Food & Beer Culture

What do you eat in a Melbourne pub? The standard dish is the Chicken Parma, short for Chicken Parmigiana. It consists of a crumbed chicken schnitzel topped with tomato sauce and cheese and grilled, served with chips and salad. It's a classic counter meal. You order it at the bar and pay before it arrives at your table.

It pairs well with beer because a cold lager cuts through the fat of the crumb coating and the acidity of the tomato. The same goes for fish and chips with flake, the term used in South Australia and Victoria for shark fillet, for meat pie, and for dim sims, steamed or fried dumplings sold at markets like the Queen Victoria Market.

Part of pub culture is the "shout": whoever's turn it is orders a round for the whole group. The beer comes in cans, known as tinnies, or small bottles, called stubbies, and is carried in an esky, a cooler for the beach or the backyard.

Celebrations center around sport and betting. That means the Australian Football League Grand Final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the Boxing Day cricket Test, and the Melbourne Cup on the first Tuesday in November. The craft brewers of Fitzroy and Collingwood have given the city a second pub world: brewery taprooms where the beer sits in tanks behind the bar. So alongside the old-school pub, a younger kind of gathering place has emerged.