Useful Notes / Australian Cuisine

When the steaks are burning fiercely
When the smoke gets in your eyes
When the sausages taste like fried toothpaste
And your mouth is full of flies
It's a national institution
It's Australian through and through
So come on, mate, and grab your plate
Let's have a barbecue!

— Eric Bogle, "The Aussie Bar-B-Que Song"

To call Australian cuisine "eclectic" is an understatement. Itself a hodgepodge of immigrant cultures that doesn't market itself as a coherent whole to the outside world the way that, say, the United States of America do, there's no one style or ingredient that outsiders can point to and say "that's Aussie food". Instead, Australian cuisine is more notable for specific foods that have evolved there. At its core, Australian cuisine is British cuisine, adapted to the semi-tropical general climate, and reinforced by a pronounced incorporation of Italian and Chinese cuisine. Its general dietary focus is on meat, seafood and desserts, and the country considers itself to be struggling with an obesity crisis. Some of the local curiosities that visitors can look forward to seeing should they dine in Australia include:

Useful Terminology for foreigners:

• Pie Shop: Possibly a British colloquialism, pie shops are small bakeries that specialize in turning out pies, sausage rolls, slices, and similar "fast baked goods". They tend to cater to blue collar workers, who can quickly duck in, grab a filling, quickly eaten, and relatively cheap meal, and then get back to the work site with time to eat, but they're also popular with kids.
• Hot Box: Due to the traditionally sparse population and wide stretches between communities, Australian groceries and petrol stations traditionally have a small glass-fronted heater in which they keep roast chickens and a variety of fast food, typically including hot chips, crumbed drumsticks and sausages, potato scallops, dim sum, spring rolls, lengths of deep-fried kabana, wingdings, Dagwood dogs, pies and sausage rolls. Even Australian grocery chain stores like Woolworths have hot boxes. Due to the nature of the heater, hot box food that has been left to sit eventually dries out and overcooks, but if purchased too soon, may turn out to be slightly undercooked. Australians regard hot box food as a guilty pleasure, as much for the need to master the trick of when to buy it as from the fact it tends to be unhealthy and often overpriced.

Mains

• Barbecue: Not to be confused with the slow-cooked, sauce and/or smoke-infused barbecue of the Americas! Australian barbecue (or barbie, or BBQ, as they abbreviate it) is closer to what Americans call "grilling"; meat, seafood and vegetables grilled on open-air griddles or flat-top grills. Barbecuing is the most iconic Australian social gathering, and most people who get together for parties or other casual socializing events, especially in rural environments, will eat barbecue as they do so. Australian parks often have public grilling surfaces where families can fry up their meat, it's that important to them.
• Chicken Parmigiana: A clear marker of the Italian influence on Australian cuisine, this is one of the most widespread "everyday restaurant" foods you'll see; virtually any public eatery that has a menu will serve this dish, which consists of a crumbed chicken fillet smothered in tomato sauce and melted cheese, served with salad, vegetables or thick-cut potato chips ("steak fries" to Americans). Discussions whether the name should be shortened as "parma" or "parmy" can get contentious.
• Damper: A wheat-flour based soda-bread, traditionally cooked on campfires. It's more of a historical food than anything, although workers on remote livestock stations still make it.
• Halal snack pack: Also known as HSP, snack pack, snack box, meat in a box, mixed plate, AB (in Adelaide), and many more. A Middle Eastern–European fusion dish typically served as a takeaway item; developed in the last part of the 20th century and now increasingly widespread nationwide. Consists of halal-certified doner kebab meat (lamb, chicken, or beef) and chips, plus any of several different sauces, with yogurt, cheese, jalapeños, tabbouleh, and hummus also widely seen as additions.
• Macadamia Nuts: Native to Eastern Australia, these nearly golf-ball sized nuts are delicious, but infamously hard to get into; hammers are the go-to method of choice. One of very few indigenous Australian crops to be grown elsewhere on a commercial scale (most prominently in Hawaii, but the biggest producer these days is South Africa, and various Southeast Asian and Mediterranean nations have also gotten in on the action.)
• Mangos: Not indigenous to Australia, but traditionally gorged upon during the Christmas months, when they come into season.
• Native Food: The Australian equivalent of game meats, such as kangaroo, emu or goanna (a kind of large lizard), mixed with indigenous fruits, nuts, and plants. Also colloquially known as "Bush Tucker", but that's arguably politically incorrect these days. Most Australians don't eat this stuff, as it is the local equivalent of "hippie food", but there is a subtle push from the government trying to rebrand it and market it to the mainstream consumer, and kangaroo meat in particular is starting to show up in Australian restaurants.
  • Witchetty Grub: Invertebrates of several kinds are part of the Bush Tucker "menu", but the most famous and recognizable are the Witchetty Grubs, a species of large, wood-boring moth larvae.
• Prawns: Not shrimp, and calling them both that is a national Berserk Button. Shrimp refers to small crustaceans used as bait when fishing. Prawns are their larger cousins, which thrive in waters of the Australian coast. They are eaten with relish, especially around Christmas time. And yes, they can be fried on a barbecue.
• Sausages: Australia may not be as crazy about them as Germany, but sausages are very common food here, favored for their cheapness and how well they go with the Australian love of grilling meat. Many different varieties exist, mostly distinguished by their basic meat ingredients; beef and pork are the mainstay, followed by chicken, lamb and kangaroo. More exotic versions most certainly do exist. The iconic no-frills BBQ meal is a grilled sausage with sauce and maybe fried onions wrapped up in a slice of bread, frequently referred to as a "sausage sizzle".^{Clarification} Technically, a "sausage sizzle" is a fundraiser event akin to a bake sale where cheap sausages are fried up, but the sausages one can buy are often called a sausage sizzle as well.
  • Democracy Sausage: Not exactly a unique meal, the Democracy Sausage is a sausage sizzle specifically held at a site where one votes for any democratic reason, such as federal elections or referendums. As voting is mandatory in Australia, the promise of being able to buy a cheap sausage sizzle makes the process more enticing. There's even a website dedicated to showing where you can get them.
• Vegemite: A descendant of a British spread called Marmite, Vegemite is based on a yeast extract, just like its ancestor, and is a love it or hate it Aussie cuisine icon, marketed as a cheap but nutritious Vitamin B-rich spread suitable for children's lunch boxes, leading to an incredibly catchy jingle called "Vegemite Kids" by the locals. It is eaten on buttered bread, spread thickly with butter and sparingly with the vegemite - it has an extremely strong, salty, almost acrid taste, and can be quite overpowering for the inexperienced. A sweeter, milder, but less famous version called Promite also exists, and you can even find the original Marmite if you look hard enough. (It's mostly known outside of Australia for being mentioned in the Men at Work song "Down Under".)
• Weet-Bix: A local breakfast staple, finger-length vaguely brick-shaped bars of compressed shredded wheat, eaten with milk for breakfast. Locals have long had a tradition of spicing up the nutritious, if somewhat bland, meal by adding extras like sugar, syrup, honey or slices of fruit (most commonly banana). Directly related to the UK's Weetabix, but more rectangular than oval.

