When Tom Di Chiera closed the doors of his family’s beloved continental deli in March 2017, he didn’t anticipate it would be almost eight years before they’d open again.
A divorce, a death in the family and Covid all prolonged the reopening of North Perth’s Di Chiera Bros.
If you have eaten a continental roll since Di Chiera tentatively switched on the open sign in December you can thank his mum, not only for apparently naming the now famous conti roll, but for saving the store from a potentially morbid fate.
There was a lot of interest in leasing the prime property while it was in limbo, including a funeral company that offered a tidy sum in annual rent.
“Mum just politely said to them, ‘no I am keeping it for my son’,” Di Chiera reveals.
Born in March 1969, Di Chiera, the youngest of six, came home from hospital to 527 Fitzgerald Street. He has always lived above the store, apart from a brief stretch in Texas with his former wife Silvana after she had completed her commerce degree.
While he was away, Di Chiera’s parents Antonio and Eleonora tried unsuccessfully to sell the business that Antonio and brother Giuseppe originally opened in William Street, Northbridge in 1953.
Ridiculously low offers gave Di Chiera the idea that he and Silvana should return to Perth in 1991 to give it a go themselves.
“And we did,” he says with pride. “And it absolutely blossomed. We both bought the business kicking and screaming into the 90s.
“I remember my brothers and sisters saying to me that because it was a seven-day a week business, they joked, ‘you bought yourself a prison sentence’.”
Showing off a precision electric tomato slicer, the retarder that allows him to bake his own rolls without needing to start at 2am, and vintage items like the original kitchen sink suspended above the pasta aisle, there’s little doubt Di Chiera loves being back. He owns the business, while Eleonora still owns the building.
Di Chiera was surprised the first person he served in December was not an original customer but a traffic controller working nearby who needed some cold drinks.
“I thought it was ironic the first customer knew nothing about the business, knew nothing about the shop and didn’t even buy a roll,” he laughs.
In the deli counter, punnets of blueberries sit alongside avocados and chunks of watermelon, with antipasto to the left, smallgoods to the right.
The store’s shelves and fridges have Italian staples, milk, soft drinks, vegies, and basic items.
“Are we gonna have cabbage, no, because Italians don’t use cabbage,” Di Chiera says.
“Are we gonna have radicchio? Yes, because radicchio is a big seller.”
While there’s a coffee machine, tables and chairs, Di Chiera doesn’t see Di Chiera Bros as a café. He is selling rolls made fresh to order for tradies and locals alike and hopes that’s money he is diverting away from fast food corporations.
“We are doing it so fresh we are tripping over ourselves,” Di Chiera says.
He sees La Mortazza down the road and stalwarts the Re Store as being on the same team, not his opposition.
“Collectively, we should be banding together, and that’s why I’ve been banging on (in the media) so much about the continental roll,” he enthuses.
Blown up to poster size in the store is a copy of an original Dichiera Bros Continental Goods receipt. Antonio, who passed away in 2018, was encouraged to change his name from Di Chiera to Dichiera when he arrived in Australia. Di Chiera sys when his sons found out while helping Antonio apply for a war pension, they reverted to the original spelling.
Listed on the receipt are the store’s specialties, including continental rolls, the origins of which have been long debated in Perth food circles.
“The Re Store have always called theirs Re Store rolls, which they should be very proud of; their Re Store rolls, their Works and their Macho Uomo,” says Di Chiera
“But we’ve always had a conti roll on the menu…mum actually coined the term.”
Di Chiera says the roll we know in WA simply doesn’t exist in Italy.
“It’d be the same as going to a bar here, ordering a pint of beer and asking, ‘can you put in some Swan Draught, some Emu Bitter and some VB, all in the same glass’.”
“It’s a level of ridiculousness. Can you imagine the look on the bartender’s face?
“That’s the same thing that happens If you go to Italy and ask them to put four meats in a roll. They give you this look as if to say, where is the hidden camera, I’m being set up here.”
There are seven rolls on the menu and the $13.50 mixed meat continental is the clear favourite, although on several occasions the chicken schnitzel – a thick, golden crumbed chicken breast served simply with lettuce and mayo – has outsold it. It’s proving popular with younger customers.
Di Chiera says the eighth item, the New York pastrami roll, is yet to return because he hasn’t had time to smoke any brisket.
Something else that hasn’t returned yet is the business’ social media presence, frozen in time in 2017.
“I have just been too scared,” Di Chiera laughs, fearing the extra customers it will bring in while he is still training up his entirely new team.
Di Chiera Bros Continental Store is open seven days at 527 Fitzgerald St, North Perth.
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