The Great Australian Food Name Diplomatic Crisis
Sometimes you stumble across something so beautifully absurd that it perfectly captures the madness of trying to please everyone. This week, someone spotted a packet at their local Aldi that had me chuckling into my morning latte: “Non regional battered potato circles.”
The packaging was clearly the result of some marketing team’s fever dream - an attempt to create a product name so generic, so diplomatically neutral, that it wouldn’t offend anyone’s regional sensibilities. The result? Pure comedy gold that managed to upset absolutely everyone while simultaneously being completely correct.
The online discussion that followed was a perfect microcosm of Australian regional pride in action. Someone from Brisbane immediately piped up that they’d never heard the term “potato circle,” while another claimed it was a Sunshine Coast expression. Meanwhile, a Melbourne local insisted they used to be oval-shaped “back in the day” but seem circular now. Perth got dragged into it with someone suggesting they’d probably call them “potato pucks.” The whole thread devolved into the kind of passionate debate that only Australians can have about the correct terminology for deep-fried potato products.
What struck me wasn’t just the regional differences - though they’re fascinating - but the impossible task facing any national brand trying to navigate our linguistic landscape. Whether you call them potato scallops, potato cakes, fritters, or apparently “circles,” everyone has strong opinions about what’s “correct.” The poor marketing team at Aldi probably thought they were being clever by going with the most generic description possible. Instead, they created something that sounds like it was named by a committee of aliens trying to describe human food.
The whole saga reminded me of a project I worked on years ago where we had to develop software for multiple Australian states. The amount of time we spent arguing about terminology - not just technical terms, but everyday language differences - was staggering. Every state had their own way of describing the same thing, and everyone was convinced their version was obviously the right one.
There’s something uniquely Australian about this kind of passionate regionalism over seemingly trivial matters. We’re a relatively small population spread across a massive continent, and these little linguistic quirks become badges of identity. They’re how we signal where we’re from and, more importantly, that we’re not from there.
The irony is that in trying to avoid offending anyone, Aldi managed to create something that pleased no one. “Non regional battered potato circles” sounds like corporate speak designed by focus groups, stripped of any personality or local character. It’s the linguistic equivalent of beige - technically inoffensive but utterly soulless.
What bothers me isn’t the regional differences themselves - they’re part of what makes Australia interesting. It’s the corporate tendency to sand away these rough edges in pursuit of some impossible universal appeal. When everything gets homogenized down to the lowest common denominator, we lose the very things that make places unique.
Maybe the solution isn’t trying to please everyone. Maybe it’s celebrating the fact that we can’t agree on what to call a piece of battered potato, and that’s perfectly fine. Aldi could have embraced the chaos - imagine packaging that lists all the regional names, or better yet, one that changes depending on which state you’re shopping in.
The best part of the whole discussion was watching people get genuinely worked up about potato nomenclature while simultaneously recognizing the absurdity of it all. One person summed it up perfectly: “I’m extremely upset/pleased/disgusted.” That’s the Australian way - passionate about the details, but with enough self-awareness to laugh at ourselves.
Perhaps what we really need isn’t diplomatic neutrality in our food naming, but the confidence to pick a side and own it. Let Brisbane have their potato circles, Melbourne their potato cakes, and Perth their presumably puck-shaped alternatives. The world won’t end if a packet of frozen potato products has a regional bias.
After all, if we can’t agree on what to call a battered potato, what hope do we have for the really big issues? At least with food names, the stakes are deliciously low.