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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