Guide

Traditional food of Australia: 13 dishes to know

Traditional Australian food is British cooking reshaped by an outdoor, barbecue culture, plentiful beef and lamb, seafood and Indigenous bush foods, then broadened by Mediterranean and Asian migration. The most emblematic dishes are the meat pie, lamingtons, pavlova and Vegemite on toast, alongside barbecued lamb and sausages, barramundi and Anzac biscuits.

Updated 2026-10-125 min read

What Australian food is built on

Indigenous Australians have lived off native plants and animals for more than 60,000 years, a body of foods and customs now known as bush tucker: kangaroo, wallaby and emu, fish caught with spears, hooks and traps, bush fruits and nuts such as the macadamia, and spices such as lemon myrtle. Kangaroo is still sold as game, and native ingredients have come back into fashion.

From 1788 British and Irish settlers brought their own food. Sheep, beef cattle and wheat became the staples, and meat made up a large share of the Australian diet into the 20th century. Barbecued meat is now almost synonymous with Australian cooking, and Australians eat more lamb and mutton than any other country listed by the OECD-FAO.

After the Second World War, migrants from the Mediterranean and Asia reshaped how the country eats. Greek and Turkish migrants brought yiros and doner kebabs, Vietnamese migrants brought bánh mì, and from the 1980s restaurants blending European technique and Asian flavours became known as Modern Australian cuisine. The traditional dishes below are the ones that stayed constant through all of it.

Main dishes and the barbecue

Roast lamb — Legs and shoulders of lamb roasted for a Sunday roast with roast vegetables, or chops grilled on the barbecue. Lamb is one of the three answers commonly given for Australia's national dish, and the average Australian ate 8.5 kg of lamb and mutton in 2017.
Barramundi — A fish of northern Australian rivers, cooked whole or as fillets on the barbecue plate. Our barramundi recipe crisps the skin, then finishes the fish with lemon myrtle butter and macadamias, two native ingredients.
Chicken parmigiana — Breaded chicken topped with tomato sauce and melted cheese, often shortened to "parma" or "parmi" and sometimes topped with ham or bacon. It is a fixture of the pub counter meal, served with chips or salad, alongside steak and chips and the mixed grill.
Sausage sizzle — Sausages grilled on a barbecue hot plate and served in a slice of white bread with fried onions and tomato sauce. Stalls run by volunteers raise money for clubs and charities outside hardware stores, and the one at a polling station on election day is known as a democracy sausage.

Pies and takeaway

Meat pie — A hand-sized pie of minced or diced beef in thick gravy, eaten hot with tomato sauce, sold in bakeries, milk bars and petrol stations and at Australian Rules football matches. It is the dish most often named as the national dish of Australia; see our meat pie recipe, with a shortcrust base and a puff pastry lid.
Pie floater — A meat pie set in a bowl of thick pea soup, usually with tomato sauce on top, sold in Adelaide. It is believed to date from the 1890s, became popular at South Australian pie carts and was named a South Australian Heritage Icon in 2003.
Fish and chips — Battered fish and slab-cut chips from the local fish and chip shop, a British import that stayed popular. In the southern states the usual fish is not cod but flake, a fillet of gummy shark, and the same shops sell dim sims and Chiko Rolls, both invented in Victoria.

Breakfast, bread and party food

Vegemite on toast — A thick, dark, salty spread made from leftover brewers' yeast extract, scraped thinly over buttered toast at breakfast or used in sandwiches. It was developed in Melbourne in 1922 and first sold in 1923.
Damper — A plain bread of wheat flour, salt and water, with butter if there is some, baked in the coals of a campfire or in a camp oven. It was the bread of swagmen, drovers and other travellers in the bush.
Fairy bread — White bread spread with butter, covered in hundreds and thousands and cut into triangles. It has been a fixture of children's birthday parties since the 1920s.

Desserts and baking

Lamingtons — Squares of butter or sponge cake dipped in a thin chocolate icing that soaks into the crumb, then rolled in desiccated coconut, sometimes split and filled with cream or jam. Queensland claims it, and our lamington recipe uses day-old sponge so it holds together in the icing.
Pavlova — A round of baked meringue with a crisp crust and a soft, light centre, topped with whipped cream and fruit and named after the ballerina Anna Pavlova. It is a summer and Christmas dessert, and its origin is contested because New Zealand claims it too.
Anzac biscuits — Biscuits of rolled oats, flour, sugar, butter, golden syrup and often desiccated coconut, linked to the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps of the First World War. They are thought to have been sent to soldiers abroad because they kept well, and they are still often baked at home.

A kitchen of states and cities

Each state keeps its own specialities. Sydney prizes its rock oysters and once made carpetbag steak, beef stuffed with oysters, a menu staple until the 1990s. Queensland cooks with macadamia, lemon myrtle, finger lime and Moreton Bay bugs. South Australia has the pie floater and German-origin foods such as mettwurst and bienenstich, and Tasmania has the scallop pie. Melbourne invented the dim sim in the 1940s, and the Bendigo pie company Four'n Twenty made the meat pie a football staple from 1947.

Across the Tasman the food is close but not identical: read about the traditional food of New Zealand, which shares the meat pie, pavlova and Anzac biscuits, and about the traditional food of the United Kingdom, where most of the settler dishes began.

Cook Australian food at home

The meat pie, barramundi and lamingtons all have full step-by-step recipes in Copper, with ingredients, timings and the one technique that makes each work. Find them on our page about the food of Australia.

The recipes

Questions people ask

What is the most popular food in Australia?

The meat pie is the dish most often called Australia's national food, and barbecued meat, especially sausages and lamb, is central to how Australians eat. Chicken is the most eaten meat by weight, at about 47 kg per person per year.

What do Australians eat for breakfast?

Toast is the usual breakfast, often spread with Vegemite. Smashed avocado on toast is a café favourite that Queensland says it was eating as early as the 1920s.

Is Australian food spicy?

Traditional Australian food is mild, built on roast and barbecued meat, pies and baking. Heat comes from the Asian and Middle Eastern food that migrants brought, from Thai and Vietnamese to kebab shops.

What is a traditional Australian dessert?

Lamingtons, pavlova and Anzac biscuits are the three classics, with the neenish tart and jam donuts as regional favourites.

What is bush tucker?

Bush tucker is food native to Australia and historically eaten by Indigenous Australians: kangaroo, emu, witchetty grubs, fruits such as quandong, spices such as lemon myrtle, and native greens and yams.

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