The Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, is a natural light display caused by charged particles from the sun colliding with Earth’s magnetic field. These vibrant green, pink, and purple waves of light dance across the sky in polar regions, creating a breathtaking spectacle.
Native to Australia, eucalyptus trees are known for their aromatic leaves and fast growth. Koalas feed almost exclusively on their leaves, which are rich in oil and give off a distinctive menthol-like scent.
Carved by the Colorado River, the Grand Canyon is a massive geological wonder in Arizona, USA. Its layered red rock formations reveal millions of years of Earth’s history, attracting adventurers and geologists alike.
Vinyl records are analog sound storage mediums that have made a nostalgic comeback in recent years. Loved for their warm sound and collectible nature, they remain a favorite among audiophiles and music enthusiasts.
Sourdough bread is a type of bread made from naturally fermented dough using wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria. Its tangy flavor and chewy texture make it a popular choice for artisan bakers and bread lovers worldwide.
MOIRA
So, Claire, do you tip?
CLAIRE
Not always. Moira, do you tip?
MOIRA
At restaurants, almost always.
CLAIRE
Why at restaurants exclusively?
MOIRA
I mean I would consider a wine bar a restaurant. But if I’m ordering up at a counter, I probably won’t tip. I think it has something to do with table service. Table service and the amount of interaction that I have with the service staff.
CLAIRE
So when you tip, are you tipping for service?
MOIRA
Yeah, I reckon, predominantly for service.
CLAIRE
I would say I’m tipping exclusively for service. It’s only recently that tipping for the quality of the food has even come into my mind’s eye.
MOIRA: Agreed. I would assume that the price of the food on the menu is reflective of the amount of the quality of the ingredients used and the time and skill that it takes the chefs to prepare said meal.
CLAIRE: I’m obsessed with you saying reflective and said meal. You know what I was thinking about? Do you remember when you would get the flatbread with that soft cheese at Marion, and it would be free?
MOIRA: Oh, shit.
CLAIRE: Life used to be crazy. Free bread. God, bread used to be free.
MOIRA: These days, I would tip if the bread was free. I’d tip if sparkling water is free.
CLAIRE: Okay, anyway, back to the point. Tipping, to me, is for service. I’m tipping for a combination of care and skill and making the experience greater than just talking to them and ordering. That, to me, is what I tip for.
MOIRA: Let me give you a hypothetical situation. The service is amazing. The food is great.
CLAIRE: Yeah.
MOIRA: The kitchen has gone down, and your food takes an hour to come. There’s an hour between your entreé and your main. Do you tip?
CLAIRE: Fascinating. Because I’m like, to me, wait time is a component of the service. Oh, moy caliente. That is a spicy one. I guess there have been times where I’ve waited a long time between food and have still thought the service was good. So I guess, no. Yes, I would tip, and no, it wouldn’t impact it. There is something about, and I know that I say this all the time of touching the table because I just love the term. I think it sounds so camp. But there is a component of feeling like the most annoying thing about going out to dinner and getting service that you don’t like is that you feel like you’re not being thought of when you’re sitting there and you’re like, can I get a glass of wine? Can we chat? Can I get those mashed potatoes? What’s happening? And if the service is good, and it is taking an hour, and they know these things. I think a good waiter comes to you before that’s happening and is like, yes, how are we going here?
MOIRA: You’re anticipating what someone needs, and it’s this idea of care, right? Dare I say hospitality. The idea that the person who’s serving cares about whether you’re having a good time, which involves touching tables, keeping track of how time is flowing. For example, if the food is taking a while, I’ll communicate that to a table.
CLAIRE: The kitchen’s at capacity.
MOIRA: The kitchen’s at emotional capacity.
MOIRA: Your food is actually going to be 20 minutes. I’m sorry. Here’s a half glass of something while you wait. That bit of communication makes a difference.
CLAIRE: That is a tip in and of itself, because that is actually the thing that you notice so much more in regards to good and bad service is that feeling of bothering the people. That’s the yuck feeling that you hate when you go out to dinner. It’s feeling like you’re a burden, which is like the exact opposite of hospitality.
MOIRA: That’s so millennial of you. But yeah It is. There’s nothing worse when someone’s like, hey, can I tell you the spiel?
CLAIRE: And it’s always, “We do things a little differently around here.”
MOIRA: Damn. Like, 70% front of house. And I know the chef bros are about to come with me with their fucking pairing knives with their tweezers. But I don’t know. You and I have very specific experiences of dining out and what that looks like. As, like, if I come into a situation where I feel like I understand the social cues or I understand the rules that we’ve created around this, and you do your dance and I do my dance, and then I leave, tipping to me, is that extra bit that.
