42 Popular Australian Foods to Try, From Vegemite to Milo

Australian food is a national canteen built from British bakery habits, Southern European ingredients, East and Southeast Asian technique and a short list of native foods that nobody else eats. The 42 foods and drinks below are the ones you will actually meet in cafés, bakeries, pubs, supermarkets and back gardens across the country, and they include a few that will make you hesitate before the first bite.

Almost none of it is restaurant food. Australia’s best-known dishes are counter food, party food and barbecue food, which is why the list runs from a savoury yeast spread to a battered sausage on a stick.

Planning the trip around them? Our Australia vacation guide covers entry rules, seasons, transport and costs.

Popular Australian food

Vegemite on toast

Vegemite is a dark, salty yeast-extract spread that Australians eat in a thin scrape on buttered toast, and the thin scrape is the whole trick. Visitors who load it on like jam are the reason the “Australians eat something disgusting” story survives.

Vegemite was developed in 1922 from spent brewer’s yeast, a by-product that would otherwise have been thrown away, and the name was picked through a public naming competition. It also goes into soups and stews as a savoury seasoning. Try it with sliced avocado or melted cheese on top, which is how it is most often eaten now.

Meat pies

The meat pie is Australia’s national snack, a hand-sized pastry case filled with minced beef and gravy and eaten with tomato sauce on top. You will find it at every bakery, service station, football ground, pub and country show in the country.

The classic is beef, but the fillings have spread to chicken and leek, butter chicken, beef curry, lamb and rosemary and a dozen more. Upmarket restaurants make refined versions; nobody thinks they are better than a plain one eaten standing up. The baking industry has run a national pie competition since 1990, which tells you how seriously it is taken.

Flat white

The flat white is a small milk coffee with a thin layer of dense microfoam, and ordering one is the fastest way to sound local. It sits between a latte and a cappuccino: less milk than a latte, no thick foam cap.

Australia and New Zealand both claim to have invented it, most likely in the 1980s, and neither claim has ever been settled. What is not in dispute is that Australian café culture built its reputation on it, to the point where Australian-run coffee shops now export the style to London and New York.

Splice

A Splice is an ice lolly with a vanilla ice cream core inside a fruit-flavoured ice shell, usually pineapple. It is a supermarket and corner-shop staple rather than anything you order.

It became a fixture of Australian beach summers in the second half of the twentieth century and has stayed there. The texture contrast, soft centre against hard fruit ice, is the point.

Tim Tams

Tim Tams are chocolate biscuits made of two malted biscuit layers with a chocolate cream filling, fully coated in chocolate. They are made by Arnott’s and they are the biscuit Australians take overseas as a gift.

Arnott’s says it sells more than 35 million packets a year. The ritual to try is the Tim Tam Slam: bite a corner off two opposite ends, use the biscuit as a straw for hot chocolate, tea or warm milk, and eat the whole thing before it collapses.

Fairy bread

Fairy bread is white bread, buttered and covered in hundreds and thousands, cut into triangles. It is not sold in shops; it is made at home for children’s birthday parties, and every Australian adult has an opinion about it.

The rules are unwritten and firmly held: soft white bread, real butter, sprinkles pressed in so they stick, and triangles rather than squares.

Dim sim

An Australian dim sim is a large, thick-skinned dumpling filled with minced meat and cabbage, and it is usually deep-fried rather than steamed. It is a Melbourne creation inspired by Cantonese dim sum, not an import of it.

Size is the giveaway. An Australian dim sim is roughly half the size of a fist, several times larger than the dumpling it descends from, and you buy it at a fish-and-chip shop or a milk bar rather than a Chinese restaurant.

Fish and chips

Fish and chips in Australia is a beachside institution rather than a British import that stayed the same. The fish is more often flathead, barramundi, snapper or shark (sold as flake) than cod, and it is eaten outdoors with salt and lemon.

Every coastal town has a shop doing it, and the good ones batter to order. The chips are thick-cut. Vinegar is optional and less standard than in Britain.

Chicken parmigiana

A chicken parmigiana is a crumbed chicken breast topped with tomato sauce, cheese and usually a slice of ham, served with chips and salad. It is the default Australian pub meal and it is almost always called a parma or a parmi, depending on which state you are in.

The name argument is real. Victoria says parma, New South Wales and Queensland say parmi, and neither side is moving. Order one with a beer and you have had the standard Australian pub dinner.

Beetroot

Beetroot in Australia means tinned sliced beetroot, and it goes in sandwiches, salads and, most distinctively, on burgers. A burger “with the lot” has beetroot in it alongside a fried egg, bacon and tinned pineapple.

Its earthy sweetness against beef and egg is an acquired combination that Australians acquired a long time ago. Order a burger with the lot at least once so you know what the argument is about.

