What to eat and drink in Australia, and where

The practical news for a traveller is good. Casual food is very good and reasonably priced, menu prices include tax, tipping is not expected, and lunch is consistently better value than dinner. Someone eating well spends $65 to $90 a day, and someone making lunch the main meal eats extremely well on less. The full budget picture is in what two weeks in Australia costs.

Start with breakfast, because Australia did

The Australian cafe is the country’s real contribution to world food, and it is worth planning mornings around rather than eating whatever the hotel provides.

What to look for: a small room, a serious espresso machine, a short menu written that week, and a queue of locals. What to order: eggs of some kind with something green and something fermented, ricotta hotcakes if the room looks like it means it, or a bacon and egg roll from a counter if you are walking somewhere.

The coffee needs a note because the vocabulary is local. A flat white is espresso with steamed milk and minimal foam, and Australia and New Zealand have argued about who invented it for forty years. A long black is espresso poured over hot water, closer to an americano and stronger. A short black is an espresso. A magic, mostly in Melbourne, is a double ristretto in a small flat white. Ask for filter coffee and you will usually get a considered single-origin pour-over rather than a jug of something stewed.

Melbourne takes this most seriously and Sydney is not far behind, but the surprise is how good the coffee is in small towns. A bakery in a Tasmanian village of eight hundred people will pull a better espresso than most of Europe.

The seafood

This is where Australia genuinely excels and where visitors under-order.

Sydney rock oysters, small, mineral and different from anything Atlantic. Pacific oysters from Coffin Bay in South Australia and from Tasmania, larger and creamier. Order both side by side once.

Moreton Bay bugs, which are flat lobster-like crustaceans with dense sweet tails, grilled with garlic butter. Balmain bugs are the southern cousin. Mud crab in the tropical north, usually chilli or singapore style, messy and worth it. Barramundi, the north’s signature fish, best pan-fried with the skin crisp rather than battered.

Fish and chips from a beachside shop, eaten on a wall with the wind trying to take it, is the most Australian meal there is. Ask what is local rather than ordering by name: flathead, whiting, snapper and blue-eye trevalla are all better choices than an imported fillet.

In Melbourne and Sydney the fish markets are worth an hour, with one honest caveat we come back to below.

The food the cities actually eat

Australia’s real restaurant culture is migrant food, and it is the reason a food trip here is more interesting than the postcards suggest.

Vietnamese. Victoria Street in Richmond and Footscray in Melbourne, Cabramatta in Sydney. Some of the best Vietnamese food outside Vietnam, and we say that as a company with an office in Hanoi. Pho, bun bo hue, banh mi from a bakery with a queue.

Cantonese and Sichuan. Sydney’s Chinatown and Haymarket, Box Hill and Glen Waverley in Melbourne. Yum cha on a Sunday morning with three generations of a family at the next table is a genuine Australian institution.

Greek and Lebanese. Melbourne has one of the largest Greek populations of any city outside Greece. Lakemba in Sydney for Lebanese, and in the month of Ramadan its night food market is one of the best eating events in the country.

Thai, Malaysian, Korean, Nepali, Ethiopian. All present, all good, all cheap. If you want one rule for eating in Australian cities: leave the centre.

Pub food, done properly

The Australian pub has quietly become a good place to eat. A chicken parmigiana, which is a schnitzel under tomato and cheese, is the national pub dish and it is enormous. A steak with chips and salad in a country pub is honest and good. The counter lunch in a small town is often the only option and often fine.

The other thing the pub gives you is beer that is not what you were expecting. Australian craft brewing is excellent and the mass-market lagers most foreigners can name are not what Australians drink now. Ask what is on tap and local.

Wine, which is the other reason to come

Australian wine has moved a long way from the heavy oaked style that made its reputation in the 1990s.

• Barossa Valley, South Australia. Shiraz, and old vine plantings that are among the oldest in the world.
• Margaret River, Western Australia. Cabernet and chardonnay of real seriousness.
• Yarra Valley, near Melbourne. Pinot noir, chardonnay and sparkling, and easy as a day out.
• Hunter Valley, near Sydney. Semillon, which ages into something completely unlike its young self.
• Tasmania. Cool climate sparkling and pinot noir, and the best of it is very good indeed.
• Central Victoria and the Grampians. Shiraz with pepper in it rather than jam.

A decent bottle in a shop is $15 to $25. Restaurant markups are moderate by international standards, and many places allow you to bring your own bottle for a small corkage fee, which is a genuinely useful habit to know about. Our food and culture route is built around two of these regions rather than five.

Non-drinkers are well served. Australian cafes take non-alcoholic drinks seriously, and the tonic, cider and low alcohol beer lists in good pubs are real.

Native ingredients, and how to meet them honestly

Native Australian ingredients are having a serious moment and it is worth engaging with properly rather than as a novelty. Finger lime, whose flesh comes apart into citrus pearls. Wattleseed, roasted and nutty. Saltbush, lemon myrtle, Davidson plum, Kakadu plum, pepperberry.

The way to encounter these is at a restaurant where an Indigenous chef or an Indigenous supply chain is central to what the kitchen does, or on a guided walk with a First Nations guide who shows you the plants where they grow. Both exist and both are worth a place in an itinerary. What we would avoid is the hotel buffet with a small sign saying bush tucker next to a tray of something, which is neither good food nor a meaningful encounter.

Sweet things

Lamingtons, sponge cubes in chocolate and coconut. Pavlova, meringue with cream and passionfruit, which Australia and New Zealand both claim and which we are not going to adjudicate. Tim Tams, a biscuit, best experienced with the trick of biting off two corners and drinking coffee through it. Vegemite, which is not sweet and which we mention only to say that the correct dose is a scraping on buttered toast, not a spread, and that everyone who dislikes it applied too much.

What is overrated

Circular Quay and Darling Harbour restaurants in Sydney. You are paying for the view, the food is average and the price is not. Eat in Surry Hills, Newtown, Potts Point or Chippendale and see the harbour from the ferry, which costs a few dollars. More on how to use Sydney properly in Sydney in four days.

Novelty meat. Crocodile is chewy, emu is unremarkable and the kangaroo served on tourist menus is usually overcooked. Kangaroo done well, rare and rested, at a restaurant that respects it, is genuinely good. The three-meat sampler platter is not that.

The fish market food courts. Both Sydney and Melbourne have famous fish markets, and both have a food court where the queue is long, the seating is a scramble and the cooking is indifferent. Go to look at the produce, then eat somewhere with a kitchen.

Hotel breakfast. In a country where the cafe is the national achievement, paying for a hotel buffet is a waste of a meal. We remove it from proposals unless the property is remote.

The famous restaurant booked because it is famous. Australia has a handful of internationally ranked restaurants and they are excellent. They are also not more interesting than a Vietnamese place in Footscray with a queue, and they cost ten times as much. Have one, not four.

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Keep reading

• Australia: the complete guide to planning your trip
• Sydney in four days
• Australia for the first time
• What we would skip in Australia
• Food and culture in Australia, 12 days
• All our Australia trips

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