Pandemic prompts Sunday chicken roast revival as Aussie families rediscover sit-down meals

Nostalgic dishes like the Sunday roast are making a comeback as lockdown forces millions of Australians to embrace life’s simple pleasures.

Chicken dinner is a lockdown winner, with more time at home prompting a revival of the sit-down family meal, and with it, a return to nostalgic recipes like the Sunday roast.

People working from home have increased the amount of time they spend sharing meals, according to an Australian Institute of Family Studies survey, with those under 50 most likely to gather around the table.

Chef Louis Tikaram enjoying BBQ peri peri chicken with his daughters Maelle, 4, and Colette, 2, in their backyard at Norman Park, Brisbane. Picture: Liam Kidston.

At the same time, the pandemic has prompted close to an extra three million searches for chicken recipes annually, according to analysis of Google searches by Semrush, and the humble whole chook, in particular, is flying off shelves. Figures from Steggles show a sharp spike in sales when panic buyers flocked to the supermarkets during last year’s nationwide lockdown, and the current Delta surge has seen sales peak again.

“People are experimenting with slower ways of life,” said sociology Professor Jo Lindsay from Monash University. “Work and sport schedules have changed, and families are slowing down and returning to more traditional activities like sitting down and eating together.”

Sales of whole chickens have spiked during lockdown periods, driven by panic-buyers and more people finding the time to prepare oven-roasted meals.

Professor Lindsay’s pre-pandemic research found that families were increasingly eating meals at the kitchen bench or in front of the TV. At the time, she argued that the expectation to eat together was an outdated burden for families juggling long commutes and conflicting schedules. “It’s good now that we have the time to do it, it’s an activity that everyone can be involved in, but we shouldn’t be judgmental about it if it doesn’t happen,” Professor Lindsay said. “Ordinarily, it can be an impossible thing to achieve.”

Louis Tikaram, head chef of Brisbane restaurant Stanley.

Chef Louis Tikaram, head chef at Stanley, Brisbane, and former executive chef at Sydney’s Longrain, is passionate about the tradition of the family meal, and said its renaissance is a big positive to come out of the pandemic. “It has represented the perfect opportunity for people to learn new recipes and try things they didn’t have time for when they were tied up in the office,” he said.

Tikaram spent part of his childhood in Fiji, where the family meal was the evening’s entertainment. “We didn’t have a TV until about 1996, the table was where we would sit down to spend time together,” he said.

Having extra downtime during lockdown periods has enabled him to share more of these experiences with his wife and two young daughters. “I’ve translated bits of my upbringing to my own family,” he said. “These experiences, the fun of enjoying and sharing food, are what formed my ideas about a career as a chef.”

Originally published as Pandemic prompts Sunday chicken roast revival as Aussie families rediscover sit-down meals