Between Two Worlds: Cooking as Cultural Bridge
Second-generation Australians share how they navigate between their parents' heritage and their Australian identity—one recipe at a time.
Editor’s Note: This is a composite narrative representing shared experiences of second-generation Australians from immigrant families. Names and details are fictionalized, but the story reflects genuine patterns from interviews with Vietnamese, Chinese, Greek, Indian, Filipino, Korean, and Serbian-Australians. This is a “cultural group snapshot”—common experiences of navigating dual identity through food—rather than any individual’s story.
The Dual Identity Kitchen
Walk into Linda Nguyen’s kitchen in Cabramatta, and you’ll find two sets of everything: two rice cookers, two wok burners, two spice collections. One Vietnamese, one Australian. One for her mother’s recipes, one for her children’s preferences.
“I used to see it as a contradiction,” Linda explains, stirring a pot of pho while chicken nuggets bake in the oven for her kids’ lunch. “Like I was failing at both cultures. Now I realize I’m not choosing between them—I’m creating something new. I’m making Australian food with Vietnamese values, Vietnamese food with Australian accessibility.”
This balancing act is familiar to millions of second-generation Australians who grew up translating more than just language for their immigrant parents—they translated entire worlds, entire identities, with the family dinner table serving as the negotiating ground.
What Gets Lost in Translation
“Mum would pack me these elaborate lunch boxes,” remembers James Chen, now 35. “Rice with carefully prepared vegetables, homemade dumplings, the most fragrant stir-fries. And I’d hide in the corner of the schoolyard to eat them because the other kids would point and laugh and ask what that ‘weird smell’ was.”
By age ten, James was begging for Vegemite sandwiches and fruit roll-ups—anything that would help him blend in, anything that didn’t mark him as different.
“The heartbreak in my mother’s eyes when I rejected her food,” he says quietly. “I didn’t understand then that I was rejecting more than lunch. I was rejecting her love language, her way of staying connected to home, her inheritance.”
It took years—and becoming a parent himself—for James to understand what he’d lost. Now he makes those same dumplings for his own children, teaching them to pleat the edges just so, telling them stories about their grandmother’s village in Guangdong.
“But I also make them Vegemite scrolls,” he admits. “Because they’re Australian kids too. They contain multitudes, just like I do.”
The Recipe as Time Machine
For Sophia Papadopoulos, her Yiayia’s moussaka recipe is more than just eggplant and béchamel—it’s a direct line to a Greece she’s never lived in but somehow intimately knows.
“When I make moussaka, I can close my eyes and I’m in Yiayia’s kitchen in Athens, even though I’ve never been there,” Sophia says. “The smell of cinnamon in the meat sauce, the way the eggplant must be salted and drained, the precise thickness of the béchamel—these are memories that aren’t mine, but somehow are.”
This vicarious memory, transmitted through food, is how many second-generation Australians maintain connection to ancestral homes they may never have seen. The kitchen becomes a portal, the recipe a vehicle for time travel.
“Yiayia didn’t sit me down and teach me Greek history or language,” Sophia reflects. “But when she taught me to cook, she taught me rhythm and patience and the value of doing things properly—all the while speaking Greek, telling stories about her mother and grandmother, keeping the thread unbroken.”
When Australian Ingredients Meet Heritage Recipes
Adapting traditional recipes to Australian ingredients is both practical necessity and creative act. It’s also, sometimes, a source of tension.
“My mother-in-law judges me for using jarred curry paste instead of grinding my own spices,” says Priya Kumar with a laugh. “But I work full-time, I have two kids, and I live in suburban Brisbane, not a village in Punjab. I’m doing my best.”
This negotiation—between authentic tradition and pragmatic adaptation—is constant. Is it still butter chicken if you use Australian cream instead of Indian? Is it still pho if you use chicken stock from the supermarket instead of simmering beef bones for 12 hours?
“I used to agonize over this,” Priya admits. “Then my mother-in-law said something that changed my perspective. She said, ‘Do you think our recipes in India stayed exactly the same for centuries? We adapted constantly—to new ingredients, new tools, new circumstances. Adaptation isn’t betrayal; it’s survival.’”
This wisdom freed Priya to create her own version of heritage cooking—respectful of tradition, but not enslaved to it. She grinds some spices fresh, uses some pre-ground. She makes butter chicken from scratch on weekends, uses shortcuts on weeknights. She’s teaching her children that cultural heritage isn’t a museum piece to be preserved unchanged—it’s a living thing that grows and adapts.
The Questions Their Children Ask
“Why don’t we eat normal food?”
This question, asked by second-generation parents’ children, cuts deep. What is “normal” food in multicultural Australia? Whose normal? Which normal?
“When my eight-year-old asked why we couldn’t just eat ‘Australian food,’ I didn’t know how to answer,” shares Michael Tran. “She is Australian. She was born here, just like me. But Vietnamese food is Australian food now too, isn’t it? This is the food of Australian homes, Australian families, Australian stories.”
The conversation led to a family project: documenting their recipes, their food stories, their hybrid identity. Michael’s daughter now proudly explains to her classmates that she’s Vietnamese-Australian, that her favorite food is both pho and sausage rolls, that she contains multitudes.
“I want her to own both identities without feeling like she has to choose,” Michael says. “Food is how I’m teaching her that.”