Neenish tart

A Neenish tart is a small pastry case with a sweet cream filling, topped with icing split into two colours, usually chocolate and white. It is a bakery classic found the length of the country.

The usual story credits a Mrs Neenish in rural New South Wales in the early 1900s, who supposedly ran out of cocoa mid-bake and iced half the tart in white. Food historians have found earlier printed references, so treat the story as folklore rather than record. The tart is real either way.

Pavlova

Pavlova is a meringue cake with a crisp shell and a soft marshmallow centre, topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit. Passionfruit, strawberries, kiwi and banana are the usual toppings, and it is the standard Australian Christmas dessert.

It is named after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, who toured Australia and New Zealand in the 1920s, and both countries claim to have invented it. The earliest known printed recipe under that name comes from New Zealand, which Australians will tell you proves nothing.

Moreton Bay bug

A Moreton Bay bug is not an insect. It is a slipper lobster, a flat, broad shellfish caught off the Queensland coast and named after Moreton Bay near Brisbane.

The tail meat is sweet and firm and closer to lobster than to prawn. It is usually split lengthways and grilled or barbecued with butter, lemon and pepper, which is all it needs.

Bush dust

Bush dust is a native-ingredient spice blend, deep red in colour, used on fish, chicken, vegetables and potatoes. It is a modern product rather than a traditional one, built from Australian native ingredients.

Blends vary by maker, but macadamia, bush tomato and Tasmanian mountain pepper are common in them. It is aromatic rather than hot, so it seasons without overwhelming.

Lamingtons

A lamington is a cube of sponge cake dipped in thin chocolate icing and rolled in desiccated coconut, sometimes split and filled with cream or raspberry jam. It is sold in every bakery and is the standard fundraising cake at Australian school drives.

The usual origin story places it in Queensland around 1900 and ties the name to Lord Lamington, the state’s governor at the time, and his chef. New Zealand disputes this too. Australians mark National Lamington Day in July regardless.

Aussie barbecue

The Australian barbecue is a social format as much as a cooking method, and the government builds for it: free electric or gas barbecues stand in parks and beachfront reserves in most towns. You turn up, press the button, cook, clean the plate and leave.

Steak, lamb chops, sausages, prawns and barramundi all go on. So does almost anything else. The rule that matters is cleaning the hotplate for the next person.

Golden Gaytime

A Golden Gaytime is a toffee and vanilla ice cream bar coated in chocolate and rolled in biscuit crumbs, and it is one of the most recognisable ice creams in the country. The crumb coating is what makes it.

Streets launched the original Gaytime in 1959, and the Golden version, with the biscuit coating and toffee centre, followed in 1970. It has since spun off into a whole range of flavoured products.

Witchetty grub

The witchetty grub is a large white moth larva eaten by Aboriginal peoples for thousands of years, and it is the one item on this list that most visitors will not order twice. It is dug from the roots of witchetty bush and other trees in arid Australia.

Raw, it is said to taste nutty and of almonds; cooked lightly in hot ashes, the skin crisps and the inside tastes closer to egg or chicken. It is a genuine traditional food rather than a tourist stunt, though it is now sold as both.

Pods

Pods are small, crunchy filled chocolates made by Mars, with a biscuit shell around fillings modelled on Snickers, Mars bar and Twix. They are a supermarket confectionery line rather than a cultural institution.

They are worth a mention because they are mainly an Australian and New Zealand product, so visitors from elsewhere will not have seen them. Availability of individual flavours comes and goes.

Snags

A snag is Australian slang for a sausage, and the classic way to eat one is the sausage sizzle: a sausage on a single slice of white bread, folded over, with tomato sauce and often fried onions. The folded bread is called a sanger.

Sausage sizzles run outside hardware stores, at school fêtes and at polling stations on election day, where the result is known nationally as a “democracy sausage”. It is the cheapest and most democratic meal in the country.

Weet-Bix

Weet-Bix is a wheat biscuit cereal eaten with milk, and Australians eat it in volumes that surprise everyone else. It is denser and sweeter than the British Weetabix it resembles.

It dates from the 1920s and was created in Sydney as an affordable, high-fibre breakfast. Milk goes on first and you eat it fast, because a soggy Weet-Bix is a lost cause. Fruit and a spoon of sugar are the usual additions.

Caramel slice

A caramel slice is a three-layer bar of biscuit base, condensed-milk caramel and a thick dark chocolate top, cut into rectangles. Every bakery, café and petrol station has one.

It is sweet to the point of being a two-coffee item, and it is cheap. Australians also call it caramel shortbread or millionaire’s shortbread depending on where they grew up.

Damper

Damper is a plain bush bread of flour, water and salt, traditionally baked in the coals of a campfire. It was the staple of drovers, shearers and stockmen who carried flour and little else.

