Why we hand-write receipts (sometimes).

When we opened, we couldn't afford a POS. We wrote every receipt by hand on a small carbon-copy pad I had bought at a stationery shop on Cleveland Street.

Now, of course, we have a real POS. Every receipt is automatic, formatted, GST-itemised, ATO-compliant. Tax invoices go to your inbox in seconds.

But sometimes — once a service, maybe — a handwritten receipt still goes home with a guest. A young couple's first proper dinner out together. Someone's birthday alone. A long-time regular's hundredth visit. The cook who waited tables in a previous life still has a pad of carbon-copy slips in the till. The handwritten one is folded inside the printed one, with a sentence on the back — usually one of the cook's, sometimes one of mine.

It's not a system. There's no policy. It's not measured.

It's just — every kitchen has one or two things that aren't on the menu and never will be, because the moment they go on the menu they stop being what they are.

That's one of ours.

— Sara