Dining out isn’t what it used to be. There was a time, not too long ago, when you would phone the restaurant, make a reservation, eat two savoury courses, maybe some cheese and dessert, pay with cash or card, and be on your way.

Now there are rules and requirements for entry. Stipulations. Fermentations. Credit card authorisations; no menu alterations. There are unpronounceable natural wines. There are two-hour time limits. There is, most notably, an extraordinary amount of koji*. Despite all this, restaurants remain a source of tremendous fun, and there’s rarely a better reason to leave the house. Dining in 2023 just requires a bit more know-how to navigate.

Booking

I legitimately can’t remember the last time I called to reserve a table. This is because a) restaurants are increasingly (and annoyingly) not listing a phone number, and b) online booking is the best thing since sliced beetroot on a burger. Some third-party systems can be clunky (SevenRooms, I’m looking at you), but it’s still nice to be able to record notes such as “high chair required” and you know that information won’t be lost. Resy, by a considerable margin, is the most user-friendly reservation service, especially when it comes to identifying available time slots.

You might recall that when COVID hit, there was a lot of chatter about restaurants charging the full amount for food at the time of booking. With a few exceptions, this hasn’t taken off, but for any venue charging north of $40 for a main course, say, you can expect to provide credit card details to secure the booking. “Please tick the box if you agree to our terms and conditions.” This policy isn’t going anywhere.

Restaurant profit margins can be tight, and if a group booking pulls a no-show, that can be a significant hit to the day’s takings. Charging the minimum cost of food to the absent table seems fair enough. Some places threaten to charge if the booking is cancelled with less than 24 hours’ notice, but, from my experience at least, this rarely happens if you call and explain the situation to an actual person (or email in lieu of a phone number).

Arriving

Really, try not to be late. There may be another couple booked at your table for the second service of the night, and who wants to be rushed? The days of lingering over an espresso after dessert aren’t behind us, but if you book a busy restaurant for 6pm, there’s a strong chance you’ll be required to vamoose two hours later.

Of course, “don’t be late” is easier said than done. I have, many times, been at the unexpected mercy of sick children, vomiting dogs, delayed trains and dodgy Uber drivers. If you’re running late, and the restaurant has a working phone number, simply call en route with a time of arrival. This isn’t just the courteous thing to do, it can also provide the floor team with more notice to shuffle a few tables and keep you eating and drinking longer.

Ordering

If it’s a long menu and you’re choice-a-phobic, waitstaff should be able to provide advice on a few signature dishes and customer favourites, especially if the restaurant has been open for more than a year.

For a new place, I’ll often ask if there’s something I absolutely, indisputably cannot miss, and follow this up with a “why”. It’s not unheard of for floor staff to push a dish that isn’t selling, or the chef has prepared too much of, or has the biggest profit margin. But the suggested “must-have” may also be spectacular. Some intuition is required to determine your waiter’s intent.

If it’s a tasting-menu-only joint, your job is already done, although there may be supplements such as oysters and caviar, and the occasional marron. A la carte restaurants will often list a “feed me” option too, usually a fixed-price menu of the most popular dishes, or at least the ones it’s easiest to send out for groups. A banquet can be mandatory for parties of six or more, but any half-decent restaurant will flag this at the time of booking.

Many pubs and casual restaurants have installed mobile ordering systems such as Me&u, activated by a QR code at the table. I’m all for ordering over an app at the pub. It makes it easier to split bills, there are handy photographs of dishes, and the risk of staff serving a fettuccine when you asked for the fish is minimal. Ordering apps are unlikely to take off in finer dining establishments, but for a few schooners and a schnitzel, they’re brilliant. (NB: This is not an ad.)

A note, too, on special requests and substitutions. The majority of restaurants can offer vegetarian or gluten-free options on the fly, but if it’s a set menu, the customer should notify the kitchen of any dietary requirements beforehand – particularly curlier ones such as dairy-free. A pox on the guest who lets the chef know they can’t eat gluten, peanuts and shellfish (but “lobster is OK”) five minutes before the tasting menu kicks off.

Cost

Dining out in 2023 is expensive, sometimes eye-wateringly so. Thanks, inflation! If you’re on a budget but still want to sample the top end of town, look for restaurants that offer a shortened pre-theatre menu, elevated bar snacks or lunch specials. Also consider avoiding steak completely if you don’t want to overspend. Despite a recent drop in cattle prices, supply chain issues and staffing costs continue to contribute to the high cost of beef.

The rising cost of produce, staff, rent and utilities also means a bowl of pasta that was $22 five years ago is likely hovering around $30 now. At two-hatted Bennelong at the Sydney Opera House, the three-course prix fixe menu was $140 per person in 2017. At the time of writing, it’s $180. The “chef’s” tasting menu was $310 at Melbourne’s Vue de Monde four years ago; it’s $350 today.

Ingredients

Mixing up your tonkatsu with tonkotsu? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Chefs love listing new ingredients, sauces and dishes to have you reaching for Google. Here’s a brief glossary of on-trend ingredients to keep in your back pocket. (Tonkatsu is deep-fried Japanese pork cutlet, by the way, tonkotsu is deliciously thick pork broth for ramen. Both are wonderful.)

