Lamb's brains, dinner gongs and a toast to the Queen - we tour the dining rooms of Melbourne's private clubs. By Peter Barrett

"Oh dear," grimaces Steve Pilmore, executive director of the Naval and Military Club, a private club at the top end of Little Collins Street. Our companion's mobile has just gone off. At lunch. In the club dining room. A definite no-no: phones left on are punishable by a round of drinks for everyone at the table. "Make mine a Johnny Walker Black," says Pilmore. Gentlemanly laughter ensues.

But for this brief uproar, it is eerily quiet here in the Streeton Room, a formal dining space decorated with an impressive array of Arthur Streeton watercolours and a large portrait of the Queen. There is no music; waiters wearing colourful epaulettes quietly pad around the tables. Ours is one of only two parties eating lunch on a Tuesday but the dining room can buzz with tables of men and women (membership here is open to both genders) enjoying entrees of salt and pepper calamari, oysters natural and mains of braised lamb shanks and roast pork.

A week later, we're at another members-only lunch, this time at the Kelvin Club, in an alley off Russell Street. The entree of crumbed lamb's brains ($9.50) is a distant memory and there is still work to be done on the huge "Kelvin Pie" with puff-pastry lid and chips. It's 2pm and a waiter has just discreetly advised the president, property consultant Bernard Corser, that "it's time". Corser stands and rings a bell that has been placed on our table.

The room of about 30 struggles to its feet, glasses are charged and the hubbub dies down. After welcoming an opera singer in our midst (the only female guest in the room) and delivering a brief run-down on upcoming club social events, Corser proposes a toast to Lord Kelvin, the club's Irish-born physicist namesake, best known for proposing the need for an absolute temperature measurement, which became known as the Kelvin scale. His portrait glowers from one end of the timber-panelled room (bizarrely, once used as a studio for radio stations 3LO and 3AW) and we resume our seats and conversations.

Quirky traditions such as the ringing of the bell and Friday bottle day (where members must bring a bottle of wine at least five years old to contribute to lunch) abound at this club and others, which are, for the most part, extremely uncomfortable about having their inner workings made public. One club we contacted, for example, even declined to confirm that their members have a facility where they can barbecue their own steaks (they do).

In the top echelon of this city's clubs, which includes men-only institutions such as the Melbourne Club, the Australian Club, the Athenaeum Club and the Melbourne Savage Club, as well as two women-only clubs, the Lyceum and the Alexandra, membership is not something one applies for. A member might invite you once or twice for lunch and, assuming you seem to fit in and enjoy the experience, they may ask if you would like to join. As well as a proposer (and sometimes more than one) most clubs will then require a seconder and up to four referees who will vouch for your character.

At the Naval and Military Club, Steve Pilmore shows the voting boxes, complete with funnels through which committee members drop white (yes) or black (no) balls for applicants. "It's a little more straightforward than some of the other clubs around town where you might need a half-dozen proposers and seconders but we don't make it that hard," says Pilmore. "Clearly, people who are in the military are encouraged because we're wishing to maintain that but we don't focus on it."

While no club discriminates overtly on the basis of occupation or interest, most have become pigeon-holed, at least in perception. For example, while the Australian Club tends to be favoured by younger businessmen and lawyers, the Savage Club has become known for attracting artists, musicians and poets as well as legal, medical and corporate types. Members of the Savage Club meet before lunch in a large lounge room opposite the club's discreet front door in Bank Place. The room is decorated with an impressive collection of Aboriginal and Papua New Guinean artefacts and fireplaces crackle at each end; a stage with a piano is used for regular musical recitals and poetry readings.

After a drink, lunching parties walk upstairs (or take a lift) past the billiard room on the second floor to a dining room on the third floor, notable for its mechanical punkah, a series of curtain-like fans that move back and forth to keep the dining room cool (before they were mechanised, a person would pull on a rope to move the fans through the air). As in most clubs, "Brother Savages" (as members refer to each other) are free to ask permission to join a table if they arrive alone. The club holds regular artists' lunches in a private room where speakers from the art world talk on a theme.

At the Australian Club, the buffet-style lunch of seafood, curries or roasts changes daily. (While club dining rooms are often lavish, you're more likely to find bangers and mash, crumbed lamb's brains and devilled kidneys on the menu than, say, roast swan. Having said that, the Australian menu is understood to be more daring than most.) New members are announced for the first time by their proposer, who rings a gong in the bar. In club tradition, the bar is a place where members are encouraged to talk to people they don't know; drinks are paid for by members signing chits.
At many other clubs, such as the Melbourne Club, there is no bar to speak of; members and guests help themselves to drinks in a separate room, with members placing their chits in a ceramic pot for collection by the clubs' staff, who add the cost to the members' bill.

