Eating the city: the transformation of the Australian city through migration and food

This chapter describes the indelible mark that ethnic Chinese immigrants have made on Australian foodscapes. We focus on Australia’s fastest growing city, Melbourne, where Chinese migrants arrived in the 1850s, and the planned city of Canberra, whose Chinese migrants settled a century later. We use social histories and ethnographic snapshots to describe the restaurants, shopfronts, shopping malls and supermarket shelves that bear witness to the adoption of Chinese foodscapes—involving novel foods, culinary techniques, eating routines and the socio-spatial dynamics of eating precincts. In the process, we observe broader culinary transitions. Chinatowns and new Asian eat streets have transformed Australian urban foodscapes, embedding dining as an egalitarian, casual, experimental, convivial and public-facing event. The COVID-19 pandemic underscores a transition to such Asian-style eating precincts.