This year, Broadsheet published about 2300 stories. While that number revealed some clear-cut trends in the world of food and drink, we’re also glued to our devices every day in search of the next big thing. Some so-called trends, like fridgescaping and ice-cream in a rollup, just ain’t it. But here are some things that surely were it in 2025: the expanding presence of Greek and African cuisines, the charcoal chook-aissance, the cinnamon scroll cult, the cocktail bar boom, matcha everything. Those, and more, were the food and drink trends Broadsheet's editors couldn’t ignore this year. Dig in everybody.

The big fat Greek food revival

The taste of Australian dining in 2025 was Greek – and I’m as confident about that as Gus Portkalos when he says the root of any word is Greek. In Sydney, it started with the arrival of the staggering Olympus late last year, followed by grungy Athenian wine bar Home Rogue Taverna and inner west grill Olympic Meats, where queues for juicy, charcoal meat and bougatsa endure. In Melbourne, a bunch of new venues showed how far Greek dining has come in the city, from family-run tavernas to day-to-night tributes to Athenian coffee culture. Let’s not forget Con Christopoulos and Stavros Konis’s Kafeneion, where homely classics live in an iconic CBD space. In Adelaide, new taverna Vasili’s Table is serviced by a carpark-turned-kitchen-garden and pushes smoky dishes, horta, loukaniko and ouzo. To Greek food’s resurgence Down Under, we say “opa!”. – Grace MacKenzie, Sydney food and drink editor

The great egg shortage

Is there a more foundational, more irreplaceable ingredient out there? Eggs go into cakes, quiches, mayo, pasta, salads, meringue, sangas, ramen, shakshuka, fried rice, huevos rancheros and a thousand other dishes. So when avian flu dented supply in the first half of the year, we’d say the collective panic we shared in front of those empty shelves was … actually warranted? Way more so than the silly TP panic during Covid. Imagine a world without eggs! Actually – don’t, it’s a fast track to nihilism. – Nick Connellan, Australia editor

Matcha everything, everywhere, all at once

Although matcha has been around for centuries, something changed in 2025. The first big matcha wave hit Australia in the 2010s, but you were more likely to see dissolvable powder paired with sugar than a chasen (bamboo whisk) and chawan (tea bowl). Now, people line up for hand-whisked matcha made with powder that’s stone-milled in-house and more-than-matcha drinks – everything from liquid matchamisu to matcha Mont Blancs and matcha mixed with orange juice is showing up around the country. Matcha cookies and cakes have become almost as common as chocolate and vanilla and many ice-cream shops serve multiple matcha ice-cream flavours. The craze has gone so far that it’s putting significant strain on the supply chain, creating shortages and forcing importers to look beyond Japan. – Audrey Payne, Melbourne food and drink editor

Protein with extra protein

My favourite yoghurt introduced a flavour with extra protein recently. I made the switch – it couldn’t hurt, I thought. But then my choice chocolate milk got protein-ed. And the humble lunchbox muesli bar started coming in a pumped-up protein version. But high-protein tzatziki is where I had to draw the line. Can I even digest all of this? Why are we all tracking macros? And why do I feel like livestock about to be sold as “protein-fed”? – James Williams, creative solutions manager

But make it steak and offal, thanks

I love steak frites as much as the next guy, but let’s be real – it kind of got out of hand this year. You’re literally just having steak and chips but paying more for the privilege of ordering it in a French accent. Steak and spuds will never go out of fashion, I guess. What has continued to come into vogue this year, though, has been sweetbreads, brains, tripe and all the other rogues and outcasts of the offal universe. A cheeky chicken liver pate used to qualify as adventurous. Now, you can’t go out for a wine and a snack without ending up with a bill that looks like the Liver King’s grocery list. – Callum McDermott, Hot List editor

The cocktail bar boom

It’s a bold claim, but I’m calling it: 2025 was the year cocktail bars stepped things up across the board. Brisbane’s Aizome Bar (opened in late 2024, but who’s counting?) turns out highly technical, seasonal cocktails in a tiny room sure to transport you to Ginza. Japanese-inspired listening bars continued their rise via Melbourne’s Bar Selecta and Honeydripper in Adelaide, to name a few. Meanwhile, Hands Down and Three Horses in Melbourne both put sherry in the spotlight. They were also among the new breed of hangout bars, like Silver’s Motel in Sydney and Shaman in Brisbane – casual spots with fastidious attention to detail, offering well-executed house creations (and classics) in remarkable settings. All these bars have stellar pedigrees and are serious about drinks, but they never let that get in the way of the fun. – Kit Kriewaldt, subeditor