• Gochujang: Super savoury and slightly sweet Korean fermented chilli paste. Spice levels vary.
• *Koji: The mould-inoculated grains that can give us miso, soy sauce and sake. When used to marinate meat, seafood and vegetables it unlocks unlimited flavour potential.
• Koshihikari: A premium short-grain rice cultivated in Japan and Australia. It has a great stickiness for sushi, but is increasingly finding its way into risotto and other rice-based dishes.
• Mafaldine: A type of ribbon-shaped pasta with frilly edges perfect for capturing every last bit of sauce.
• Makrut lime: The gnarly citrus formerly known as kaffir lime. A few years ago, the fruit’s Thai name rightfully came into common use, rather than the one created by a Scottish botanist in the 1900s.
• Oscietra: Caviar harvested from the osetra sturgeon and second only to beluga in price. All types of caviar have different taste profiles – oscietra is buttery with a hint of hazelnut, for example, and beluga is delicate and creamy.
• Paradise prawn: Electric-blue prawns from New Caledonia. Best enjoyed raw or lightly cured to appreciate the sweetness and almost crunchy texture.
• Pil-pil: A big-flavoured Basque sauce made by emulsifying olive oil, salt cod and garlic. Great with confident, pan-roasted fish.
• Sudachi: More green citrus! This time from Japan and wonderfully sour, it’s often used in place of lemon and lime to flavour marinades, desserts and clear soups.

Drinking

Cocktail prices continue to go where no margarita has gone before. $20 is the going rate for a negroni at most hatted venues, but I’ve seen some classic cocktails priced at more than $26.

The cost can be justified if training and skill has gone into making the drink, although many restaurants where integrity isn’t always, eh, valued, have just jacked up their martini prices because everyone else has. A $28 cocktail is nothing but a waste of money when it tastes like something used to clean contact lenses.

Booze prices are likely to keep rising, however, as restaurateurs approach the limit of how much guests will pay for food. The ceiling on a coral trout fillet might be $60, say, but there’s more leeway to raise the price of an Americano, beer or wine.

Speaking of expensive pinot, by-the-glass selections are more extensive these days, largely thanks to the Coravin, a needle-point preservation system that allows wine to be poured from a bottle while the cork remains intact. In the proper hands, it’s a wonderful invention. You can sample an aged Burgundy, say, that you might never be able to afford by the bottle.

However, I’ve also been the victim of Coravin bill shock multiple times, including one $80 glass of Chablis. Always check the by-the-glass prices before asking a sommelier to “pour whatever you think will work best with our mains”.

Wine under Coravin will still deteriorate once the cork has been punctured, and I find the quality becomes a bit of a dice-roll after three weeks. A good restaurant should keep track of its Coravin bottles so your glass of high-end semillon remains in top nick. I’ve sent back two Coravin pours in the past two months, on account of the wine tasting like an apple that’s spent too long at the bottom of a backpack.

And lastly, natural wine (broadly, wine fermented without commercial yeast and chemical additives, and often made with organically grown grapes). Many customers dig the lively, juicy and sometimes funky qualities of natural wine; other guests would rather lick the bottom of a vegetable crisper than drink anything labelled organic.

For a while there, it seemed like every hot new restaurant was focused on natural wine, leaving fans of more standard-issue chardonnay wanting for a nice old Brown Brothers. In the past 12 months, however, more venues with a natural-wine bent have expanded their cellar to include a few bottles for diners after something with less funk, and more and more natural winemakers are releasing elegant, precise drops.

In short, it’s never been easier to find something delicious to drink to suit your tastes, and if there’s a sommelier on the floor, by all means have a chat to find that right bottle. Sommeliers love to talk about wine. It’s their lifeblood and there’s no question too basic.

Tipping

Oh, boy. OK. Here we go. What’s that New Testament quote? It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than have a rational group conversation about tipping in Australia?

In an effort to minimise the risk of multiple “this isn’t America” comments on Facebook, I’m not going to tell you how much to tip, or whether you should at all. I’ll just note what I do, which is almost always 10 per cent of the total bill. My uncle Kevin from Coffs Harbour would say that’s too much, and I’m a raving lunatic. Meanwhile, I know hospitality staff who reckon that’s too little, especially if the service has been terrific. A conversation for another time.

Discretionary service charges are creeping into Australian restaurants though, and lately I’ve been double-checking bills. I had a surprise 10 per cent service fee added to a Tuesday night dinner last month; on another occasion, a five per cent tip added to the bill without warning.

I’m not against a discretionary service fee per se, but restaurants need to make sure it’s in easy-to-read print on the menu. I don’t love being prompted by the point-of-sale machine to tip another 10 per cent on the surcharge either.

Paying

If you’re dining in a group and everyone’s eaten roughly the same amount of food, and knocked back a similar level of booze (give or take a cocktail), I say split everything evenly. Don’t be that person totaling everyone’s separate order on your smartphone calculator. It all comes out in the wash, et cetera. But if you’ve tied one on with a three-martini lunch while everyone else is sipping green tea, then certainly offer to pay a bit more before it becomes awkward.

Some waiters will get shirty about splitting the bill, but for the most part it’s fine to pay over two credit cards. Three cards is annoying, but four is getting out of control, especially when it’s a full dining room that could do with more staff. After dealing with a group paying across eight cards (!), a floor manager once said to me, “that table spent most of the night looking at their phones, so I don’t know why they can’t use those same phones to transfer money to each other”.

Even though it’s 2023, many smaller suburban restaurants still have a cash-only policy. I suppose this is because no one likes to pay credit card fees or, let’s be honest, report their full takings to the tax office. I get it, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be irked by it. PayID transfers are also taking off around the traps, which is at least better than having to find an ATM.

On the flipside, some restaurants are now refusing to accept cash at all and have implemented a card-only policy. Most of the time this will be noted on the venue’s website. I guess it helps drug dealers know which places to avoid. I’m all for card-only, though. The last time I carried cash on a regular basis was probably the last time I called to book a table.