Desserts & Sweets

• ANZAC Biscuits: Created by Australian and New Zealand women to send to the soldiers as they fought World War II, these long-lasting biscuits are made with rolled oats, coconut and golden syrup as their primary ingredients.
• Arnott's Biscuits: Arnott's is the countries single largest producer of biscuits and crackers, with a spectacularly large array of different items on the menu; you'll see their products in every grocery store and service station across the country. The most iconic are the Shapes (small, flavorful baked crackers), Jatz (large, round, plain-flavored, baked crackers), Tim-Tams (two wafers sandwiching a cream filling, covered in chocolate; there are many different flavors, from milk, dark and white chocolate to more exotic affairs) and Mint Slices (chocolate biscuit topped with mint cream, covered in milk chocolate).
• Fairy Bread: Seen as a child's treat served at parties, this is just soft white bread buttered and spread liberally with hundreds-and-thousands, a small, round kind of sprinkles (known as nonpareils in most countries). Use of any other kind of sprinkles will earn the disdain of any true Australian. Arnott's (see above) has a biscuit variety called by the same name, which is a shortbread biscuit with hundreds-and-thousands glued to it with strawberry icing.
• Ice Cream & Ice Blocks: In a hot, arid country whose denizens have a sweet tooth, frozen sweets are incredibly popular. Ice cream, of course, is your frozen milk-based desserts available in tubs, in a cone, or on a stick. Ice blocks (or occasionally "icy poles") are pre-prepared treats consisting of water ice on a stick. Some popular Australian examples include Splice, which is a fruit juice ice wrapped around a core of vanilla ice cream (similar to an American Creamsicle), and Golden Gaytime, an ice cream made of toffee-flavoured ice cream covered in a very thin layer of chocolate dipped into biscuit pieces. Paddlepops are a common brand of ice cream on a stick, to the point that what Americans would call "popsicle sticks" will almost always be called "Paddlepop sticks" in Australia.
• Lollies:^Note This is what most Australians use to refer to small sugary treats, though younger Australians have more and more frequently been noted to use "candy" instead Australians consume a lot of candy, and whilst much of it is British or American in origin, there are some home-grown favorites. Fantales - caramels coated in chocolate and served in individual wrappers, printed with interesting facts, were iconic and their discontinuation in 2023 caused much controversy. Minties are equally iconic and live on - large, sticky, gooey, chewy soft mints, whose wrappers are covered in blackly comic little cartoons. Popular chocolate bars are traditionally Cadbury products, such as Picnic (caramel-filled wafer coated in chocolate, peanuts and more chocolate) and Cherry Ripe (pressed, dried coconut and cherry in dark chocolate).
• Lamington: One of the national desserts, Lamingtons are small sponge cakes, or cut pieces thereof, covered in icing (traditionally chocolate, but variants do exist) and rolled in shredded dried coconut meat. The more decadent versions are served with cream and jam.
• Pavlova: Another iconic Aussie dessert, commonly eaten around Christmas time, pavlovas are hollowed meringue containers filled with whipped cream and mixed pieces of fruit. Australians and Kiwis are known to fight over which country truly owns the distinction of inventing the dish.
• Peach Melba: A famous Aussie dessert that actually isn't served much, this dish of peaches and vanilla icecream served with raspberry sauce is tied in some way to the famous Opera singer Dame Nellie Melba, although how it came to be is something stories disagree on.
• Slices: These sweet pastries, inherited from Britain, are everywhere to be found in Australia as the sweet treat of choice. The most iconic flavor is the vanilla slice; thick confectioner's custard sandwiched between two sweet crackers, with the top cracker covered in a thick layer of sweet, creamy icing - ironically, most vanilla slices nowadays are topped with passionfruit-flavored cream!

