Global Street Food Day

Before you drool all over the photo's I'm about to show you, you need to know a little of where this place is and of course how we came about it.

The story, ever so briefly, goes like this.

Needing to get the hell out of California, well, the coast at least, we decided to spend the most part of a 111 degree day driving toward Palm Springs, where we would spend one night camping than hit Joshua Tree the following day. To do this, we needed to drive along a five lane highway in what you would still call the L.A. area. Hoping that we could get away with not driving too far into the world of mad, we were happy that it was a Sunday and that hopefully most people would still be at church and not adding to my irregular heart rhythm that I had developed since entering Southern California. The only thing I could compare it to was skydiving, only way worse.

We're now heading East and hunger is adding fast and furious to our already naughty attitudes. Of course we see an endless amount of evil and destructive signs for food not worth mentioning, somehow holding back the tears and turning to our instinct of where to eat. We are too far to wait until Palm Springs, where we could set up camp and cook something and we're still on a five lane highway with billboards towering above posting wanted adds for rapists and murderers. The only thing left to do was dive right into one of these highway neighbourhoods and hope for the best. We were approaching a place called Ontario. There was a 4th street exit coming up so we took that for no other reason than desperation.

We turned a few corners and made it to a main road where we saw JAX MARKET, with a mass construction site out the front, obviously making room for more parking spaces since people seem to feel the need to drive cars twice as wide as your every day Subaru.

At this point we thought JAX was nothing more than your just-off-the-highway-super store. Here we thought we could grab a roast chicken or something and ravage it with salt and pepper while adding to our heat stroke in the car park. We were very wrong. JAX was a Mexican grocery filled with enough glorious fascinations to keep us in there for about an hour.

This hour that we spent inside, this did not include the half an hour we sat out the front ordering and re-ordering the tastiest morsels of tacos I've put in my mouth. You must know that although I've never been to Mexico, Glenn has many, many times and he vouches on behalf of my hopes that the real deal tacos in Me-he-co are going to be just as spasmodically awesome.

They were tiny and perfect. I also do not speak a lick of Spanish, so delirious smiles and food smudged all over my burning cheeks while giving him the thumbs up was the only way I knew how to thank the man of the hour. To be honest, it's not that he didn't care, but his nervous glances toward me out the corner of his eye and his unruffled thick, black moe said nothing more than "Get stuffed lady gringo".

Of course it wasn't just about the food. Look where we were; in a car park, 112 degrees by now and a shopping trolley with a plastic tub filled with chicken and steak sitting i the under rack. (Separately) A bulk amount of napkins and salt on the table and crowds of people waiting to pay a mere $1 for a handful of corn taco, meat, lettuce, onion, and three kinds of hot, hot sauces.

Home cooking on whatever street you turn down. Why is this not yet a global holiday?