The problem with Australian pub food: it’s all the same

I’m just back from a two-week road trip through NSW and Victoria, and as you can probably tell from this story, the food has been getting me down a bit. In many regional centres around Australia, the local pub is the obvious place to go for dinner, but every single place around the country seems to have the same menu. If you have any favourites that do things differently, please do share them in the comments below. I will be heading on a train trip through regional Victoria in a few weeks’ time, so if I can unearth a few great pub meals I will be very happy indeed. And thanks, as ever, for your support of the Food + Travel Edit – I couldn’t do this without you.

There’s nothing wrong with a chicken schnitzel. Or even a parma. I love a good steak too, and like every other Australian I don’t mind some salt and pepper squid.

In fact, I like all the food on a classic Aussie pub menu, which I suppose is the point. It’s meant to be recognisable. Everyone should like everything.

An Aussie pub isn’t here to challenge you or surprise you or attempt something wild and different. It’s here to feed you things you enjoy, maybe paired with an icy cold schooner of some other thing you enjoy.

Most people seem happy with this status quo. But what happens when you’re travelling in regional Australia and the local pub is pretty much your only cheap, casual dining option that’s open every night? What happens when you find yourself sitting down to the exact same food night after night?

I reckon I could place an order at any pub in Australia without even looking at a menu. I’ll take a schnitzel with gravy and chips. I’ll have a steak with mash and veges. I’ll go for the beef burger, and my son will have the kids’ fish and chips.

Oh yeah, and we’ll start with the salt and pepper squid.

It’s like Groundhog Day in an Aussie pub. You could be in Mandurah or Maryborough, Scone or Strahan and the local pub will have the same stuff on the menu.

(I just Googled Scone, out of interest, and found the Royal Hotel, which does schnitzels – gravy an extra $2 – parmas, steaks, burgers and fish and chips. And on the starters menu there’s our old friend salt and pepper squid.)

As I said, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this standard menu, and I’m more than happy to eat pretty much anything from it. But there’s a lack of culinary diversity in Australia that really becomes apparent when you start spending your nights propping up the bar at its local pubs.

One of the great joys of travel in a place like Spain or France, Peru or Brazil, Japan or China, is the regional diversity of the cuisine. Travel half an hour and suddenly the culture has changed, there’s a preference for this dish over that dish, there’s a love of this local ingredient over that local ingredient.

Any casual bistro in France will have a lot to tell you about the area you find yourself in. These don’t have to be fancy places pushing the boundaries of culinary possibility – any old place will serve local ingredients, local dishes, paired with wine or beer or cider that’s also from that area (although, yes, they will also all have steak frites).

Even somewhere like Peru, which Australians don’t tend to think of as a culinary hotspot – though, they should – the cuisine changes as the landscape changes. The dishes served at down-home “huariques” on the coast are vastly different to those turned out in the Andes, or in the Amazon.

In Australia though? That east coast pub does the same food as the one in Alice Springs, which is the same as the one in Margaret River, which is the same as the one in the Adelaide Hills.

The “crumbed squid” on the menu at Uncle’s Tavern in Alice Springs doesn’t sound much like a regional speciality to me.  

I would love to hear from travellers who have done the “Big Lap” around Australia, and what that experience was like from a culinary point of view. Because I have just spent two weeks in regional NSW and Victoria and it was a grind, from a food perspective.

First night in a country town it’s fun to order a burger and get the kids a pizza. But two weeks in and you’re still ordering a burger and the kids are still having pizza and you start to toss up the beef and black bean from the takeaway-only Chinese place a few doors down (though as I’m sure you already know, pretty much every regional Chinese restaurant has the same menu as well).

There are exceptions to this rule, of course. No doubt you will be able to choose some rad pub in Castlemaine or Kyneton, in Mittagong or Bicheno, but to me that proves the rule. The fact these exceptions stick out just shows how blandly similar all the rest of them are.

I don’t blame the pubs for this. They’re giving the crowd what it wants: a recognisable menu filled with Aussie favourites.