Drinks

• Beer: Australia is famously a nation of beer drinkers — although the brand most often associated with Australians overseas, Foster's, is hardly ever drunk by actual Australians, and often referred to as "that piss we sell to foreigners". Which brand is most popular depends on the state, with some popular beers being Victoria Bitter, AKA VB (Victoria-based), Toohey's (New South Wales-based), XXXX (Queensland-based), Swan (Western Australia-based), West End (South Australia-based) and Cascade (Tasmania-based). There are also several boutique and craft brewers. Australian beer tends to be higher in alcohol content that American beer - most American full-strength beers could legally be sold as light beers in Australia. One Australian joke is:
  Q: Why is American beer like sex on the beach?
  A: They're both fucking close to water.
• Coffee: Since the post-WWII influx of European immigrants, Australia in general, and Melbourne in particular, has grown into a nation of coffee snobs — one of the most common complaints from Australians travelling overseas is not being able to find a decent coffee. We're not picky about the style, either: Vietnamese-style sweet coffee, Italian froth, Turkish sludge, it's all good, so long as it's good.
• Milo: A local powdered drink made from a mixture of malt powder and powdered chocolate. It is stirred into heated milk or water and consumed — local wisdom is to always use milk instead of water and to put in large, generous spoons of the powder for a stronger, superior flavor. It possesses low sugar and a high content of multiple vitamins and minerals — Calcium, Iron, and Vitamins A, B1, B2 and C. As such, it's considered a "healthy snack", and often consumed by individuals with athletic tastes.
• Soft Drink:^Note This is the preferred generic nomenclature - not soda, as that often refers to soda water exclusively Whilst a few American products such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi have infiltrated the Aussie market, the bulk of the local soft drink varieties is the product a local company called "Kirks", which produces a wide variety of flavored sodas, including some versions that are restricted by state or which are limited edition promotions. Classic flavors include lemonade, creaming soda, sarsaparilla and ginger ale, but more exotic drinks include Pasito (a passionfruit-flavored soft drink), Portello (a grape-flavored soft drink), and Toffee Apple (a now-discontinued gimmick flavor). Another local soft drink company is Bundaberg, which alongside creamy soda and ginger beer makes several more unusual varieties.

