John Caviston:JOHN CAVISTON, who has died aged 87, was a fish dealer and pioneer of good food through his renowned shop in the south Dublin village of Glasthule.
Long before the term “foodies” was invented, discerning customers were drawn to Cavistons for its high-quality fresh Irish produce and the chance to buy unusual products from abroad. In the 1960s he had the vision to start transforming the fish, poultry and game shop into the food emporium it is today.
It was his brother Jim who first put the family name to the business, after he went out to buy a pound of fish one day in 1947 and woke up the next morning to realise that, during a drinking session in the nearby Eagle House, he had bought the shop instead. He tried to stop the £300 cheque he had written for the fishmonger but it was too late, it had already been cashed.
John Caviston grew up in Harold’s Cross in Dublin, the younger of the two children of John Caviston, a member of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, and his wife Margaret (née O’Donoghue). He was educated at Belvedere junior school and then the Catholic University School on Leeson Street.
After falling out with his father as a teenager, he left for England and lied about his age to join the British army and fight in the second World War. He never had the chance to be reconciled with John snr, who died after a collision with a runaway horse drawing a milk cart as he cycled on Upper Clanbrassil Street on January 21st, 1944.
After the war he worked with an engineering firm in England before returning to Dublin to open a fish shop on Mespil Road. He had married Margaret Crowley from Dublin in 1948, with whom he was to have six children.
A serious car accident early one morning as he drove to Arklow to buy fish left him unable to work for a long period and forced him to close his business. Once he was well enough, he went to help in Jim’s Glasthule shop and, after his brother decided he wanted to travel the world, took it over in the mid-1950s. It was not long before he began to show his flair for innovation.
In the early 1960s, for instance, his cooked chickens proved a phenomenal success. Not content with just selling fish raw, he explored ways of adding value by making fish cakes and fish sausages, and marinating herrings. Olive oil, little used in Ireland at that time, was another diversification, but one which complemented the fish as an ideal ingredient to use in its cooking.
Caviston was always open to new ideas. The sight of a coffee grinder at a food fair in the RDS prompted him to start selling freshly ground coffee beans and tea out of chests. Later, he had a smokehouse built so that Cavistons could smoke its own salmon, trout, venison or any other foodstuff that might benefit from the process.
A great conversationalist who was imbued with a sense of fun, he loved to engage with customers. He had a keen interest in politics and was a member of the Labour Party for many years.
He took every opportunity to make his shop a talking point. If there was some headline catch on the block in the Dublin fish market, such as a giant tuna or shark, you could be sure it would be going home in the van of John Caviston, who revelled in the attendant publicity.
On slow days at that same market, he could be relied on to get up and sing a song or two to entertain his fellow dealers as they waited for catches to be delivered. “You might as well sing sorrow as cry it,” he used to say.
One day he daubed the shop window with the message “Chickens cheep”, knowing full well that passersby would not be able to resist coming in to point out the apparent error. One woman went as far as to wager a bet on it, which he won by producing a dictionary that showed chickens do, indeed, cheep.
Living across the road from the shop up to his death, he was always in and out, keeping an eye on the family business as responsibility for the day-to-day running passed to his eldest son, Peter, and, latterly, to three of his grandchildren. Only last week he was there when he overheard a customer being told they were out of Wensleydale. Immediately he intervened to suggest the man taste a Canadian cheese instead, which he then happily bought as an alternative.
Right to the end, John Caviston knew that pleasing customers was the secret to bringing them back.
He is survived by Margaret, his wife of 62 years, and children Susan, Peter, Paul, Patricia, Catherine and Stephen.
John Edward Caviston: born March 23rd, 1923; died July 19th, 2010