Given the scarcity of research on tourist food preference, this study is a first attempt to generate in-depth understanding of Chinese tourists’ food preferences in a culturally different environment by employing on-site participant observations and focus group interviews. It provides a detailed analysis of the motivational factors underlying the Chinese participants’ food preferences when holidaying in Australia, and also proposes a typology that describes and contrasts the participants’ tourism dining attitudes, motivations and behaviors. Furthermore, this study elucidates the influence of Chinese food culture on the participants’ tourism dining behaviors and explores the disparities in dining behavioral patterns between the participants in terms of their dining motivations and the way they related tourism dining experiences to their daily experiences.