where you went for the Greek CDs your parents wanted and the ones you pretended not to want, and where a man behind the counter knew which was which. Gone.
The bank went earlier and more quietly. Delphi Bank started life as Bank of Cyprus Australia, was bought by Bendigo and Adelaide Bank in February 2012, moved every customer across to Bendigo products in February 2022, and was rebranded away later that year. Nobody closed it. The Greek came off the window, the Greek-speaking staff stayed on, the service continued, and what stopped existing was the reason to call it ours.
But the church still fills, the school still enrols, and Kalymnos still has a queue on a Saturday. What thinned out is everything in between.
Why a deli, and not another restaurant
A restaurant seats you, feeds you and releases you. Two hours, one table, the people you arrived with, a bill. I love them, obviously. Vasili’s Table at West Beach gave me the best lamb of my life and my Piraeus-born husband agreed, which is the hardest bar I know.
A shop works differently. A shop puts you in a queue behind somebody’s theia, which is Greek for aunt and also for any woman of that generation who will ask after your mother by name before you reach the counter. Four conversations in Greek in six minutes. Somebody’s cousin on the register. You go in for pita and leave with three things you did not plan on and the phone number of a woman who does christening bomboniere.
That is the room Henley Beach Road has been short of. Churches do it once a week. Schools do it for the years you are enrolled. Shops do it on a Tuesday, indefinitely, for free.
What I will be buying first
Assume a queue in week one and go in with a plan.
The freezer first, before the crowd gets to it, which means the Cypriot smallgoods and whatever seafood has landed. Then gemista and dolmades, on the grounds that nobody in this house has four spare hours on a Tuesday. A tray of pastitsio to pretend I made. A lamb yiros with the chips inside where they belong.
Then the pantry: olive oil, herb blends, capsicum spreads, Greek cheeses, and pita for the freezer at home. Something with syrup, and buy two more than you plan to eat, because one gets eaten in the car. My dad will still say he could have done better. He is welcome to say it. If you want to make one thing yourself in the meantime, start with the Greek paprika pepper dip from the souvlaki shop.
What I am hoping for
A shop this size does quiet work, and the quiet work is the valuable kind. It gives people a reason to be on that road on a Tuesday with nothing particular to do. It puts a queue on the footpath on a Saturday morning and holds it there long enough for two women to disagree about whose gemista is better while neither of them moves out of the way. It takes the phone call about trays for a christening.
Small things, one at a time, on a footpath. That is how a road becomes ours again.
And at some point next summer, a Greek kid in Adelaide will be standing near the freezers, staring at the ceiling, waiting out a conversation their mother did not plan to have and cannot seem to end. Bored past the point of language. Not knowing yet that this is the good part.
So thank you, Harry and Eleni, for backing yourselves in a hard economy and a harder industry, and for taking the shop west. That address means more than a lease.
The details
New address: Shops 1 and 2, 34 Henley Beach Road, Mile End SA 5031, opposite the Mile End Hotel and near Una Cafe, about 2 kilometres west of the CBD. Buses run the length of Henley Beach Road and the parking is on the side streets.
Until it opens: 23 Duthy Street, Unley, on 08 7230 9189. Same family at Funky’s on Duthy, 59 Duthy Street. Opening dates move, so Instagram and Facebook will have the day before anyone else does.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Eleni’s Kouzina & Grocer moving to?
Shops 1 and 2, 34 Henley Beach Road, Mile End, in the shop group opposite the Mile End Hotel and next to Una Cafe. It sits roughly 2 kilometres west of the Adelaide CBD, on the stretch of Henley Beach Road running from Mile End through to Torrensville.
When does the Mile End shop open?
The site was still under renovation in late July 2026, with a four to six week window quoted at the time, which points to early or mid September 2026. Renovation timelines slip, so check the shop’s Instagram before driving over.
Is the Duthy Street shop closing?
Eleni’s Kouzina & Grocer is leaving 23 Duthy Street, Unley after three and a half years. Funky’s on Duthy, run by the same family, keeps trading a few doors down at number 59, so the Unley address stays in the family.
What can you buy at Eleni’s Kouzina & Grocer?
House-made moussaka, pastitsio, gemista, dolmades and Greek cakes, plus lamb and chicken yiros off the charcoal, meat packs and marinated meats. On the grocery side: Greek extra virgin olive oils, biscuits, pasta, organic herbs, jams, capsicum spreads, cheeses and Alexakis pita, with a frozen range covering Greek sausages, vegetables, seafood and Cypriot smallgoods.
Does Eleni’s cook with seed oils?
No. The kitchen uses extra virgin olive oil only, the meats are marinated in olive oil, and the chips are cooked in tallow. Mainstream Australian dietary guidance treats seed oils as fine in ordinary amounts, so this reads best as a flavour and provenance choice rather than a health claim.
Is Eleni’s connected to Funky’s on Duthy?
Yes. Harry Alexiou has run the free-range rotisserie chicken shop Funky’s on Duthy in Unley since 2011 and began putting Greek dishes on as weekly specials. Eleni’s Kouzina & Grocer opened in early 2023 in the original Funky’s shopfront at 23 Duthy Street, after Funky’s moved down the road.
Which pita bread does Eleni’s use?
Alexakis, exclusively in Adelaide. The company has been baking pita in Greece since 1956 and is one of the country’s largest producers, supplying souvlaki counters, canteens and caterers across Greece before exporting to Australia and around two dozen other markets.
What happened to the Greek bank in Adelaide?
Delphi Bank, which began as Bank of Cyprus Australia, was acquired by Bendigo and Adelaide Bank in February 2012. Customers moved onto Bendigo products in February 2022 and the Delphi brand was retired later that year. Bendigo said at the time it would keep branch staff with the relevant language and cultural skills and continue serving Greek Australian customers.
Are there other Greek food shops on Henley Beach Road?
Kalymnos Pastries has been baking on the road since 1995 and remains the benchmark for Greek sweets in Adelaide, and St George church and St George College anchor the Greek community at the Mile End end of the strip. The retail side has thinned over the past decade, which is much of why this opening matters.
Keep reading
If a Greek deli opening made you this emotional, you are in the right place. Read the Vasili’s Table review next, then everything else in Greeks Abroad.