The Subtle Acts of Preservation
Not all cultural transmission happens through grand gestures or explicit teaching. Sometimes it’s in the quiet, unremarked moments.
It’s in the way you hold a knife, the way you rinse rice, the way you know by feel when dough is ready. It’s in the words you use for kitchen implements, the prayers you say before cooking, the people you cook for and why.
“I didn’t realize I was saying ‘ayúdame’ when I cooked until my partner pointed it out,” says Maria Santos, second-generation Filipino-Australian. “Help me—I was asking for help in Tagalog, even though I mostly speak English. It’s what my mother always said in the kitchen, asking for divine assistance with the meal.”
These small inheritances—linguistic, gestural, spiritual—travel alongside recipes, often unnoticed until they’re passed to the next generation.
The Burden of Being Custodian
There’s a weight that comes with being the keeper of cultural heritage. Second-generation Australians often feel responsible for maintaining traditions their parents brought to Australia, even while navigating a society that may not value or understand those traditions.
“My mother says I’m the guardian now,” says Alexandra Mihailovic, whose Serbian parents immigrated in the 1980s. “She’s getting older, and she expects me to keep the traditions alive. But I don’t speak Serbian fluently, I’ve never been to Serbia, and my children are even further removed. How can I guard something I barely understand myself?”
This pressure—to be “authentic enough,” to preserve perfectly, to not let the culture die—can be overwhelming. Some second-generation Australians respond by intensifying their connection to heritage. Others step back, overwhelmed by the responsibility.
“I’ve made peace with being an imperfect keeper,” Alexandra says. “I make my mother’s sarma at Christmas, even if it’s not quite as good as hers. I teach my kids a few Serbian words. I tell them stories. It’s not perfect preservation, but it’s real and it’s mine.”
The Creation of Something New
What many second-generation Australians are discovering is that they’re not just preserving old traditions—they’re creating entirely new ones.
“My kids’ favorite meal is what we call ‘fusion Friday,’” laughs David Kim. “Korean-style tacos, with bulgogi in soft tortillas, kimchi on the side, finishing with pavlova for dessert. It’s ridiculous and perfect and completely ours.”
This creative mixing, once seen as cultural dilution, is increasingly recognized as cultural evolution. These hybrid dishes tell the truth of Australian multiculturalism—not separate cultures existing side by side, but cultures flowing into each other, creating something that couldn’t exist anywhere else.
What We’re Really Cooking
Food, in immigrant families, is never just food. It’s memory, identity, belonging, resistance, adaptation, and love, all served on a plate.
When second-generation Australians cook their parents’ recipes, they’re not just making dinner. They’re saying: I remember where we came from. I honor what you sacrificed. I’m keeping the connection alive, even as I create something new.
And when they teach these recipes to their own children, they’re saying: You belong to something larger than yourself. You carry stories in your bones. You are both/and, not either/or.
The Kitchen as Sacred Space
In many migrant families, the kitchen becomes the last stronghold of heritage language and practice. It’s where grandmothers can be authorities, where old-country knowledge matters more than Australian accreditation, where the rules are clear and the outcomes are tangible.
“The kitchen is where my mother has power,” observes Linda Nguyen. “In the broader Australian society, she struggles—language barriers, underemployment, casual racism. But in her kitchen, she’s the expert. She’s the teacher. She’s the one who knows.”
Respecting this knowledge, learning these skills, preserving these recipes—it’s an act of love and restoration. It’s giving back dignity that the migration experience may have stripped away.
Moving Forward
The second-generation experience is one of constant translation and negotiation. It’s exhausting and enriching in equal measure. Food provides a tangible way to navigate this complexity—something you can touch, taste, share.
“I used to resent the pressure to maintain culture,” reflects James Chen. “Now I see it as a gift. My mother gave me these recipes because they were all she could give me of her mother, who died before I was born. Every time I make dumplings, my grandmother is at the table with us.”
This is the real cultural heritage being preserved—not just recipes, but relationships. Not just techniques, but stories. Not just food, but connection across time, space, and the vast distance between homeland and new land.
What We Tell Our Children
In the end, what second-generation Australians pass to their children isn’t perfect cultural preservation. It’s something more honest: a complex inheritance of belonging to multiple worlds, of navigating between tradition and innovation, of honoring the past while building the future.
“I tell my daughter that she’s lucky,” says Priya Kumar. “She gets butter chicken and meat pies. She gets Diwali and Christmas. She gets Hindi lullabies and Australian playgrounds. She gets all of it, because all of it made her.”
This is the true gift of multicultural Australia—not the preservation of pure, separate cultures, but the creation of beautiful, complicated, delicious hybrids. In kitchens across the country, second-generation Australians are cooking up this new identity, one meal at a time.
This article is part of HomeFood’s Cultural Heritage series, exploring how Australians from diverse backgrounds maintain and evolve their food traditions.
Note from HomeFood: This is a composite narrative representing documented experiences of second-generation Australians navigating cultural identity through food. All people and details are fictionalized, but the challenges described—school lunch shame, negotiating “authentic” vs “adapted,” pressure of being cultural custodians—reflect consistent patterns across numerous interviews. This is a “cultural group snapshot”: when many individual stories share common themes, those patterns reveal universal truths about the immigrant experience. These are real experiences, just not from one real person. If you’d like to contribute your experience to future cultural snapshots, contact stories@homefood.com.au.