I blame the customers, who don’t seem to want anything different. Everyone seems content ordering from the exact same menu night after night, town after town, state after state for the rest of their lives.

If we as customers stand demanding regional diversity, then maybe we will get regional diversity. Maybe we will get international diversity, too. Bring on the pubs that serve Thai food, or Vietnamese, or even just focus in doing killer Italian.

You see this already in Australian cities; far less often in regional areas (admittedly the Gladstone, in Orange, does great Thai food).

For pubs to take a chance on doing something different they need to be confident that their clientele will embrace that difference and enjoy it and come back for it. I’m not sure we’re there just yet, which is why, on my next road trip, I’ll probably be getting a parma. With the salt and pepper squid to start.

RANT OF THE WEEK

As someone who has written at least one newspaper column every week for more than 20 years now, I am certain there are stories I’ve written that I would look back on and regret. Not every week can be a winner. My attitudes and opinions have changed over the years.

Still, I’m pretty certain I’ve never written anything as catastrophically stupid as Mark Dapin’s recent opinion piece in the Canberra Times about Japanese food.

You don’t have to love Japanese cuisine, obviously. People have different tastes. But as a writer you do have to avoid lazy stereotypes about Japan and its cuisine that come direct from the 1990s: “Much of it [Japanese food] has never been near a cooktop or hob.” “I’m not sure that seaweed is a food.” “Some dishes look closer to ornament than aliment.”

This is the sort of stuff you say to your dropkick mates in the pub – in about 1995 – to get a few weak sniggers, not publish in a major daily newspaper in 2026. It’s factually incorrect, needlessly derogatory, borderline racist, and makes all of us as a profession look bad.

While we’re at it, my SMH colleague Brian Johnston recently penned this bizarre piece in Traveller about winery visits: “The whole wine-tasting schtick is tiresome and awkward. You may be forced to run through a flight of wines when you already know you don’t like chardonnay or shiraz.”

Oh, the humanity.

This ignorance-as-attitude schtick is such a weird flex. Being a luddite isn’t a badge of honour when you have billed yourself as an expert in travel and food.

There’s room for irreverence in travel writing, for sure. It’s fun when it’s done well, and the true greats can do it. But a writer has to be genuinely funny to pull it off – and neither of these stories is funny.

WHAT WE’VE BEEN EATING THIS WEEK

Jess was scanning the internet recently looking for food ideas, and came across this recipe for cheat’s banh cuon. For those not familiar, banh cuon is a Vietnamese classic of fermented rice batter that is steamed in a large sheet, then wrapped around various fillings and served with plenty of fresh herbs and a fish sauce-based dipping sauce. Clearly, most of us don’t have the time, the ingredients or the skill to produce thin sheets of freshly steamed fermented rice batter. Instead, this recipe calls for normal old store-bought rice paper sheets, which you dip in warm water and then wrap around your filling of choice – in this case pork mince and diced prawns – and serve with herbs and sauce. It’s not an exact dupe but for a quick lunch it comes impressively close.

WHAT I’M LOVING THIS WEEK

• Western Sydney Airport has announced a new flight partner: Vietnamese budget carrier VietJet will be flying twice a week from WSI to Ho Chi Minh City, beginning in January 2027, increasing to three times a week by next March. The NSW government is chipping in funds to encourage more airlines to head west.
• I really enjoyed this story about the recent porridge-making championships in Pearl Beach, NSW.
• I also loved this story about small-scale cruising aboard wooden-hulled boats in the Scottish Isles.

WHAT I’M NOT LOVING

• Erm, two planes almost collided at Sydney Airport last week. Do we have a problem?
• Jetstar has announced a new ticketing structure, charging passengers extra to use the overhead luggage bins. It’s another step towards being a Ryanair-style ultra-budget carrier, only Jetstar isn’t that cheap.
• I was a huge fan of the Zeekr 7X EV I was loaned a few weeks ago - but is Australian infrastructure really ready for the oncoming EV wave?