Fast Food

• While Aussies love their fast food as much as any other Western nation, the population being comparatively small and widely spread, combined with Australian law requiring a comparably higher minimum wage for fast food workers and making it harder to fire unproductive workers, means that most fast food joints are either local one-offs or big brands from America, because it's hard to break even on running multiple shops. That's not to say there are no local fast food franchises, just they tend to be smaller in their distribution than you'd see in, say, America.
• Australian hamburgers — always called "burgers" by locals, never sandwiches — differ from the American variety in that the default beef option is usually a "rissole" (a thick, often oval-shaped, patty of fried ground beef, sometimes with added vegetables) as opposed to the relatively thin, circular, flattened or "smash" burgers that dominate in America. The option is usually given in the non-chain shops to swap out a steak for the rissole for the cost of a couple extra dollars.
• The Works Burger: An iconic Aussie spin on the classic American hamburger, this motley creation consists of a fried patty made from minced beef (though a steak can be substituted), as well as lettuce, cheese, tomato, onions (usually fried), beetroot, a slice of pineapple, bacon, and a fried egg, all served in a buttered burger bun. Can be had at any non-franchise restaurant that sells burgers, including most truck-stops.
• Hungry Jack's: The closest thing to an Aussie burger chain for a long time, it's actually a subsidiary of America's Burger King restaurants; they actually beat out McDonalds as the first American burger franchise to open in Australia, but because there was already a local franchise with the same name, they had to jump through some legal hoops — long story short, the Australian "Burger King" sold the American Burger King its stores, but not the name, so they rebranded as Hungry Jacks. Like its American counterpart, they're iconic for their "Whopper" burgers; extra-large single, double or triple-patty burgers (in contrast to the double-decker "Big Mac" of their more famous rival), with special promotional variants offered for weeks-long stretches.
• Wendy's: Americans who love Wendy's burgers are in for a nasty shock if they come to Australia; though Wendy's did try to extend the franchise to the land down under in 1982, they ran into the same culture shocks as most other foreign franchise, so all 11 of their burger joints were all shut down by 1985. Wendy's Milk Bars, which sell hotdogs, ice cream and milk shakes, do continue to exist in shopping mall across the country. In 2021, the first Wendy's burger joint since 1985 appeared in the form of a pop-up shop that was only open for a day... but it was popular enough that, in 2023, Wendy's announced they planned to open 200 new Aussie restaurants by 2034, with the first to open by 2024.
• Oporto: An Aussie-grown franchise, Oporto's is a Portuguese chicken restaurant, selling spicy grilled chicken, chicken burgers and chicken wraps that started out in North Bondi before spreading along the coast and even inland.
• Grill'd: The first big burger franchise to be homegrown in Australia.
• Pies: Australians are nuts for pies, alongside their cousins the pastie and the sausage roll. Sweet pies are relatively rare here, with the focus being on savory pastries; the "meat pie", a roughly palm-sized short pie full of minced, diced or shredded beef with gravy, is the iconic snack, usually served with tomato sauce ("ketchup" for Americans, but the Australian version is less sweet and more runny). Pies are Serious Business to Aussies, and every town will have a bakery or a cafe making its own pies; any place that offers ready-made hot food, such as groceries or truck stops (as Aussies call gas stations) will usually have packaged and reheated pies for sale. One bakery in the state of Queensland, the Old Fernvale Bakery, earned state-wide fame for a menu of over 120 different varieties of pie, ranging from variants on the classic beef, pork and chicken to more exotic affairs like lamb & mint sauce, pork with apple sauce or corned beef in white sauce, to game meats like turkey, duck, kangaroo and crocodile.
  • Pie Floater: Take a meat pie, place it in a bowl of pea soup and garnish with a generous squirt of tomato sauce. Popular street food from South Australia that works if you treat the pie as a large meat-filled dumpling.
• Sausage Roll: A relative of the pie, and likewise inherited from Great Britain, sausage rolls are oblong 'sausages' of minced meat and vegetables that've been rolled in flaky pastry and then baked. The standard mix is beef-based, but variants exist that either add extra ingredients (bacon and cheese) or swap out the filling (pork and fennel). Conventional wisdom is to consume with sauce, due to the lack of the lubricating gravy of their pie relatives. But remember, It's a long way to the shop if you wanna sausage roll!
  • Red Devil: A variant of the sausage roll akin to the American "pig in a blanket"; a full-length frankfurter rolled in flaky pastry with diced onion, bacon, cheese and tomato sauce, then baked.
• Dim Sim: Not to be confused with dim sum, this is a large dumpling normally consisting of minced meat, cabbage, and seasoning, encased in a wrapper similar to that of a traditional shumai dumpling. They are typically rectangular, or sometimes a larger circular shape. They can be served deep fried or steamed and are commonly dressed or dipped in soy sauce. Don't try asking for them at an actual Chinese restaurant - you're more likely to find them at a fish and chips shop or a local footy game.
• Crumbed Drumstick: Fried crumbed or breaded chicken is quite rare in Australia outside of the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise, but an ubiquitous hot box item is a large, meaty chicken drumstick that has been breaded and deep-fried.
• Crumbed Sausage: A sausage (typically pork) that has been breaded and deep-fried.
• Dagwood Dog: An Australian analog to the American corn dog, a Dagwood dog is a frankfurter that has been battered, impaled on a wooden stick to serve, and deep-fried.
• Chicken Wingding: Either of the meatier portions of a chicken wing rolled in a spicy crumb mix and deep-fried. Alongside the crumbed drumstick, this is one of the only forms of American-style fried chicken to be widely available outside of "cook at home" packaged food. Typically called "Wingdings" for short.