We love our bread, we love our butter, but most of all, we love… Japanese food. A new survey has revealed Australia’s most popular cuisine for 2024 – and Japanese fare has taken the cake (or should we say, snagged the sushi roll?).
Australia’s love affair with Japan runs deep, with steaming bowls of ramen and charming cherry blossoms drawing a record number of travellers to the Land of the Rising Sun in May. Our love story keeps heating up, with Tokyo recently ranking as the second most popular international getaway spot for Aussie families in winter.
Not every Aussie can jet set to Japan for sushi under the Sakura trees, sizzling street-side skewers and post-karaoke karaage, but we can dream, right? As part of the new survey, insurance platform BizCover combed through more than 11,000 keywords on Google related to the 30 most popular cuisines and dishes from 50 cities nationwide. Japanese cuisine emerged as the undisputed champion of online food searches in Australia, totalling a whopping average of 22.46 million searches. Unsurprisingly, sushi was the most searched Japanese dish, racking up more than 7.7 million clicks, with ramen and tempura next on the pass.
When we’ve feasted on Japanese food too many nights in a row, Aussies shift their appetite towards Indian food (21.33 million searches) – particularly biryani, curry and tandoori – followed by Italian food (19.63 million searches) – particularly pizza, pasta and gelato.
The analysis also broke the results down by state and territory, revealing a widespread love for Japanese cuisine across NSW, QLD, VIC, WA, NT and ACT. Meanwhile, Tasmanians favoured Indian flavours and South Australians were on the hunt for top-notch Italian restaurants and recipes.
As for Australia’s all-time most searched dish? This might raise some eyebrows. Hot dogs are officially the most popular dish Aussies searched for in the last year, with a whopping 10.93 million searches. Who knew we could find so much satisfaction in a snag squashed between a soft white bun? Next in line was pizza, sushi, kebabs, and fish and chips.
Interested to see if your favourite cuisine made the cut? Here are the top ten most popular cuisines in Australia:
- Japanese
- Indian
- Italian
- American
- Chinese
- Turkish
- Thai
- Vietnamese
- English
- Spanish
And here are the ten most-loved dishes in Australia:
- Hot dogs
- Pizza
- Sushi
- Kebab
- Fish and chips
- Ramen
- Tapas
- Burgers
- Stir-fry
- Feijoada (Brazilian black bean stew)
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