Tackling Australia from a culinary perspective can be tricky for outsiders. Aside from the huge array of native ingredients — 6,500 and counting — the country lacks an obvious “cuisine,” in the way the world knows the tropes of French food, say, or Cantonese. But what it does have is a vast melting pot of cultures — you’d be hard pressed to find better Thai or Greek food outside of their countries of origin, for example — as well as a near-religious devotion to produce quality. So if you’re traveling to Australia, feeling overwhelmed by the options and wondering what it really means to “eat Australian,” consider this your starting point.
Saint Peter (Sydney, New South Wales)
Photo by Christopher Pearce
Australian oceans are pure and pristine, and no one knows how to transform their contents into fine-dining masterpieces like chef Josh Niland. If you’re keen to try southern hemisphere fish species you’ve likely never seen before — blue mackerel, nannygai, southern calamari — presented with the kind of creativity that lands you at No. 66 on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, Saint Peter is the place.
Baba’s Place (Sydney, New South Wales)
Courtesy of Baba’s Place
Sun-faded pots of roses and herbs are clustered round the entrance of this inner city warehouse restaurant, while inside, lace-topped tables are spread with the third-culture creations of kids who grew up in Sydney’s proudly multicultural outer suburbs. Roast chicken with toum, taramasalata (fish roe dip) on shokupan (a milk bread), a riff on a fried “seafood basket” with Italian mixed herbs; at Baba’s Place, it’s all a generous, playful and delicious love song to what it means to be Australian today.
North Fitzroy Arms (Melbourne, Victoria)
Photo by Jana Longhurst
Pubs are everywhere in Australia, but for Melburnians, they’re as essential as AFL football or excellent coffee. Everyone has their die-hard favorite, and the North Fitzroy Arms, which first opened its doors in 1874, is an excellent gateway to the genre. To go all-in Aussie, order a pie in pea soup, a plate of oysters, or a round of sausage rolls, and chase them with a Carlton draught or a Rutherglen chilled red.
Yiaga (Melbourne, Victoria)
Photo by Jason Loucas
Melbourne’s Vue de Monde has set a benchmark for the city’s fine dining since it opened in 2000. Now its head chef, Hugh Allen, has opened his first standalone restaurant, Yiaga, a superb tribute to everything Australian. Every angle, surface, and curve of the dining room has been sourced from local materials, and the detailed dishes are an encyclopedia of the very best Australian produce, from fresh Queensland prawns to world-class Blackmore wagyu.
Booln Booln Cafe (Geelong, Victoria)
Photo by Lyndsay Scott
Many Australian chefs make use of Indigenous ingredients, but there’s nothing like trying them prepared by a First Nations chef. At Booln Booln Cafe on Victoria’s surf coast (about an hour’s drive southwest of Melbourne), get stuck in strawberry and Davidson plum tarts, lemon myrtle cream cinnamon buns, and Blakbrews teas infused with pepperberry and wattleseed. Local musicians sometimes drop by to play a few tunes, and there’s a wildlife sanctuary next door where kangaroos and emus are waiting to try and steal a nip of your choc and wattleseed cookie.
The Agrarian Kitchen (New Norfolk, Tasmania)
Photo by Sam Shelley
Around 90% of what you’ll find on the plates at this pretty regional restaurant close to Hobart can be found about 10 steps from the door. It’s one thing to grow the best possible produce. It’s quite another to nudge it and highlight it and coax it into previously unrealized heights of flavor, the way The Agrarian Kitchen team does. The nonalcoholic drinks pairing, which also draws heavily from the garden, might just be the best you’ll ever try.
Chow’s Table (Margaret River region, Western Australia)
Courtesy of Chow’s Table
Australia has no shortage of classic winery restaurants, from Penfolds Magill Estate near Adelaide to Ten Minutes by Tractor in Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. But Chow’s Table in Yallingup does something a little bit different, by bringing together Australia’s infatuation with the varied cuisines of our closest neighbors in Asia, with our love of a good bottle of wine. Here, you’ll feast on Malay yellow curry, typhoon shelter fried squid, and peking roast duck alongside wines from the restaurant’s companion winery, House of Cards, or from the Margaret River region’s best producers.
Blume Restaurant (Scenic Rim, Queensland)
Photo by Grace Dooner
Pickles on shelves, pressed-tin walls, and an old-fashioned devotion to “the proper way of doing things” are the hallmarks of Blume, a charming regional restaurant, around an hour’s drive southwest of Brisbane. Much of what’s on the plates is sourced from nearby mates, from local lamb to sun-ripened ox heart tomatoes. It’s all a little bit like grandma used to make, assuming grandma happened to be a lady who could shape a plate with great refinement and finesse.
Dining and Cooking