New South Wales
A coffee-obsessed, sea-fed nation of immigrants — with kangaroo on the barbecue and smashed avo at brunch.
Order a flat white in Melbourne and you’ll grasp quickly that Australia takes its coffee more seriously than almost anywhere, and its brunch nearly as much — smashed avocado on toast is less a dish here than a national habit. This is a country built by immigrants, and the tables show it: a Vietnamese roll for lunch, yum cha on Sunday, a Greek bakery and a Lebanese grill on the same street, most of it eaten outdoors in a climate made for it.
The land sets the rest of the menu. Sear kangaroo over the barbecue and it eats like lean, gamey beef; further north, crocodile turns up in burgers and emu in pies. Native ingredients — macadamias, tart bush berries, peppery native seasonings — have crept out of Aboriginal kitchens and into fine dining, where ‘Mod Oz’ cooking marries Asian flavours to Western technique. And with all that coastline, the surest bet is the seafood, barely off the boat and cooked with the sun on your back.
- smashed avo toast
- kangaroo (barbecued native game)
- Modern Australian (Mod Oz) fusion
- crocodile & emu (novelty bush meats)
- macadamias & bush tucker
- flat white coffee
- Barossa & Margaret River wines