CLAIRE: So, do you think the tips should be split up? As someone who benefits from said tips.
MOIRA: I’ve worked in a big four restaurant group and had a percentage of my tips go towards the owner and the head office which is like, kinda fucked lol. It’s not uncommon to see businesses to take 5% of that for glass breakages, which I don’t think is as fucked. I’ve worked in places that do an even split with everyone working, front of house and back of house. I think 70/30 is fair.
CLAIRE: More than an even split?
MOIRA: So I was going to say was that when I came back to work in a restaurant, I had long-COVID and I was having a shit time at work. I never sunk my section, I did all the things that I was supposed to do but there was no flirting.
CLAIRE: Well, also, there was no jazz hands. There was no razzle dazzle.
MOIRA: Yeah. We were using square terminals, which meant that you’d get a report with your tips. I reckon during that time, I was making 60 bucks in tips at the end of the night when I’d normally make like 200 bucks? And I think it’s something front of house maybe have more influence on a tip going in than back of house?
CLAIRE: That is interesting data also. That’s the data that proves my point that I really think that societally, we have decided that this is a cream of the crop extra thing.
MOIRA: But it’s work. Performing good service, doing those extra things is labour. We don’t actually have to put a candle in your cake when you tell us it’s someone’s birthday. We don’t have to stress over you having a full glass of water at all times. Or over you getting your first drink before your snacks hit the table. We didn’t have to spend years learning about wine so that we could help you pick a glass of wine that matches your understanding of the word ‘funky’ and goes well with your food.
CLAIRE: So as to why 80/20. I think this comes down to emotional labour like, there’s doing your job in hospitality, following the sequence of service, touching all your tables. That’s doing your job. And then there is putting the cream on top of the cake, as you had said, which is like, I’m going to connect with this person and I’m going to make them feel good. The bear, literally, this is what the bear is about, where you’re going above and beyond, and you’re tailoring that person’s dining experience to make them have a better time. But can you imagine a world where every single time you went to a restaurant in the three to six times per week that you tipped 15%?
MOIRA: I wouldn’t be able to afford to go out.
CLAIRE: You wouldn’t be able to afford to.
MOIRA: The percentages thing is so interesting because like, I’m never really like, was the service worth 10% of the meal or 20%, it’s more like I think that people should tip because it makes a difference to what Melbourne hospitality and service looks like. If it weren’t for tips hospitality, it’d be hard to make hospitality a long-term career. Hospitality award rates for full-timers is less than 25 an hour? And maybe just over 30 for casual workers? So what, 50 - 60K? Tips can bump that up to like 90K and its partly to do with building skills so you can work in restaurants that get you tips.
CLAIRE: So how do you tip?
MOIRA: I’d say like blanket rule, 5 bucks per person if someone’s done anything that I see as doing more than just taking my order and bringing food from the kitchen to the table. Or I’d round the bill to a nice looking number.
CLAIRE: I think dining in 2023, 2024, or the modern world or whatever that looks like, that landscape doesn’t leave room for tipping at every situation, because dining out isn’t what it was. Do you know what I mean? It feels like that wicked capitalist problem of being, like, we have surpassed this thing’s initial perceptions or ideas or like, what this was originally built for, and it’s become too big of a beast, or too. Like, it’s become more than the sum of its parts, and we can’t sustain what it was in the same way that we could before because of the fact of the concept of how we wish to see the world and our actual lived experience can’t. Those two things are very rarely a full circle. A Venn diagram.
MOIRA: I think that if you are dining out on a gift card from your 30th birthday, on your engagement party–
CLAIRE: How dare you come for me so personally.
MOIRA: Well, where you’re not personally paying for the meal, you should tip. And this also includes people who are using the company card.
CLAIRE: On the company card. Every meal. I think that is embarrassing if you don’t. Honestly.
MOIRA: God if you’re some white food influencer profiting and gaining cultural capital from sharing your quote-unquote expertise and review of food from a culture that isn’t yours, especially if it’s from a marginalised culture and you’re not tipping, you should think about that.
MOIRA: Claire, how much do you tip?
CLAIRE: Absolutely not by percentage, unless I get that weird prompt where it’s like 5, 10, 15, and it tells you how much it is. I’m always doing the mental math kind of rounding up to numbers or rounding up to ideas of what I think is a budgeted concept. So I think that chucking, like $10 or $15 or $20 onto something in.
MOIRA: What’s the social etiquette with groups? Would you ask the crowd, would you just add it on?
