In all previous trips to Australia, we had actively avoided eating any Mexican food. The logic was: why would we eat Mexican food here when we can have great Mexican food (for obvious reasons, like proximity to Mexico) back in the U.S.? But in recent years, there’s been a huge surge in Mexican restaurants in Australia. Each time we’d come back, I’d notice more and more. I never seriously looked at the menus, but it was clear that the interest and trend were growing here.

Chris’s cousins organized a cousins dinner nearby for us, as they were being considerate and thoughtful that we had a baby, so they wanted to pick a restaurant that would be a quick drive back in case Kaia got too fussy with Chris’s parents on their own with her. I knew it was Mexican and didn’t really think much of it until we got to the restaurant. It was certainly outfitted the way you’d stereotypically imagine, with sombreros, brightly colored paintings, and cactus everywhere. When I opened the menu, I thought… oh great. There’s lots of things I’d expect on the menu, so I stuck with what seemed safe — two tacos, shrimp and fish, plus a nonalcoholic coconut/lime/pineapple drink.

Chris got jackfruit tacos, so we sort of shared our food. The tacos were absolutely horrendous – at least, the jackfruit ones were. They were mushy, the sauce was disgusting, and they were clearly canned jackfruit pieces. The shrimp and fish ones were decent, but considering how much they cost, I feel l like I could have made better Mexican food as a child than this. And the service was even worse than the food: they took our orders but warned us that the kitchen AND the bar were closing in the next 15 minutes (at 8pm?! We had just arrived at around 7:15!), so we had to make up our mind on regular food, drink, AND desserts then and there. The food took ages to arrive, and they arrived with our drinks and jugs of water. We had nothing to drink, not even basic water, until all the food arrived. I couldn’t even remember experiencing service so awful at a restaurant until that evening.

I normally never say anything about restaurants when it comes to Chris’s family’s gatherings because the main focus is not really the food — it’s about all of us getting together and catching up. Plus, I’m not technically a cousin, so why should my opinion overrule anyone? But after that experience… the next time someone tries to suggest Mexican here, I’m definitely going to have to chime in and veto it.

Most afternoons during our stays in Melbourne, we’ve still been exploring different neighborhoods this time around, just with the baby with us. While it is always enjoyable to see family and friends here, it’s also fun to be able to revisit old favorites, like Lamb on Chapel and Shandong Mama, and also try new restaurants and bakeries that have opened. It’s basically like an extension of what we do in New York — seeing new and different neighborhoods and trying new cuisines and restaurants. Most people don’t really know their own backyards, and so we actively try to do the opposite and know where we are traveling to as well as our own home base.

We’ve been telling Chris’s parents about all these new places we have visited, and they have laughed a bit, saying this is their own home but they haven’t been to these areas much. The ironic thing there is that they are quite adventurous and have literally spent their lives traveling the world, seeing new places, eating new foods, diving into totally different cultures. But when it comes to their own home base, they don’t really see much of it and say they don’t have much time to do it. In that sense, they’re not that different to the average person who doesn’t go outside of their own neighborhood or surrounding neighborhoods. But when we do bring the foods back home for them to try, maybe that will entice them to go back?

The first time I went on an airplane was when I was 13. My mom picked some fight with my dad about how he never takes us anywhere, and so he randomly decided to book a trip for the three of us to go to Las Vegas. That was also my first time leaving the state of California. Ed never wanted to go anywhere with our parents, so that’s why he stayed behind. My daughter is just over 1 year old, and the flight she took this morning from Melbourne to Gold Coast was her 9th flight, plus her first flight traveling in economy class. Her first eight flights were all in First or Business class. She’s having quite the jet-setting life already.

We arrived in Gold Coast, Queensland, this afternoon, and decided to spend the rest of the day on the resort property. Kaia enjoyed her very first Moreton Bay Bugs during our lunch at the hotel restaurant. These little crustaceans go by many names, including flathead lobsters, bay lobsters, and Moreton bugs. Moreton bay bugs live in deep water and most species can be found all along the Australian coast. The first time I’d ever seen them was when we were in Cairns in 2014 and had them at a restaurant. The second time I saw them was in Sydney at the fish market in 2015. They are cooked and prepared just like lobsters, and they’re a very expensive delicacy, one I had never seen or heard of outside of Australia. Similar to how she was with lobster, Kaia loved the bay bugs. Our plate had five of them, and she had one bay bug almost all to herself and gobbled it up! She seems to love all seafood she’s had so far — my sweet little foodie baby.

While everyone back in the U.S. has been complaining endlessly about rising food costs in the last year, it seems like it may be impacting Australia far harder, especially being so far away from most of the world. It has not been uncommon for the cost of some basic food staples to go up anywhere from 3-4x. At Bun Bun Bakery, which we visited this past Monday, I had read on Google Reviews that just three months ago, the banh mi sandwiches cost $6. When we went, the sandwiches were $8 each. that’s a 33% increase in just three months, which is insane. And I have the faintest feeling that people’s salaries are not increasing at the same rate. Living in Australia already is so expensive, and this definitely makes everything worse for the average person here.

Going through the supermarket the other day was also crazy to see how much things like fruit and meat cost; but from my perspective, since $1USD = about $1.47 AUD, it’s almost like I get about a 35% discount every time I buy something. So I have to readjust it in my head every time.

