Do Australians secretly love fast food more than fine dining?

Apr 14, 2025

We queue for Shake Shack, lose our minds over limited-edition Macca’s collabs, and praise high-end chefs for ‘elevating’ junk food. Are we all just pretending to be foodies?

It’s a contentious call. We like to think of ourselves as cultured, we read sites like this one about the hottest new restaurant openings, the coolest chefs and the latest must-order dish. We furiously hit refresh to score a table when Michelin-starred restaurants such as Noma, Eleven Madison Park and L’Enclume pop up in town. The dopamine rush is strong to secure one of a few, rarefied bookings and experience restaurants at the top of their game. So far, so foodie.

And yet, the siren call of fast food is strong. Potentially stronger, because it’s a democratised space. You get the rush, you get the hit, you don’t have to spend a week’s wages on lunch.

When In-N-Out does one of its semi-regular pop-ups, the queues are often down the street. Fuelled by a social-media frenzy and FOMO, diners cancel plans, call in sick and rearrange their day to nab one of the sought-after burgers.

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Credit: In-N-Out

We get it. It’s hard to beat a good burger. On a menu where you’re unsure, a burger is a safe bet. When you’re hungover, a burger has a magical way of releasing the vice crushing your skull. When a fine-dining chef takes on a burger, they make it better than the sum of its parts. When that burger usually isn’t available locally? The want is amplified.

According to a report by online data portal Statista, Australians spent more than $23 billion on fast food and takeaway in 2023. That was up $2.4 billion from the previous year.

Fast food chains are investing to increase that spend. Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported that McDonald’s will upgrade 43,000 restaurants with AI-powered technology, with the aim of increasing its customers from 175 million to 250 million by 2027.

Closer to home, a more recent report by point-of-sale platform Lightspeed, released in February, found that Australians dined out, on average, 41 times in 2024. That’s up from 38 times in 2023, which is pretty good, considering the current ‘cozzie livs’ crisis.

Interestingly, the report also found that high-income earners ($130,001+) allocate, on average, $166 per month to restaurant visits. If they’re going out a few times a month, the maths adds up to fast food rather than fine dining.

So yes, it looks like we value fast food more than fine dining because it’s more affordable. Which is fair enough – not everyone has the cash to splurge on a fancy dinner, but the desire to not have to do the washing up is real.

On the flipside, you only have to look at the calibre of international, award-winning restaurants doing local residencies to create a counterargument.

L'Enclume Residency, Sydney

When L’Enclume popped up at Bathers Pavilion in 2023, the three-Michelin-starred restaurant had a waitlist of more than 2,000 tables. The appetite (pun intended) for experiencing the pinnacle of fine dining was so great that the English restaurant is coming back to Balmoral in July. A 14-course tasting menu by the restaurant voted number one in the world for 2025 by French restaurant bible, La Liste, is $590 a person. That’s more than some people pay on rent. And it’s not including drinks.

But it’s not an outlier. There are two more expensive and exclusive dining pop-ups happening in April. Hiroyuki Sato from Hakkoku in Tokyo, which has a six-month waitlist, is serving his omakase at Icebergs. Tickets are $1000, including drinks, and are expected to sell out. Another omakase experience is happening in April; two-Michelin-starred chef Eric Räty of Arbor in Hong Kong is serving his Nordic/Japanese omakase experience at Besuto. It’s $750, including drinks.

Clearly, those who have the means are booking these exclusive experiences. But take solace in the fact that this is the upper echelon. The Lightspeed survey revealed that even those eating out at the upper end of town are feeling the pinch; 46 percent of fine-dining diners are opting for lower-priced menu items, while 43 percent are skipping dessert to save on bill shock.

For the rest of us, we’ll be checking social media to see when the next In-N-Out pop up hits town. It’s not that we aren’t foodies. It’s just that our credit cards are already maxed out.