Australian Food

Visitors to Australia are often amazed by the quality and variety of Australia’s food. This can be credited to our colonization of Europeans and waves of immigration over the years leaving Australia as one of the most multicultural countries in the world with restaurants to match.

Sydney and Brisbane offer flourishing Chinatowns, Melbourne is well known for its Vietnamese and Greek restaurants while Darwin has a big Asian population which can be seen wandering the aromatic food stalls at Mindi Beach markets.

While Australia can not offer you a typical national dish, its love for food goes hand in hand with its love for the outdoors. It is quite usual for beach sides and national parks to be filled with families and friends having a game of cricket while cooking on the numerous free or coin operated BBQ’s most weekends. For a few dollars you can buy a juicy steak, chicken breast or sausages and relax in the great outdoors.

The Aussie pie still remains Australia’s most popular fast food, today you can choose from a number of fillings from traditional meats, vegetarian, chicken or even specialities such as kangaroo and emu. Australian’s have a passion for sauces, most dishes will be served with a sauce poured on top or available on the table. The most popular being of course tomato sauce and then anything that can be used at a BBQ to hot and spicy.

Australia has a deliciously fresh variety of seafood. Sydney fish market is Australia’s only working fishermen’s market, a vibrant place that takes place every weekday morning. You can try some live mud crabs, sliced sashimi salmon, king prawns, coral trout or fried calamari. Adelaide’s fish market any day will provide you with the salty smell of the sea and a great variety of oysters, abalone, lobster, prawns and blue fin tuna.

Every state has something unique to offer the traveller, olive oil and fine wines from South Australia, balsamic vinegars and snails from Victoria, tender lamb from New South Wales, sweet salmon from Tasmania and fresh mud crabs from Northern Territory to note a few.

Although Australia is in the list of one of the most obese societies, closely following and highly influenced by the American diet, fast food is only an option and does not always mean the cheapest. For snacks you will find bakeries in most central areas offering sweet and savoury snacks freshly baked that morning, tiny cafés where you can choose from 100’s of fillings to make a fresh sandwich and funky restaurants offering healthy vegetarian or alternative meals.