1952 - 2002

The Eze Moses spice shop in North Bondi is fondly remembered as a local business that’d been established in the mid-20th century and flourished for 50 years. Eze’s (Ezekiel) father Kelly Moses had opened a spice ‘market’ in his family garage at 113 Brighton Boulevard during the early 1950s, but it’d soon outgrown its premises, and Eze had decided to take it over and move it to 108 Brighton Boulevard. It remained there till 2001, known throughout Sydney and beyond, and in the 1950s it was one of the few shops – possibly the only shop – at which Sydneysiders could buy fresh spices. The business’s official name was Eze & Son, but almost everyone knew it as Eze Moses. At its height, it was reportedly so popular that on Sundays, customers double parked on Brighton Boulevard just to get inside. 

In the 1979 edition of The Complete Asian Cookbook, pioneering cookbook author Charmaine Solomon listed just one Sydney spice shop: Bondi Beach’s legendary ‘Eze Moses’.

By 2001, the shop had outgrown its Brighton Road premises, and the members of the Moses family decided to relocate it to 514 Bunnerong Road in the south-eastern Sydney suburb of Matraville. They renamed it the Moses Spice Centre and continue to import and package their own range of spices in domestic and commercial quantities and sell other products such as chutneys, other condiments, nuts, pulses, sweets and dried fruits. Being Asian Jewish and having roots back to the Middle East, they sell mostly kosher items.

In early 2002, the vacated Eze Moses spice shop at 108 Brighton Boulevard became the home of Dharma Shala, Bondi Beach’s longest-running authentic yoga school. That business closed in 2020, and the premises are now occupied by the Bondi Vixen women’s fitness centre.

Courtesy Fairfax Media and Waverley Library Local Studies Collection.