I'm James — I'll Show You Melbourne's Laneway Food Culture From the Inside

My name is James. I grew up in Footscray and have spent my adult life working in Melbourne's food scene. Melbourne has the most interesting café and food culture in Australia — the laneway coffee shops that established how serious Australians take their espresso, the Vietnamese pho in the western suburbs that feeds the city's early risers, the Ethiopian restaurants that the food writers discovered three years after everyone in Footscray already knew about them. I take groups through the CBD laneways and into Footscray across a morning: three specialty coffees, pho with the breakfast crowd, and a walk through the Footscray market that shows you who Melbourne actually is. I talk the whole time and I never take you anywhere with a queue of tourists.