I’m in front of the big outdoor screen, watching an opening-week qualifying tennis match between Australian Storm Hunter and Georgian Ekaterine Gorgodze. A family of four next to me has just demolished a Hector’s Deli sandwich and is deciding what food stall to hit up next. A guy behind me with a gimbal and zoom lens has been trying to film a slow-motion video of his frappe for the last 10 minutes. Somewhere on the grounds, someone is getting ready for an omakase by Brisbane’s Sushi Room, with Piper-Heidsieck Champagne, as part of a premium ticket package that starts at $2200 per person. 

A friend texts me, “How’s your first Aus Open since 2018?”

“I’m having salted duck egg prawn toast and spicy onigiri,” I write back. The first time Broadsheet wrote about food at the AO was at the end of 2016, leading into the 2017 tournament. “No one goes to the tennis for the food,” we said at the time. “This year, that will change.” And it did, thanks to of-the-moment eateries including two-year-old Japanese fusion restaurant Tokyo Tina; Huxtaburger, which had just two outlets at the time; newly opened taqueria Hotel Jesus; and then-hyped, now-defunct souvlaki chain Jimmy Grants.

Tennis Australia upped the food game the next year with Mamasita and Nobu. I still smuggled in cold meats and stale bread from my pantry. In the eight years since, the food has shifted from stadium fuel to something more closely resembling a food festival. We’ve seen high-volume plays from the likes of A1 Bakery, Crop (formerly Green-On), CDMX and Piccolo Panini Bar, but also slower, more elaborate menus from restaurants such as Pipis Kiosk, Gingerboy, Entrecote, Supernormal and Nomad. The country’s top culinary talent has gotten involved, from Andrew McConnell and Josh Niland to Jacqui Challinor and Tom Sarafian. 

In 2024, the tournament introduced AO Reserve, premium ticket packages that include food and drink from some top culinary talent, with this year’s lineup touting Peter Gilmore of Sydney’s Quay and Bennelong; Simon Rogan of three-Michelin-starred restaurant L’Enclume in England; and Rodney Dunn and Severine Demanet of renowned Tasmanian restaurant The Agrarian Kitchen. It’s all curated, content-friendly and increasingly stratified, with lavish options like the aforementioned omakase. 

This year, when you walk across the beautiful Tanderrum Bridge, one of the first things you’ll see is a giant Shake Shack stall. It’s the first time the fast food chain founded by renowned New York restaurateur Danny Meyer has appeared in Australia. And that’s just the beginning. Stalactites has collaborated with Taverna on a lamb filo cigar. Hector’s Deli is serving an apple-flavoured tennis ball doughnut. And Nik Hill of Sydney’s Porcine has made a grazing box with foie gras, camembert and cultured butter.

This shift towards food as a major part of the experience reflects something deeper than just catering logistics, says Tennis Australia’s head of product growth and innovation Fern Barrett, who joined in 2020 after nearly nine years with Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. “I think people are looking for more than just a sporting experience,” she says. “Post-Covid, everyone realised that investing in memories and investing in social connection are more critical than anything materialistic.”

Plus, the Australian Open has always been a showcase for Melbourne. And now that includes its restaurant scene. “We have this incredible opportunity to broadcast our city, our state and our country across the world through tennis,” she says. “And food and drink content has started to be a really natural and integral part of that coverage.”The US Open’s Honey Deuce demonstrated just how powerful the food-sport nexus can be. The simple Grey Goose vodka-lemonade cocktail – garnished with tiny balls of honeydew melon that look like tennis balls – has sold more than 3.5 million cups since 2011. In 2024, the Australian Open announced Lemon Ace, also in partnership with Grey Goose. The drink launched at last year’s AO and hasn’t managed to create the same hype as the Honey Deuce, but it’s easy to see the intent. 

The Australian Open is leaning into a well-established global tradition here. The idea of a signature drink defining a sporting event, for example, traces back to at least the 1930s, when the Kentucky Derby  began promoting the Mint Julep as a race-day drink. At Wimbledon, the Pimm’s Cup has been served since 1971, with more than 300,000 glasses consumed during the fortnight alongside the tournament's other iconic pairing: strawberries and cream, a tradition dating to the 1870s.

In Australia, Melbourne isn’t even the pioneer. Adelaide Oval’s $535 million redevelopment in 2014 included more than 2000 dining spaces, transforming what was once primarily a cricket ground into a year-round hospitality destination. The message was clear: the food wasn’t incidental to the sporting experience, but integral to it.

Globally, the sports hospitality market is now valued at more than US$45 billion (about $67 billion) and is predicted to more than triple by 2032. 

Food worth queuing and lingering over means Tennis Australia gets a longer, more lucrative day out of each ticketholder; sponsors get brand moments designed to travel on social feeds; big-name vendors get prestige and reach; and local operators get either a dream showcase or a painful lesson.

“The volumes here are like none of these businesses have seen. Sometimes we’re looking at 6000 units a day out of one vendor,” Barrett says. “Three years ago, DOC sold 50,000 slices of pizza. They were baking 24 hours a day. It’s very hard to keep up with the demand. It’s sometimes 40 degrees, and they’re working long hours. [They have to] make sure the queues are flowing steadily, the food’s coming out quickly and the quality represents the quality they’d be serving in their own establishment.”

“Sport and food in Melbourne are inseparable,” says Nicole Konstandakopoulos, co-owner of Stalactites, which is popping up at the AO for the fifth time in 2026. “Sport is not just a standalone thing – it’s a social cultural experience. The migrants also brought their sporting culture to Australia. They gathered around clubs and they shared meals.

Konstandakopoulos’s grandfather opened Stalactites in 1978 and, as the story goes, broke the key in the lock so the restaurant would have to stay open 24 hours a day, becoming a permanent fixture of Melbourne’s food identity. For Nicole, being at the Australian Open is about continuing that legacy of food as a community ritual. 

I’m not that into sport myself. But when I think about it, it’s the only thing in my life that reliably gives me the buzz of being part of something bigger – a goal, a wicket, a point – and the chance to hug a stranger and scream without being seen as strange. Because sport isn’t just about the game itself. It’s one of the few places left where strangers become an “us”; where their victory feels like yours. 

During my day at the AO, something nagged at me: the tension between the egalitarian spirit of most sporting events – everyone eating the same overpriced garbage, shouting together – and the increasingly stratified experience at events like the AO, where a $59 ground pass exists in the same precinct as a Club 1905 membership experience worth thousands of dollars. 

“We want to make sure that we’ve got a full breadth of different experiences to meet different needs,” Barrett says. “A lot of people come here multiple times during the tournament and have different experiences.”

It’s a reasonable answer. But Konstandakopoulos’s framing resonates with me more. Food as communal celebration, as belonging. Perhaps the question isn’t whether premium experiences diminish the communal sporting ritual, but whether the scope and variety of the food itself creates new forms of connection, new ways to feel part of something. It feels like going there creates a type of connection with other people who love food and want more than just fuel.

A tennis fan I speak to, who’s been coming every year since 2014, doesn’t care too much about the food, but admits it’s nice to have more options. Another said she was there for the tennis, but her husband was coming for the food and music.

The family next to me is still arguing about what to get next. The frappe guy is still filming. From one of the courts, I hear applause, then that particular tennis-court silence – the collective holding of breath before a serve. I bite into my prawn toast. The crunch is loud – too loud, maybe, for a sport that periodically demands silence. But this is Melbourne. So I take another bite.