Sherry, shrubs and boozy slushies

Three drinks dominated Melbourne menus, in particular, in 2025. First up, the sherry revival is officially here. It’s not your grandma’s drink; it’s the fortified backbone of cocktails at the sherry-obsessed Three Horses (by the Caretaker’s Cottage team) and the star in Daphne’s signature 3057 Martini. Next, shrubs – those sweet and sour drinking vinegars – are quietly beasting across the city’s best cafes, from Masses Bagels to Assembly Coffee. They reflect a growing push for seasonality and sustainability. And for summer? The humble frozen drink has been given a grown-up makeover. We’re talking boozy slushies: try Zareh’s viral Bonjus Sakran shaved-ice drink or the shakerato-inspired Café Crema at Hands Down. – Stephanie Vigilante, head of social media

Insisting on raving at the cafe

I get it – I swear off drinking every time I have a hangover. But I can’t accept early morning cafe raves as the answer. Daybreak made the coffee-rave a thing in NYC in 2013, and 2025 saw the sober-friendly party format hatch around Australia. For all its sensible benefits, it has the same energy as speed dating, but dressed up as a dance party. I’m all for wholesome activities, but I believe the best dancing is done on a dark dance floor, and the best flirting happens sloppily in the smokers’. – James Williams, creative solutions manager

Go West

Australia has had East African restaurants since the 1980s, following years of migration from the Horn. But West African food? That was almost impossible to find until the 2010s, when restaurants like Melbourne’s Adonai Foods and Sydney’s El-Shaddai and Little Lagos came along. 2025, though, felt like a watershed moment for jollof-loving cultures in Australia, with openings like Villapot in Brisbane; Mary’s and Jollof Vibe in Melbourne; and Jollof Junction, Edem’s and De Glorious Delight in Sydney. You know injera – now get ready to add fufu, egusi, suya, ata din din and all sorts of other deliciousness to your food vocabulary. – Nick Connellan, Australia editor

Year of the hospo pivot

It’s harder than ever for a hospitality business to keep the lights on. And this year, we saw some new moves emerging. In Sydney, Neil Perry and Mucho Group both rebooted venues with new concepts less than a year after opening. We saw high profile restaurateurs Chris Lucas and Junda Khoo replicate their brands interstate, which is objectively safer than launching with an untested one. To be fair, the industry has never been more risk averse. This year, it was palpable. – Dan Cunningham, features editor (food and drink) 

Charcoal chicken got new wings

The classic Aussie charcoal chicken shop is pure nostalgia: harsh overhead lights, fridges that hum through the night, and A Current Affair flickering silently from a corner telly. But 2025 saw a new wave of chefs reinventing the rotisserie bird and bringing this suburban staple into the future. Melbourne’s Yang Thai and Tay in Sydney both turned up to the party with Thai-style birds, while Smoky Hen in Melbourne does it Korean-style. And hey, if Lebanese charcoal chicken chain El Jannah can sell to an American equity firm for $1 billion, you know there’s gotta be something in the genre. Honestly, I can’t wait to see how high this bird will fly in 2026. – Holly Bodeker-Smith, newsletter editor

The non-alc supernova

The Times recently reported that Gen Z’s sobriety is set to cost the UK treasury around £1.7 billion (roughly AUD $3.5 billion) per year in lost alcohol excise. The Australian numbers aren’t in yet, but we know for sure the generational shift in drinking habits isn’t some kind of phase. Cue the flood of considered sodas, functional fizz and nolo wines released in ’25. I’ve copped at least 50 pitches from brand new companies in the last six months alone. Some of their drinks are actually good. Others are so bad they make me want to get blackout drunk just to forget the taste. – Dan Cunningham, features editor (food and drink) 

Little treats stuck around

Cost-of-living pressure is real. And this year little treat culture – essentially the mid-2020s rebrand of the lipstick effect – exploded. Rather than splurge on big purchases, we saw the country go mad for small treats that bring a bit of joy to the day. This year, it was all about cinnamon scrolls, dedicated tiramisu shops, cookies galore and iced matcha mixed with every kind of syrup and topped with any number of clouds. It seemed like there was one in almost every hand, to the point where we had to ask: what happened to brunch? – Audrey Payne, Melbourne food and drink editor