Modern versions add baking soda or self-raising flour and sometimes milk, which gives a lighter loaf. Eaten hot with butter and golden syrup, it is still a camping and school-camp fixture.

Bowen mangoes

The Bowen mango, properly called Kensington Pride, is the mango Australians mean when they say mango. It ripens through the Queensland summer and it is the taste of Christmas for most of the country.

It takes its common name from Bowen in north Queensland, which marks the association with a large roadside mango sculpture, one of Australia’s many “big things”. Buy them by the tray when they are in season, because a tray costs little more than a handful.

Sausage rolls

An Australian sausage roll is seasoned sausage meat wrapped in puff pastry, baked and eaten with tomato sauce. It is bakery food, party food and lunchbox food in equal measure.

Vegetarian versions with spinach and cheese or lentils are now standard in most bakeries. A good one has a crisp base rather than a soggy one, which is the whole test.

Prawns

Australians call them prawns, not shrimp, which makes the famous advertising line about shrimp on the barbie doubly wrong. Prawns are a central part of the Australian summer table and an Australian Christmas.

Queensland tiger prawns, king prawns and school prawns all turn up. They are barbecued in the shell, eaten cold with seafood sauce, or served as a prawn cocktail, which Australians took up in the 1970s and never gave back.

Emu

Emu meat is a lean red meat from Australia’s largest native bird, and it is genuinely red rather than white despite coming from a bird. It is low in fat and a good source of iron and protein.

You will meet it more often as an ingredient than a steak: in pies, on pizza, in sausages and as a burger. Cook it fast and serve it pink, because it dries out quickly.

Avocado on toast

Avocado on toast is an Australian café standard that Australian cafés genuinely helped export. Smashed avocado on sourdough with lemon, salt, chilli flakes and often feta or a poached egg is on essentially every breakfast menu in the country.

It is also the centre of a long-running national argument about house prices and young people’s spending, which began with an Australian columnist. Order it and enjoy the small cultural aftershock.

Anzac biscuit

The Anzac biscuit is a hard, chewy oat biscuit made from rolled oats, flour, sugar, butter, golden syrup and often coconut, bound with golden syrup rather than egg so it keeps. It is tied to Anzac Day on 25 April, which commemorates Australians and New Zealanders who served and died in war.

Two things are worth knowing. The first known recipes predate the formation of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, so the story that they were baked specifically for the trenches is disputed; what is documented is that women’s groups sent biscuits of this kind to soldiers overseas because they survived the journey. The second is legal: the word Anzac is protected in Australia, and these must be sold as Anzac biscuits or slices and never as cookies.

Barramundi

Barramundi is Australia’s best-known eating fish, a firm white fish with a mild flavour that holds together on a grill. The name comes from an Aboriginal language of the Queensland coast and is usually translated as “large-scaled silver fish”.

It is at its best pan-fried or grilled with the skin on rather than battered. Wild-caught northern barramundi and farmed barramundi taste noticeably different, and the wild fish is worth paying for.

Wattleseed

Wattleseed is the roasted, ground seed of acacia species, used as a native flavouring in both sweet and savoury cooking. It tastes of coffee, chocolate and hazelnut, which is why it turns up in ice cream, bread, sauces and beer.

Look for it in cafés and bakeries that work with native ingredients, and in supermarket spice ranges. It is one of the easiest native foods to bring home.

Chiko rolls

A Chiko roll is a large deep-fried roll filled with cabbage, barley, carrot, beef and seasonings in a thick egg-and-flour pastry. It was designed to be eaten one-handed at a football match, which is exactly where it is still eaten.

It was created by a Victorian boilermaker and caterer and first sold at a New South Wales agricultural show in the early 1950s. The name is a shortening of “chicken roll”, and it has never contained chicken.

Kangaroo

Kangaroo is a lean, dark red meat with a strong flavour, sold in supermarkets as steaks, mince, sausages and fillets. Australia is one of the few countries that eats its own national animal, which visitors find strange and Australians do not.

It is very low in fat, high in iron and protein, and it must be cooked rare to medium-rare or it turns tough. Marinate it, sear it hard and rest it. Eating it on a barbecue is the standard introduction.

Pikelets

Pikelets are small, thick pancakes made with a raised batter, eaten warm or cold with butter and jam. They are closer to a Scotch pancake than to a crêpe or an American stack.

They are afternoon-tea food, made at home and sold in supermarket packs. Spread with butter and jam and served with a cup of tea, they are as domestic as Australian baking gets.

Dagwood dog

A Dagwood dog is a battered sausage on a stick, deep-fried and dipped in tomato sauce. It belongs to agricultural shows and fairgrounds, and almost nowhere else.

It goes by different names around the country, including Pluto pup and dippy dog, and it is a close relative of the American corn dog. The name comes from a comic-strip character.

