In this story

The Australian bacon and egg roll is a fried egg and crisp bacon in a bread roll, usually finished with cheese and tomato sauce, barbecue sauce or a relish. No fetched source names who first sold one in Australia or when. What the sources do document is a sandwich with a British ancestry that Australians have made their own, sold from suburban barbecues to cafes charging more than twenty dollars, and surveyed, ranked and measured by record attempts along the way. Tourism Australia says eating bacon and eggs for breakfast might be a British tradition, while in Australia the dish has been turned into a popular grab-and-go meal.

Video: Man on a mission to find Australia’s best bacon and egg roll | Today Show Australia | TODAY

A British ancestor, an unrecorded arrival

The egg-in-a-roll idea is old, and its documented history belongs to London. A 2014 article by Sarah Kaplan, first published in the Washington Post and carried by SBS News, quotes breakfast historian Heather Arndt-Anderson on early nineteenth-century street vendors in East London who sold coffee and sandwiches to factory workers. The sandwich held a fried egg, meat and sometimes cheese in a soft roll called a bap. The same article makes no mention of Australia, and its closest parallel is the Irish jumbo breakfast roll, which a 2011 Irish report tied to construction work during the Celtic Tiger boom.

The bacon half of the pairing has a separate and contested story. A 2017 VICE article by Mahmood Fazal says the bacon-and-eggs breakfast came from a 1920s marketing campaign by the American pork company Beech-Nut, in which Edward Bernays was hired to persuade the public that the combination was the healthiest way to start the day. That account is VICE’s, and it concerns the American breakfast plate, not the roll.

For the Australian version, the sources describe the result and skip the origin. The British bacon sandwich that shares its bread-and-bacon logic is covered in the post on the bacon butty. The American commercial breakfast sandwich is covered in the post on the Egg McMuffin.

Bacon and two eggs in steel rings cooking on a griddle beside toasting bread rolls.

What goes in the roll

VICE describes the brekkie roll as fried eggs, crispy bacon, cheese, and tomato and/or barbecue sauce, a departure from the American formula. Fazal adds that it is a “battler’s sanga on the go”, a phrase that places it with working people and tradespeople, who are pictured cooking it at a worksite barbecue.

A Sydney shop shows the same build in practice. Eat at ROBs in Rozelle, at 621 Darling Street, describes its roll on its own site as thick-cut smoked bacon, an egg cooked so the yolk still runs, and melted cheese, pressed into a toasted Martin’s potato roll, with a choice of tomato or barbecue sauce.

Writers who judge rolls for a living ask for balance. HerCanberra’s Sarina Dao, reviewing Canberra cafes in 2024, defines a strong roll as one with “an oozy fried egg, smoky and/or crispy bacon, and a soft bun with a crispy outer shell.” Gourmet Traveller’s Andrew Levins wrote in 2016 that the dish is hard to muck up and that fancy versions tend to ruin it, citing truffle mayonnaise and quail eggs as examples.

Bread, from soft bap to potato roll

No single bread defines the roll. A 2018 Time Out guide to Sydney, written by Jordi Kretchmer and subtitled “the hangover cure you can hold in your hands”, lists a warmed soft brown roll at Shop and Wine Bar in Bondi Beach, a big white roll at Rolling Penny in Newtown, a buttery brioche roll with toasted sesame seeds at Parlour Lane Roasters, and a milk bun at Originals Burger Co in Brookvale.

Canberra offers more of the same. HerCanberra notes that Fox and Bow serves a toasted bun, The Bean Station uses Turkish bread, and Catbird makes its roll in-house. The sandwich is not confined to rolls in the strict sense either. Gourmet Traveller’s 2016 list includes a version in roti at Lucky Suzie in Darlinghurst, bacon and eggs in freshly baked pita at Alpha on Castlereagh Street, and a John Montagu roll in Woolloomooloo with scrambled Kangaroo Island eggs on a buttered soft round roll.

Jill Dupleix, who publishes the Jill Dupleix Eats newsletter, chose an English muffin in a 2021 recipe for its structure and subtle flavor, and listed potato rolls, sourdough rolls, soft damper, round Turkish bread and Italian panini as workable alternatives. Brioche, she wrote, is acceptable if it is not too soft. She also recommends toasting or grilling the cut sides, as for a burger.

