Eating in Oceania: SOUP AND TACOS SOUP AND TACOS

I spent 9 months in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. It was crazy/awesome/expensive. During that time I ate some things. Actually, I ate A LOT of things. Here are the things that will live forever in my heart and cerebellum. 

I LOVE BIG CITIES. I love that every weird niche and stoned idea can become an affluent business. 

I lived and worked in Melbourne for 4 of the months I was away and it will always have a place in my heart. 

Flinders St Station

Deep in the hustle and bustle of the CBD lays Desgraves St.

Desgraves is so iconically Melbourne that I encourage any travellers passing through even for a short time to check it out.

 Every possible surface is covered in constantly changing and evolving art. Thousands of people pass trough everyday. It's pedestrian only- no cars or bikes. 

Desgraves is fiercely competitive. Melbourne is famous for it's coffee (and coffee snobs!) Anywhere else in the city a soy latte will put you back 4-4.5$ but in Desgraves every cafe charges 3$. If they were to raise their prices they wouldn't survive. 

Everywhere you stand you feel like you're in the way. There is so much energy and noise and laughter and music.

Every vendor is always busy. Always. 

I love it!

It was here that I had the only good mexican-inspired thing in the whole of Oceania, at a place that sold only Soup and Tacos. They had 9 kinds of soup (only some are vegan) everyday in giant Harry Potter-esque cauldrons that a charming french girl dished out on request. 

It 35 degrees that day so natch I went for the Black Bean Tacos. They came with guacamole and salsa fresca. They also had fresh squeezed OJ in an ice bucket on the floor (apropos of nothing,) and I scooped up one of those as well. 

The whole thing set me back 9$ I think and I enjoyed my lunch on a dirty staircase. Next to me a guy in a batman mask sold ecstasy to an impossibly beautiful woman in impossibly tall heels. Across from me two businessmen talked over coffee. Further down the lane tourists excitedly took photos of the dumpsters. 

I loooovvveee big cities.