Where former Art Gallery of NSW director Michael Brand is headed next

But not a single member of Labor’s class of 2025 even bothered to show up. To be fair, Wednesday is going-out night in the Canberra Bubble, so perhaps Labor’s rookies were hitting up Mooseheads or chumming with the lobbyists at the dreadful Hotel Realm.

While the class of 2025 includes a few fresh-faced young hacks who probably never expected to win their seats, there are also a few political veterans in the mix, including former Tasmanian Labor leader Rebecca White, who won the seat of Lyons.

At the National Press Club, the only pollies who put in a good shift were Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young (among the last standing on the Midwinter Ball dance floor a few years back) and the new teal member for Bradfield, Nicolette Boele, who might not stick around if the High Court does something insane after her Liberal rival Gisele Kapterian challenged the result.

Fishy business

To paraphrase Frank Sinatra, if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere.

And until recently, Fishbowl, the Aussie-born corporate food court mainstay specialising in a kind of hyperefficient work lunch we’re calling “lanyard slop”, had indeed made it.

Opening in New York under the rebrand Thisbowl, the chain landed with a splash, quickly becoming one of Australia’s buzziest stateside cultural imports since Margot Robbie. On TikTok, the “West Village girlies” were going wild for Thisbowl, sending queues around the block.

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Grown-up media also got in on the hype. The New York Times wrote about Thisbowl favourably. “Can the sad desk lunch be saved?” wondered the Wall Street Journal, noting that Thisbowl was a “bowl place where you could take a date”.

But what TikTok giveth, TikTok taketh away, as social media started spreading the news that some diners had found Thisbowl a far from fresh experience for their bowels. That chatter made it into an article on Grub Street, New York Magazine’s online food-centric spinoff.

“In June, the TikTok user @anyonecancookforreal shared a video alleging three of her friends got food poisoning after eating at the restaurant. The comments section was loaded with similar complaints, and many called out the salmon,” Grub Street senior writer Chris Crowley wrote.

The article cited several Google reviews and firsthand accounts all pointing to bad experiences with the salmon.

But in a statement, a Fishbowl spokesperson maintained their salmon was “sashimi grade” and told us that they’re received just a single, isolated Google review.

“Approximately one week after the initial report, a journalist at Grub Street contacted us seeking comment. We later learnt that the individual who made the complaint is a friend of a Grub Street employee,” they said.

Fishbowl said the article conflated that Google review with an unrelated incident, where an employee was unknowingly infected with a contagious illness that affected some staff.

“It was swiftly addressed with a third-party food safety expert and in full co-operation with the New York Department of Health, who found no issues with our food safety or handling practices,” they said.

This house of Lipa

Here’s a tune you don’t hear every day. English-Albanian pop sensation Dua Lipa has thrown her support behind one of Australia’s most loved writers, Helen Garner, via social media. Talk about an unlikely duo.

Lipa is spotlighting Garner’s This House of Grief in her popular book club this month. The 2014 non-fiction novel follows the trial of Victorian man Robert Farquharson, and is widely considered an Aus-lit masterpiece.

When contacted by CBD, Garner told us she was a bit embarrassed by all the international attention, especially after having fielded multiple media requests all day.

Perhaps this is a lesson to us all: we must keep our national treasures, and not just when they’re going viral on Instagram.

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