Casual dining has done its best to kill off the trolley. Tableside service came of age with bow-tied maitre d’s, silver-service skills and space between tables. But we have share plates now, and serve ourselves. The gaps between tables have narrowed so considerably that with a good pair of chopsticks, you could help yourself to your neighbour’s noodles.

But now the trolley is creaking back into the spotlight, serving up nostalgia and fun as well as dry martinis, antipasti, salumi and patisserie.

Signore Cardini’s Caesar salad is composed and served tableside at Gowings Bar & Grill in Sydney, while Joe Vargetto’s Bianchetto bar in Melbourne’s Kew offers an Americano trolley with all the fixings of the popular aperitivo on board to adjust to your liking.

Order mousse au chocolat at the glamorous new Maison Batard in Bourke Street in Melbourne’s CBD and a gleaming trolley will roll up to your table. The decadent mousse is skilfully scooped into a footed glass coupette, dolloped
with creme Chantilly, and drowned in shards of Belgian chocolate. Who exactly is having fun here? Everyone.

Good waiters love a good trolley because they can create a one-on-one guest experience instead of just fetching and carrying; they get to shine. Diners also love it because they get dinner and a show as their order comes to life before their eyes.

At Gimlet, in Melbourne’s Cavendish House, the crepes suzette supper service for two on Friday and Saturday evenings embodies the romance of another age as paper-thin crepes are flambeed tableside in a classic sauce of Grand Marnier, cognac, sugar, butter and orange juice.

Sydney, too, has gone a la cart. There’s the magnificent, bespoke wooden trolley at The Cut in The Rocks, where a domed silver hood lifts to reveal a massive prime rib of grass-fed Angus, all darkly burnished crust and juicy, crimson heart.

They’re having fun with banh mi at the new Delta Rue in the Wentworth Sofitel hotel, wheeling out a lunchtime trolley so you can customise your Vietnamese roll with chicken liver pâté, chilli and pickles.

And you can even hail a gorgonzola-and-wild-honey trolley at Alessandro and Anna Pavoni’s new Cibaria in Manly, giving new meaning to the phrase, “a wheel of cheese”.

It’s all part of a new, more performative era of dining, one that could bring back so many of the hospitality skills we thought we’d lost. What goes around comes around.

theemptyplate@goodweekend.com.au