Food and Wine

Visitors to Australia are often dazzled by the sheer quality and variety of Australia's food. "Australians have one of the most extraordinary assortments of basic ingredients of high quality anywhere in the world", according to leading US food writer Barbara Kafka. The local food markets in every major city are a great place to sample the harvest. 
The Thursday evening Mindil Beach market is a local institution, when most of Darwin buys the evening meal from a multi-cultural array of food stalls and sits down on the beach to watch the sunset. Heaven for Adelaide's gourmands, Central Markets is a tantalising feast of charcuterie, olives, oils, wines, cheeses, wood-fired bread, organically grown vegetables and Asian style treats. On the first Saturday of the month, the Good Living Growers Market brings food from the farm fresh to the shores of Sydney's Pyrmont Bay - a sensational range of flavours, colours and smells.
Bush tucker is the fruits, seeds, fish and meat that made up the traditional diet of Australia's Aboriginal people, and it has caused a quiet revolution in some of Australia's most fashionable restaurants. Tasting Australia, a 10 day food and wine festival held in Adelaide every two years, is an event that showcases the very finest of Australia's foods and beverages to the world's food professionals and epicures. Second only to Tokyo's, the Sydney Fish Market is a showcase for the riches of Australia's seas, with sushi, fish and chips and oysters fresh from the water, available in cafes overlooking the fishing fleet. Melbourne's cavernous, 130 year old Queen Victoria Market is renowned for its exciting range of produce, from fruit, vegetables, meat, poultry and fish to delicatessen specialties.

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Australia's growing reputation as a haven for foodies is due to a mix of Indigenous and multicultural influences. In any restaurant, the label 'Modern Australian Cuisine' is a promise that you'll be tantalised, delighted and surprised. It's no secret these days, but over the past decade Australia has become a culinary destination par excellence. Australians themselves have known it for years, and now the rest of the world is discovering the tastes of Australia. Adelaide has maintained a heavyweight reputation for fine dining that has vastly outstripped its size thanks to a culinary tradition that has spawned some of the greatest names in Australian food. Australia now has several residential cooking schools that offer anything from a weekend to a full week of instruction, and that specialise in anything from Thai food to seafood to bread making. Melbourne has an exalted tradition for elegant dining, seen at its most exuberant in places such as the restaurants that spill across the pavement in Lygon Street and the stylish Southgate complex. While Australian cuisine is among the most innovative and exciting in the world, you probably won't be eating out in a five star restaurant every night. Fear not: there's a wide range of cheap and healthy eating options available, from pubs and delis to food halls and barbecues. The extraordinary diversity of Western Australia underpins its gastronomic strength, with an incredible array of meats, seafood, fruits and vegetables, helped along by a large Italian community. Propelled by its young, well-travelled and affluent population, Canberra, the national capital, has a great array of fine-dining options, and more restaurants per capita than any other Australian city.

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The term bush tucker refers to the fruits, seeds, nuts, fungi, mammals, reptiles, fish and birds that sustained indigenous Australians for 50,000 years or more before white settlement. Bush tucker tours are gaining popularity as the food gains a greater following. In various parts of Australia, Aboriginal guides show visitors how plants were used for food, medicine, shelter and artefacts. Interpretative bush-medicine and bush tucker walking tours are sometimes preceded or followed by dance performances, didgeridoo playing, story telling and boomerang throwing. The influence of native foods on contemporary Australian cuisine has seen chefs using lemon aspen, bush tomatoes, Illawarra plums, lilli pillies and muntari berries, often blended with traditional dishes of meat and fish. Kangaroo and emu are commercially farmed and processed. Both meats are low in fat content and high in fibre. Other bush tucker includes quandongs (like a peach with a touch of rhubarb), wattle seeds (sometimes used in ice-cream), Kakadu plums (less sweet than the usual varieties) and bunya bunya nuts (delicious in satay sauces), witchetty (witjuti) grubs (large grubs found in the trunks and roots of certain wattle trees) and bogong moths (a hefty migratory moth roasted in a fire and eaten like peanuts).

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In Victoria, Melbourne's Queen Victoria Market is reputedly the second-largest market in the world, with an extensive and exciting range of produce from fruit, vegetables, meat, poultry, fish and dairy products to handmade delicatessen specialties. In South Australia, Adelaide's Central Market is a gourmet treat - crammed with cheeses, charcuterie, pasta sauces, breads, preserves and fish. The market is a showcase for some of South Australia's distinctive produce such as seafood, sausages and olive oils from the Barossa Valley and brie from Kangaroo Island.

In the Northern Territory, a sensational way to sample the flavours of the Asia-Pacific region and beyond in a balmy, tropical setting is to visit Darwin's Mindil Beach Markets, held every Thursday evening during the dry season. The distinctive cuisines of Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia add their special flavours to this multicultural feast, or there are always spit roasts, burgers and fish and chips to satisfy traditionalists.

In New South Wales, the Sydney Fish Market is a showcase for the riches of Australia's seas. The fishing boats tied up along the wharf add a salty note to this market, just a five-minute drive from the heart of the city. The complex has a sushi bar, a hot-bread shop, liquor store, delicatessen, fruit and vegetable shop, tackle store and a waterfront cafe.

Held every second and fourth Saturday of the month, the Brisbane Farmers' Markets is a showcase for Queensland's finest, freshest produce, from the ginger and galangal that are essential for Asian dishes to goat's cheeses from Gympie and mangoes from the state's north. Fremantle Markets in Western Australia are a lively, bustling weekend bazaar with stalls packed with fragrant spices and organic fruit and vegetables, held in the historic precinct of the city's original fresh-food market.

In the Australian Capital Territory, Fyshwick Markets are a treat for the nose as well as the eyes - where most of Canberra comes to buy its fresh pasta, organic fruit and vegetables, wood-fired bread and delicatessen specialties. Bands, buskers and more than 300 stallholders spill across three city blocks every Saturday in the historic Sullivans Cove precinct for Hobart, Tasmania's famed Salamanca Market, which sells everything from leatherwood honey gathered in the World Heritage area to organic vegetables and gourmet specialties like strawberry chilli sauce, alongside artist studios and cafes housed in sandstone Georgian warehouses.

Source: Tourism Australia 2006

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