Sauces and fillings

Tomato sauce and barbecue sauce are the baseline, and the supporting cast grows with the price. The Canberra review records tomato relish at Fox and Bow and The Usual, chipotle barbecue at Catbird, smoked garlic aioli at Black and White Espresso, a kewpie and sriracha mayonnaise at The Usual, and chilli jam at Rye. The cheeses range from Swiss at Two Before Ten to Jack at Fox and Bow and Maasdam at The Cupping Room.

Hash browns appear at several cafes. Broadsheet’s Sydney review of Cafe Margaret, published on 10 November 2025, describes chef Neil Perry’s roll at 30-36 Bay Street in Double Bay with double-smoked bacon, free-range eggs, melting cheese, spring onion and chipotle mayonnaise in a soft bun, plus a slab of twice-cooked potato hash brown for an extra six dollars. The total came to 22.50 Australian dollars. The reviewer called it her new personal benchmark.

An older Sydney round-up from 2014 shows how far prices have moved. Writing for Concrete Playground, Kara Jensen-Mackinnon scored ten rolls and recorded prices from 5 to 16 dollars, including nine dollars for a roll with soft bap, grilled tomato and housemade tomato sauce at The Pig and Pastry in Petersham, which she rated 9.5 out of 10. She joked that the roll deserves an Order of Australia medal and noted that it is sold cheaply at suburban barbecues and at upscale cafes alike, with recent reworkings using slaw, aioli, brioche and kale.

Tourism Australia says the country’s immigrant communities have produced local variations, among them a Mediterranean style with chilli jam and a Vietnamese style with cucumber on a banh mi roll.

Five split bread rolls, brioche, Turkish bread, potato, sourdough and an English muffin, on a wooden board.

Cooking the bacon and the egg

Dupleix’s recipe treats the two fillings as separate problems. She allows about three rashers per person, because the roll absorbs a lot of bacon, and distinguishes two styles. For a meaty result, the full rasher including the eye is fried and kept warm in the oven. For a crisp result, only the streaky tails are used and fried until serving, with pancetta suggested for extreme crispness. Gourmet Traveller’s list shows both camps at market stalls: Porky’s Henhouse sells mango-cured bacon with homemade relish, and Bowen’s Bacon and Egg Rolls uses thin, crisp bacon with a ring of fried egg.

The egg, in her method, should have set whites and a slow, golden, runny yolk. She jokes that it should produce an “E & B roll, not an A & E roll,” a reference to accident and emergency departments. The eggs are fried in oiled rings over medium heat, covered with a lid to set the top, then flipped for about 20 seconds. Scrambled egg is offered as the alternative for anyone eating on the move, since it does not drip.

Her assembly order is warm muffin halves on warm plates, butter or mayonnaise, shredded baby cos lettuce, bacon, and then the egg, seasoned with sea salt and black pepper. Avocado, tomato, Swiss cheese, haloumi, baked beans and pickles are listed as optional extras, though she warns that adding them turns the dish into something else.

How Australians rank it

A survey released in 2019 gives the roll a numerical standing. Australian Food News reported that of just over 3,000 Australians surveyed, 45 percent preferred bacon and egg rolls, which the article called the Aussie classic. Six percent preferred bacon with smashed avocado and 2 percent the bacon jaffle. Ninety percent said breakfast was the best time to eat bacon. The results were released ahead of International Bacon Day on 31 August, and the same article notes that 80 percent of bacon sold in Australia is made from imported pork, a figure 78 percent of respondents found surprising.

Writers have argued for the roll’s rank as well. Dupleix cites Terry Durack’s suggestion that the egg and bacon roll could replace the meat pie as the highlight of the Australian food road trip. That is Durack’s argument as relayed by Dupleix, and the primary text was not fetched. HerCanberra compares the debate over greens in the roll to whether pineapple belongs on pizza, and mentions that the Egg and Bacon Roll Appreciation Society published its favorite Canberra spots eight years before the 2024 piece.

Foil-wrapped breakfast rolls on an outdoor table beside a barbecue hot plate.

The record attempt

On 18 January 2019, Primo Foods assembled a record-sized batch. Guinness World Records lists the largest serving of breakfast rolls as 2,091 rolls, made at the company’s factory in Wacol, Queensland. Each held ketchup and/or barbecue sauce, eggs and Primo bacon, and the rolls were cooked on solar-powered grills. More than 50 Primo employees helped make the serving, with Edelman Australia also credited.

A recipe SBS republished from Feast magazine takes a domestic route: bacon, eggs and cheddar in brioche buns with a homemade HP-style sauce, which the page calls an all-day burger. The page is tagged English and does not discuss origins.

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