"Do you know where I can get a good meat pie?"

The man at the information desk of the State Library of Victoria looked a bit surprised. I had wandered around the magnificent building -- marveling at the great domed reading room, with its warm rays of wooden desks spreading out from the center, illuminated here and there by elegant green banker's lamps -- and now was hungry. And I have a thing about starting my visit to a place with local fare.


The man thought a while, asked his assistant, and eventually they sent me to a little food court in the bottom of the building next door, where I had a nice pie of steak, bacon and cheese.

Afterwards, I wandered up Little Bourke Street, and then down Bourke Street, marveling anew at the range of restaurants. The first street turned into a little Chinatown with traditional Chinese restaurants -- a water tank in one displayed the largest crabs I have ever seen, sort of like footballs with legs -- and more modern bistrots, like the Post-Mao Cafe.

Bourke Street had some wonderful looking Indian restaurants, full of Indian office workers and the smell of curry. Pelligrino's Bar was a narrow room with people squeezed at the bar wolfing down plates of pasta. Back on Swanston Street I passed a Chinese dumpling place directly across from a Vietnamese noodle house.

Something tells me I'm going to go easy on the meat pies.

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I wrote a column last Sunday on international street food - gyros, bratwurst, crepes, tacos - (available at www.sun-sentinel.com/travel - the column, that is, not the food). Monday I got a message from a woman in Lake Worth kindly alerting me to an item I had missed: falafel.

I've had some great falafel around the world, which was part of the reason I left it out: Like the empanada, it is so common it's hard to pick one country as its home.

I e-mailed this to the woman in Lake Worth and soon got a message telling me she was traveling in Lithuania. I messaged her back, telling her to have a bowl of saltibarsciai for me.

Saltibarsciai, or cold borscht, is not a street food, but it's one of the world's great soups. It's as important to the Baltics as gazpacho is to Spain. The Lithuanians, the Poles (who call it "Lithuanian borscht"), the Russians, the Latvians all, come summertime, turn beets into chilled bliss, mixing the juice with kefir, sour cream, buttermilk (depending on the region) and adding to the chopped beets (also depending on the region), pickles, radishes, spring onions, a hard-boiled egg, meat (sometimes), shrimp (rarely), but, always, always, lots of dill.

I made a big bowl a number of years ago and took it to a party, where it sat suspect and mostly untasted. People were alarmed by its flamingo pink surface, the result not, as they suggested, of artificial coloring, but of the simple mixing of beet juice and buttermilk.

Too bad for them. It's not often you find a food that's delicious, refreshing, filling, and healthy. I may make a batch this weekend - and eat it during the summer solstice.

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