Pre-dinner tacos and tequila @ Hello Jose

Not really sure exactly what we felt like on a cold winters night in North Melbourne, my friend GL and I decided to check out Hello Jose. HJ is a hole in the wall style taqueria that serves traditional soft tacos, salads, an extensive range of tequila and not much else.

We both decided to go for a tequila and two soft tacos, with both of us choosing one crispy pork belly (the house speciality) and a chipotle beef. All of HJs tacos come on a fresh, soft, corn flour, pillow of awesome, with a delicious red cabbage salad for colour, crunch and astringent complimentary flavour. That part at least was amazing.

The toppings were more hit and miss. I really loved the beef - slow cooked in a great spice mix with chipotle mayo and jalapeños as a garnish - spicy and very moreish. The crispy pork belly with apple slaw I could take or leave. It tasted a bit like bad crackling - that is crunchy, but gamy and pork greasy to the max - and the apple slaw did nothing for it. It markedly improved when I dumped a lot of their house made salsa onto it, but still wasn't great.

Interestingly, GL, who spends a lot of time in California for work said the tacos really took him back to some his more adventurous eating in the food trucks and markets of LA and The Bay Area. When we were asked by the Aztec poncho wearing hostess if we enjoyed our food, he told her they were the best tacos outside of California, much to her obvious, mexicocentric, chagrin.

We also sampled a variety of interesting tequilas - including an interesting anejo (aged) tequila with a smokiness that reminded me very distinctly of a nice glass of Laphroiagh.

All in all, I'd be back - however I'd stay away from the pork.

-M

Pre-tennis bagels @ 5 & Dime, Melbourne

It's pretty accurate to say that M and I are both bagel lovers, he due to his love of bread and his 1% Semitic blood and I due to my fond and lingering memories of eating the most delicious bagels while picnicking on Primrose Hill in London.

I'm still yet to find a bagel as good as those ones, which were soft and moist but also genuinely chewy and just ridiculously tasty. Pair that with some roast garlic hummus from Waitrose and you're laughing (although Brandon Flowers prefers Sainbury's). I had tried a 5&Dime bagel before because they apparently supply Bowery's bagels. However, I've only ever had a pumpernickel version at Bowery so was keen to try 5&Dime's other bagels.

Wandering down one one morning before we took the 70 tram to Melbourne Park, we dropped by the 5&Dime flagship in Katherine Place. I went for the onion with cream cheese, capers, tomato and gherkins while M opted for an 'everything' with a plain cream cheese schmear. I thought mine was so-so but I must confess that i found it a bit dense and dry in comparison to my PH bagels (which were sourced by my Jewish-Canadian girlfriends from a Polish bakery). It's strange because 5&Dime claim their bagel is very authentic and M rates their donut shaped bread as right up there with the ones he had in NYC. If that's the case, I must prefer an inauthentic bagel.