When Chris suggested going on a walk our first afternoon back in Melbourne, I thought, why not? That sounds like a good idea to get some natural light into all three of us to help our bodies adjust to local time. We buckled Kaia into the stroller and went off towards Brighton Beach just a few blocks from his parents’ house. And while a walk along the water seemed like a tranquil, scenic, and fun thing to do to help us transition, the picture I had in my head of how it would go… is not exactly how it went.

Every time I opened my eyes to see or my mouth to talk, it was like a fly was aggressively trying to find its way in. And when there wasn’t a concern of a fly going right into my eye or mouth, they were trying to make their way into my ears and nostrils. The same was happening to Chris, except with him, they love to always perch all over his back and shoulders. It’s as though they know that he’s an Australian native, so they make a “home” of him as soon as he arrives. So while we both wanted to talk, it was so awkward because we were simultaneously fighting flies off the outside AND the inside of our bodies. For whatever reason, the flies did not seem to swarm Kaia. Maybe they prefer older humans?

Chris has also had to take some over the counter allergy meds because the Australian pollen has gotten to him. He’d been free of it for the last three years given we hadn’t been back, and now his body is finally being exposed to it once again.

In addition, Chris’s parents said that because it’s been wetter than usual, the “mozzies” or mosquitoes had been swarming the house. It’s like they just wait outside until someone opens the door and immediately fly in. In the last few days, I’ve killed about 6 just in the bathroom. What joy!

Coming to Australia in their summer is a treat for many reasons, but a huge reason, from a fruit perspective, that it’s an amazing time is that it’s MANGO SEASON here. There are many mango varieties that are delicious and ubiquitous here. The most common ones that you will see in grocery stores and markets will be the Kensington Pride, Calypso, R2E2, and honey gold. The ones we usually have at home that Chris’s mom so graciously buys and cuts up for us are the first three I listed. So when we were in Springvale yesterday, we stopped by a market to pick up some produce, and of course, that included mangoes. I was surprised by one variety I saw: it was a long, oblong-shaped mango that was a pale yellow color, and it was labeled either a maha mango or a maha chanok mango. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but I knew we had to try it, especially since I had never, ever seen it before on any previous Australia trip, and other than the last two years, we had been back every single year!! So we picked up three of these, plus 2 fat, fragrant and hefty sized R2E2s.

I later read more about the maha: it’s a hybrid variety that is originally from Thailand, a combination of the Sunset and Nang Klanwan mangoes that are Thai. However, the maha chanok are also grown in Australia and have been grafted onto Kensington Pride trees. It’s characterized by its unusual oblong shape, not to mention its very sweet and juicy flavor. It’s even better because the fruit has a very small and thin pit, making for the maximum amount of fruit to eat per piece. Can’t complain about that.

We haven’t cut it open yet, but I’m really looking forward to it, and potentially doing a side by side test against the other Australian varieties.

The last time we came to Australia in December 2019, we had no idea that we wouldn’t be back for three years. In 2020, we couldn’t come back because of the global pandemic. Last year, we didn’t come back because Pookie was due in December, so this visit is really like Chris’s homecoming, plus a huge adventure for Kaia Pookie since it will be her second international flight, the longest flight she will ever have been on, plus, her first time visiting her fatherland.

After spending a day adjusting at home and in the neighborhood, Chris decided our first stop outside of Brighton would be Springvale, which I wasn’t going to complain about. We checked out HS Cakes, which he discovered via Instagram about two years ago, which is supposed to be famous for their durian cakes, filled generously with D24/Sultan variety durian imported directly from Malaysia. To do a taste test, we got two items from there – a set of durian cream puffs plus durian crepe rolls. We tried a puff each right outside the bakery, and WOW! The durian hits you immediately, both in smell and taste. And the creaminess of the cream with the thick hunks of durian was actually dreamy. I never call any food “dreamy,” so this was a BIG deal. Chris wants to get Kaia’s second birthday cake from here (his mum already planned to have her first birthday cake made by her friend – mango coconut), so we’re planning to get a durian cake for Saturday.

HS Cakes owner Judy, who was there when we came and we chatted with, was really friendly and told us about Bun Bun Bakery just a couple blocks away. It’s supposed to have Melbourne’s very best banh mi. Of course, we wasted NO time walking over there. We got two banh mis – one standard mixed ham roll, and one BBQ pork with sauce. Both totally blew our minds. The bread was insanely light and ethereal yet crunchy. All the fillings were packed with flavor, super fresh, and delicious; the mayonnaise and the pate were incredible and so, so rich. We also loved the BBQ pork banh mi particularly because they separated out the crackly pork skin from the tender and fatty pork belly, so you have a really great taste and texture contrast in most bites. These were probably some of the best, best banh mi we had ever had. I’d even say they were likely better than the other two banh mi spots we love in Melbourne. Even after sharing two sandwiches, we didn’t feel even remotely heavy and went on to have bun bo hue and a pork chop rice plate from yet another Vietnamese restaurant recommendation (Bun Bo Hue Chu Le) from Bun Bun Bakery. That bun bo hue was also phenomenal, with a rich, spicy and lemongrassy broth, but unfortunately because I was getting so full, I didn’t enjoy it as much.

And to top it all off, we purchased multiple mangoes (two varieties: R2E2 and Maha Chanok) plus 3.30kg of jackfruit from a market in Springvale! The fragrance of the jackfruit just beckoned, and when a seller asked me if i was interested, I just couldn’t resist and had to say yes.

It was an eventful day eating in the delicious neighborhood of Springvale in Melbourne.