I don't know about you, but the luxury hotel world feels like another dimension to me; a glamourous, celebrity-filled world. Then there are the people behind the scenes who make it all happen. My only insight into their world is through White Lotus, The Night Manager and The Grand Budapest Hotel, which are documentaries, right? I was invited to a glorious Melbourne Cup Day Champagne breakfast at The Westin in Collins Street and I was welcomed into a group of General Managers and other hotel industry people who were swapping stories of their various posts around the world. I inhaled that. Fascinating. I met SJ in that group and when I said what I did, she told me I absolutely must talk to Justin Dingle-Garciyya. So I did. Justin has travelled the world as a chef, although he originally thought he would be a professional baseball player. When that didn't pan out, he found himself in the kitchen and he loved it. Inspired by the books he read by the likes of Marco Pierre White and Raymond Blanc, he propelled himself on a career trajectory that led to top chef and culinary director roles in luxury hotels. And now, with all that in mind he reckons he has a book in him too. It won't be a cookbook though, it'll be tales of all he has seen in hotels across the globe. I think, why stop at a book, this was a cinematic ride of a conversation and totally up there with the 'documentaries' on which I based my original impression of hotel life. For now, Justin is involved with opening The Standard, Melbourne, in Fitzroy, the first of the LA-based group's Australian hotels.