Crocodile

Crocodile meat is pale, firm and mild, and it turns up on menus in the Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australia. It is farmed rather than hunted from the wild for the table.

Treat it like a cross between chicken and pork: cook it through but not for long, because it dries out. Expect to meet it as a skewer, a burger or a novelty tasting plate more often than a main course.

Fior di latte

Fior di latte is a fresh Italian-style mozzarella made from cow’s milk, and Australian dairies produce a lot of it, particularly in New South Wales. It is here because Italian migration shaped Australian eating more than any other single influence.

It melts cleanly and tastes mild and milky, which is why it is the default cheese on Australian pizza. Buy it fresh from a deli rather than vacuum-packed if you can.

Lemon, lime and bitters

Lemon, lime and bitters is Australia’s non-alcoholic house drink: lemonade, lime cordial and a dash of Angostura bitters over ice with a slice of citrus. It is served in every pub in the country and usually shortened to LLB.

The bitters carry a trace of alcohol, so it is not strictly alcohol-free, but it is ordered as a soft drink. It is the standard order for the designated driver and, by long tradition, for golfers after a round.

Quandong

The quandong is a small, tart red native fruit that grows on trees across arid Australia, and it is one of the more approachable bush foods. It tastes somewhere between apricot and rhubarb.

The flesh is too sharp to eat raw in quantity, so it goes into jams, pies, chutneys and sauces. The kernel inside the stone is edible and tastes of almonds. Look for quandong jam in outback roadhouses and native-food shops.

Cruffin

A cruffin is croissant dough baked in a muffin tin, then filled, and it came out of Melbourne’s bakery scene in 2013. The name is exactly what it sounds like.

Fillings run to salted caramel, vanilla custard, jam, chocolate and lemon curd, and good bakeries change them weekly. Australia’s pastry culture is strong enough that the cruffin travelled worldwide within a couple of years.

Salt and pepper calamari

Salt and pepper calamari is deep-fried squid in a seasoned flour coating, served with lemon and aioli, and it is on the menu of nearly every Australian pub. It comes straight from Cantonese cooking and has been fully absorbed.

Good versions are tender and lightly coated; bad ones are chewy, which is a cooking-time problem. It often arrives topped with fried chilli, garlic and spring onion.

Milo

Milo is a malted chocolate powder stirred into hot or cold milk, and Australians eat it dry off a spoon as often as they drink it. The green tin is on shelves worldwide, but it was invented in Australia.

Thomas Mayne, a food scientist at Nestlé Australia, developed it during the Great Depression as an affordable way to get vitamins and minerals into children, and launched it at the Sydney Royal Easter Show in 1934. Locals will tell you the right way to make it, and they will disagree with each other.

Frequently asked questions

What is Australia’s national dish?

Australia has no official national dish. The meat pie, the lamington, the pavlova and the barbecued sausage all get nominated, and the meat pie wins most informal polls.

What foods are unique to Australia?

The genuinely Australian foods are the native ones, such as witchetty grubs, wattleseed, quandong, Moreton Bay bugs, kangaroo, emu and barramundi, plus invented products like Vegemite, Tim Tams, the Chiko roll, Weet-Bix, Milo and the lamington.

Is Australian food just British food?

No. British baking gave Australia the pie, the sausage roll and the biscuit tin, but Italian, Greek, Lebanese, Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai migration reshaped everyday eating, and native ingredients are a growing part of it.

What should I try first in Australia?

Start with a meat pie from a bakery, a flat white from an independent café and a Tim Tam from a supermarket. All three are cheap, universal and tell you something about the country.

Can visitors eat kangaroo and crocodile?

Yes. Both are farmed or harvested under licence and sold in supermarkets, butchers and restaurants. Kangaroo is widely eaten by Australians; crocodile is mostly a menu novelty.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

Four things worth knowing before you order are listed below.

1. Scrape the Vegemite, do not spread it. Butter first, then a thin dark smear you can see the toast through. Every visitor who dislikes Vegemite ate too much of it on the first try.
2. Cook kangaroo rare, or do not cook it. It has almost no fat, so anything past medium-rare goes tough and livery. Restaurants that know this serve it pink without asking.
3. Look for the free public barbecue. Most Australian parks and beachfront reserves have council-run electric or gas hotplates that cost nothing to use. Buy snags and bread at a supermarket and you have a genuine local meal for a few dollars.
4. Buy Anzac biscuits, never Anzac cookies. The word is protected by Australian law and the product must be sold as biscuits or slices. Anything on sale as an Anzac cookie is not a local product following local rules.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, whose Queensland road trip from Brisbane up to Port Douglas covered a lot of bakery counters and pub menus along the way. The team covers Australia for independent travellers, including the tours, hotels and rental cars worth booking, and updates this page when products and the facts behind them change.