CLAIRE: That is a fascinating question because I’m usually the person that gets the bill and does the thing. Does the. I can’t think of a lot of times where I’ve been like, are we tipping? If I do it, I’m just like, I tipped this much. If I were going to dinner with people and I knew that they famously didn’t tip, I would tip.
MOIRA: Cop the tip. Hot of you.
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Where to go when you are many.
We love BYO restaurants because the best things in life are shared. However, finding spaces to share things is another question, especially when the group chat exceeds eight people. These are the places we go when we’re bringing people together, arranged on a scale that starts at food court to bougie private dining rooms (you figure it out). We recommend bringing your own corkscrew to minimise disruption (for both one’s thirst and staff). Depending on your level of wine wankery, BYO glasses. Make sure you order a round of beers so you’re not putting restaurants out and ALWAYS tip when dining as a big group (it’s only fair when you’re taking up so much space, physically and in decibels).
A fabulous spot to hang out and drink wine while enjoying a variety of independent Thai, Sri Lankan, Korean and Chinese vendors. Not ‘officially’ BYO, but the food court is licensed, so you’ll need to bring your own glasses (and discretion). They have cheap beers at Asia Unique if you don’t feel like wine. Long live Paramount.
Pork belly with Chinese broccoli at Me Dee, spicy dry tom yum pork noodles at Asia Unique, eggplant curry at Ceylon wok.
When a place is in the burbs, cash only and 3.8 stars on Google Maps, you know it’s on target. Long deserved accolade, Jim’s food is a one-stop Cantonese Hotel Banquet whose craft rivals the best of Melbourne’s cuisine. Use Google Translate to access the seasonal menu board at the rear of the restaurant. They might not let you see the menu, but Grace will make sure you order right.
No private room, but you can request the big round table up front that fits 10.
Squab, crab, chicken soup with wonton mee, braised pork in pumpkin
A Collingwood stalwart for over twenty years, this Singaporean joint serves hawker classics in a cosy Victorian terrace. The proprietors are passionate about their cuisine, with deep knowledge to show how slight differences in ingredients and cooking set it apart from Malaysian cuisine. Bring a crowd and order generously.
Stir-fried radish cakes, prawn curry
The classic that I left unconsidered for too long. Organic, seasonal Italian – basically a farm-to-table osteria in the middle of Carlton. Corkage isn’t cheap, so it’s the kind of place to bring your best botts (in the name of value). If you’re in the private room and with the ~*wine wankers*~ the team can adjust the set menu to complement the wines.
Anything and everything seasonal and the classics.
Hansang, a Sydneysider classic, opened Surangsang in Melbourne and we’re blessed. There’s a bottomless banchan, a whole page of Korean pancake variations to try, and countless large-format stews and sides for groups. A bit dearer than other Korean places but makes up for it in both quality and choice.
There's a private room, for up to 18 people on one big long table.
Pancake, bibimbap, spicy potato and pork neck bone hot pot, marinated beef & mushroom hot pot
Going to fancy restaurants for sweets only.
With cozzie livs, shouting a fancy dinner can be a bit too big-guy. A single bougie dessert to share, with a couple wines/disgestifs/espressos at a bougie venue however, is a manageable amount of big-guy.
They only do this as a part of their Friday and Saturday supper menu that starts after 10pm. Nothing feels more like being spoiled than having the theatre of fire in your dessert.
There’s a good chance that the waitperson will try to twist your arm and get you to order the sesame and honey ice cream to go with it. I mean, like yeah, the right answer is yes – while you’re there. If it’s quiet, the loungey seating area that faces the street through a giant window is a pretty place to sit.
Etta’s chilli oil parfait made the Instagram rounds when Lorcan first took the reins from Rosheen. Of course, he’s made his own chilli oil. Of course, it’s as good as the hype.
Once it was a chipotle and orange flan, another time it was a banana tiramisu, or a very simple coconut ice cream with mango and candied chilli and every time it’s been the best dessert I’ve ever had. I don’t care what it is, if Scott is making it, the sweets will be very good.
When something’s been on the menu since day dot, it’s usually for good reason. A dessert as boozy as a rum baba makes a difficult pairing, but the team knows what they’re doing when they suggest pairing it with apple brandy.
Where to go when you are many.
Tokyo is full of listening bars and cafes, with many choosing to specialise in a particular niche or genre. Jazz cafes, or "kissa", have particularly established themselves as a category. Some are sunny daytime hangouts with specialty coffee and tea, others more late-night haunts encouraging you to stay a while, sipping on a rare whisky or stirred-down cocktail. The only real through line uniting these venues is a strict adherence to vinyl. Here's our favourite spots to hear the soothing crackle.
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