If you do, this is the way to start:
[ol]
[li]White bread, toasted however way you like it - still hot.[/li][li]Spread butter or margarine on the toast.[/li][li]Put a thin scraping of vegemite over the toast - seriously: Make. It. Thin![/li][/ol]
It should look like this http://static1.squarespace.com/static/549daccee4b0be677c05bc2d/t/55c4f905e4b083cf1fbffda8/1438972166576/
Don’t spread it on in a thick layer - you should be able to see most of the toast.
I just spent six weeks back in Australia visiting friends and family. Most of my time was spent in Sydney.
Definitely a larger variety of southeast Asian cuisine than you’ll find in most parts of the US. As Giles notes, Malaysian and Indonesian are particularly common, but there’s also lots and lots of Thai and Vietnamese. Walk through a place like Newtown and it sometimes seems that every third storefront is an Asian restaurant of some type or another.
One thing i’m going to disagree with Giles about a little bit: i was absolutely amazed at how many Mexican places have sprouted up in Sydney since i was last there. Some seem to be attempts at (relatively) cheap places like taquerias, while others are a bit more up-scale. I saw them in Glebe, Newtown, Erskineville, and in the downtown area of the city itself. I can’t offer much insight into the quality, because i live 15 miles from the Mexican border and can get plenty of good Mexican food here in San Diego, so there’s no way i was going to waste my time in Australia eating Mexican food. The Mexican places all seemed to be very popular, although a quick look at the menus in the windows suggested that they lacked some ingredients that are very common in US Mexican food. For example, no-one offered chiles rellenos, because you can’t easily get the dark green pasilla peppers in Australia, and i think queso fresco is pretty hard to find as well.
I’m a vegetarian, i visit LA quite a bit, and visit San Francisco at least twice a year. In my experience, especially on this most recent trip, it is at least as easy to find good, healthy vegetarian food in Sydney as in in California. And almost every menu these days seems to specify which items are gluten-free. Also, while California has a reputation for having some of the best produce in the United States, i think that the quality of the produce itself (in groceries and markets, and in restaurants) in Sydney was as good or better, and for many things was more reasonably priced (at least, given the current exchange rate, which is favorable to people who are spending US dollars).
Leaving aside specific ethnicities for a moment, i think that one thing done very well in Sydney is basic cafe food and breakfasts. The produce is good, and the prices are very reasonable. Here’s a picture of my wife sitting in front of a breakfast we had at a little cafe in Manly (the ferry trip from Circular Quay to Manly is a great half-day out). She had smoked slamon and capers and cream cheese on wholegrain toast, with a spinach salad. My meal, closest to the camera, consists of spinach salad, asparagus, avocado, poached eggs, grilled haloumi, and wholegrain toast with butter. We paid $A30 for that meal ($15 per plate). At the current exchange rate, that’s about $US21 for two people, and that includes tax and tip because there is no tax and tip to worry about; the price on the menu is what you pay.
Haloumi is everywhere in Sydney cafes. If you haven’t tried it, you should. It’s a type of cheese from Cyprus, and something about the way it’s produced means that you can grill it in a pan without it melting all over the place. It has a chewy texture, like harder mozzarella, and a lovely salty flavor. Grilled haloumi was part of almost every breakfast menu i saw in Sydney. I’ve actually managed to track it down at a middle-eastern grocery store here in San Diego, and have been making for our breakfasts at home.
There’s a lot of Turkish and Lebanese food in Sydney, especially at the cheaper, takeout end of the spectrum. This means plenty of falafel rolls and gyros with lamb or chicken or beef. There are some great turkish pizza (pide) places. One of my absolute favorite places for a cheap meal is in Newtown. Saray Turkish Pizza has been in the same spot since i was living in the area 20 years ago, and you can eat really well for less than 20 bucks per person. The mixed dips (about 8 or 10 different types) with Turkish bread are a meal in themselves. Saray is cheap and cheerful, with friendly service and no frills. For a slightly more formal (but still not terribly expensive) meal, try Almustafa Lebanese in Glebe.
Glebe is a great place to eat out. It’s only about five minutes in a taxi or ten minutes on a bus from downtown, and the main road, Glebe Point Road, has dozens of restaurants of all types within a half-dozen blocks. There’s something for just about everyone, from Nepalese to Thai to Spanish tapas and paella to Mexican to higher-end traditional places with steak and lamb and barramundi on the menu. Newtown is only about five minutes further than Glebe, and has a similarly large selection. They’re both great because you can just get off the bus or out of your cab and walk until you find something that you like.
Vegemite, by the way, is disgusting.
I should add, too:
I’m not a coffee drinker, but just about every American i’ve ever met who has been to Australia agrees that the coffee there is miles better than what you get most places in the United States. My wife’s a huge coffee fan, and she absolutely loves the coffee in Australia. Her mother raved about it, and so do plenty of our other US friends.
