Flat whites, the bakery pie, and BYO restaurants

Australian coffee culture is serious: order a flat white or a long black at an independent café, not a chain. The meat pie from a bakery is lunch; the sausage sizzle at a hardware store on a Saturday is a national ritual. Many neighborhood restaurants, especially Asian ones in Sydney and Melbourne, are BYO: bring wine from a bottle shop and pay a small corkage. Tipping isn't expected, since wages are high; rounding up is enough. Public holidays bring a surcharge on bills.