Attend a Masonic Lodge for dinner (they accept guests on special occasions) and we are told you can expect a serve of singing along with your soup, roast beef or chicken schnitzel. Before the meal, there is a toast to the Queen and at the end of the night members and guests retire to the supper room to sing Auld Lang Syne followed by Advance Australia Fair.
Not all clubs are as formal. Barristers at the unexpectedly contemporary Essoign Club opposite the Supreme Court in William Street can drop in without a tie for a quick "McBarrister" (bacon and melted cheese on a muffin, $5) or "Big Trial Breakfast" (juice or fruit salad, eggs and spinach, roasted tomatoes or chipolata sausages, $12). Guests must be accompanied by a barrister and a notice reminds members that current litigants may not enter. (Essoign is a legal expression meaning, one's excuse for not appearing in court.)

Paul Rack, CEO of Royal Melbourne Golf Club, says dining practises at his club have changed due to time pressures on members and stricter drink driving laws. "If I go back 30 years, what the members used to do is come down here about 11.30am, have a putt on the putting green, go into the bar and have quite a few beers. And, with their collar and tie, they went into the dining room and had their lunch. It was out of the bain-marie or they could order the steak and a half-and-half, which was half stout and half beer, and finish that off and trundle out to the golf course and play 18 holes of golf, come back inside, sit at the bar for another few hours and then go home." Since then, dining at Royal Melbourne has become more casual and ties are no longer compulsory. The sporting club tradition of free cheddar cheese and crackers in the bar, though, has remained - perhaps made even more relevant by changing attitudes to the responsible serving of alcohol.

Ironically, Melbourne's most egalitarian club is the hardest to get into. Instead of being proposed by one member and seconded by another, you need the support of an entire electorate. Only Members of Parliament can dine in the Members' Dining Room at Parliament House, a regular haunt of Premier John Brumby, who favours the fiscally sound soup of the day with bread ($7.50). No cash changes hands - kitchen staff recognise MPs and charge their accounts (staff have a cheat sheet with photos of MPs to refer to).

It's a grand, L-shaped room with wood panelling and large windows that look out onto Parliament's gardens. Seating arrangements, while informal, follow those in the House - the ALP members occupy two long tables reserved for the Government near the entrance, the Nationals have a table overlooking the garden and the Liberals are over the far side. Somewhere in the middle is a small scratch table made up for six: Independent Craig Ingram, the DLP's Peter Kavanagh and Greens Sue Pennicuik, Greg Barber and Colleen Hartland (an extra place is reserved for whoever wants to join them).
Members are accustomed to speaking freely in the dining room and there is an unwritten rule that if you find yourself within earshot of the enemy's conversation, it is up to you to move away. "There are people you become quite friendly with even though you utterly disagree with them and they'll come and have a cuppa with you," says Hartland, who worked as a kitchenhand here 15 years ago and is now on the Legislative Council representing the Western Metropolitan Region. "Various people have sat at our table over time."

Hartland says the food has improved over the years, too. Tripe in white sauce has been replaced by low-GI turkey wraps and vegan-friendly Cajun-spiced fried tofu. While no member who has asked to sit at Hartland's table has been refused, she has never been asked to sit on another party's table. Given the seating divisions, it's not surprising that the quiet and reverential scrape of Stanley Rogers cutlery on Parliament-branded crockery does give way to the odd political jibe thrown across the room (all in good humour, we are told). "Dinnertime can be much more boisterous than lunchtime," says Hartland, "because lunch is that much quicker. Dinnertime is an hour-and-a-half, so it can be much more relaxed." (m)

What's for lunch? A serving of main courses from some of Melbourne's members-only dining rooms

Members' Dining Room, Parliament House
Smoked turkey wrap on thick pita bread filled with shaved turkey, cranberry and Swiss cheese, and a side salad (low GI) ($13.50). Roast of the day with vegetables ($12).

The Naval and Military Club
Confit of duck legs on a ricotta and thyme-stuffed crumbed mushroom, with a chocolate and veal reduction sauce ($36.50). Red wine-braised lamb shanks with parsnip puree, pomme gaufrette and butter beans ($36).

The Australian Club
Mixed grill including chops, steak, lamb's fry, bacon, kidney and onion rings (about $25).

The Kelvin Club
The Kelvin Pie (flavour of the day, puff pastry lid and served with chips) ($17.50). Bangers and mash (specialty sausages served with creamy buttered mashed potato, fresh vegetables and onion rings) ($17.50).

MCC Committee Room
Fried fillet of South Australian snapper accompanied by a Hervey Bay scallop and prawn ravioli, creamed leeks and cold-pressed lemon oil ($28.50). High Country prime rib‑eye steak grilled to your liking, accompanied by a potato roesti, grilled asparagus and beetroot relish ($34).

Qantas First Lounge
Massaman beef curry with crispy fried eschalots and fragrant rice (free).
House-made pappardelle with duck ragout and gremolata (free).