“'At’s not a spoon…THAT’S a spoon!!!” (digs into the minestrone)
It’s been awhile since I was in Australia, so things may have changed. That’s why I was asking about “gluten free”. You never heard about it a few years ago, and now every restaurant has gluten-free options, and every supermarket has a gluten-free section. At least in northern CA. Is that as much of a thing in Australia these days? I know quite a few people who would have serious “issues” eating out if they couldn’t be certain they could order gluten free.
Vegemite is used by many Australians in much the same way the D’regs of Discworld use sheep-eye soup.
My dad has travelled in the US a fair bit and mostly complains about food there being a lot sweeter than local versions (bread and peanut butter mainly) and the portion sizes being insanely huge compared to the Au versions.
Yeah, it’s become a thing there just like it is here. Finding gluten-free food is incredibly easy.
My mother, who lives in Australia, is a celiac sufferer who has been eating gluten-free for over 30 years. On the one hand, she has benefited from the growing numbers of people who insist on eating a gluten-free diet. There are many more products available than there were a couple of decades ago, and the quality of the stuff has also improved greatly. Restaurants are also far more conscious of it now.
On the other hand, she suffers from the fact that, since the gluten-free thing became trendy, most people who insist on gluten-free diets don’t really need to eat that way. As a result, people like my mother sometimes get sneered at or condescended to by waiters and other people who assume that they are just following the latest fad. Those people sometimes seem to forget that some folks have to avoid gluten for serious health-related reasons.
In Australia the UHT milk tastes like milk. At least, the UHT milk they send to us in China tastes like milk (instead of burnt milk).
When the Aussies have cookouts they have (in addition to standard American-like fare) something that I can’t remember the name of, but it’s essentially meatloaf formed into small patties and grilled. Quite tasty.
My sample size is small by virtue of not being in Australia, but I will suggest that Australians really, truly love Asian food, but that may be because, for some reason, 11 of the 12 Aussies that I know all have Asian wives. I’m not sure if that’s because Asian women are particularly attracted to Aussies, or if it’s the other way around. 
That would be a rissole
Yep. I have 2 acquaintances who actually have celiac disease, and a bunch of others who think that gluten is just bad for you. Makes it tough on the folks with the actual disease. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think the incidence of the disease was about 100x what it actually is.
FYI, we don’t have ‘cookouts’, you will be invited around for a barbecue aka a barbie. However your typical barbie bears no resemblance to American BBQ, with all meats (steak, snags, rissoles, maybe some chicken for the ladies 
) invariably being grilled rather than having whole cuts slow cooked or smoked.
Unwritten rule to make sure you don’t get caught out when going to a Barbie, the men must gather around the barbie, (or over by the eskies is also acceptable) while the women gather at some remove from the fire. Never touch the hosts tongs and even more emphatically never touch the meat while still cooking on the barbie without the express consent from the host, and a direct verbal undertaking to ‘keep an eye on these for a sec while I go take a slash’ 
For the non-Aussies: snags are sausages; rissoles are the aforementioned meat patty things; and eskies are coolers. If there’s one thing Aussies love, it’s grilling meat. If there’s two things Aussies love, it’s grilling meat, and inventing new words for things.
I believe that if we ever are able to travel back in time, and can go back to the lower Paleolithic, we would in fact see the female Homo erectus sitting back towards their caves, while the male Homo erectus stood clumped around their leader, who poked at the cooking antelope with a stick. That is to say: every barbecue, in every country, that I have ever attended has shown the same behavior, in which the women sit or stand somewhere and chat (and drink), while the men hover around the barbecue scrutinizing the meat as if they expect their sausages to make a break for freedom at any moment.
One difference I haven’t seen mentioned is that the plethora of somewhat icky sit-down chain “family” restaurants in every strip mall in the US is much reduced in Aus. Fast food is present, yes, including both local and US based chains (Burger King is called Hungry Jacks, for example, and Wendy’s has ice cream, hot dogs and donuts.)
But the Chili’s-Boston Market-Applebee’s-IHOP-Denny’s-Ruby Tuesday’s segment just doesn’t exist. Instead, as mentioned, cafes and pubs fill this niche, as well as family-run ethnic restaurants.
Ah, yes, I was very careful to avoid the use of the word “barbeque” because it’s not barbeque to the American tongue, and use “grilling” as the verb. Ontario (Canadians) and some weirdos in some strange parts of the USA might say “barbeque” instead of grilling or cookout.
I would be disappointed to arrive at an American “barbeque” (or “barbecue” if you prefer) and be served hot dogs or hamburgers; that’s cookout food! Of course when the Aussies invite me, it’s always to the “barbie,” which except for the rissoles, is classic American cookout.
I live in Omaha, Nebraska and the Outback Steakhouses here are horrible as well
“Eh, I can see you’ve played ‘Knifey-Spoony’ before!”
Is that like a pineapple upside down cake?
I tried Vegemite a long time ago and don’t remember a favorable impression of it. I might not have put it on thin enough.
Please tell me that canned spaghetti isn’t like Chef Boyardee. Are the beans like retried beans?
Thanks. That looks perfect. This trip is for our 30th anniversary and that looks like a nice place for it.
Oklahoma, so pretty close. Healthy or gluten free isn’t much of a thing here.