Bowl'n for a Good Smoothie

Image Credit: Ashley Valli

The first sign that my friend and I had finally found the famous cafe ‘Bowl’n’ was announced by an embarrassingly shrill squeal on my behalf. I jumped up and down a little as well. People saw. I’d like to back this moment up, however, for the sake of my own shrivelling self-esteem, with the fact that we’d been looking for the place for almost half an hour. 

Of course, I can’t blame Urban List, the website we’d found it off originally. I’d seen the store named in one of their articles, boasting it as one of the best places to grab an acai bowl. Fabulously, I had mistaken the whereabouts of the place and dragged my friend halfway across Perth convinced it was located somewhere on Murray Street. Then, when he looked up the place, it was far down Williams Street. And, to everyone in sight hustling to get to work on time, were two mates looking like they’d never been caught outside before 9AM in their life. For future reference: we probably hadn’t.

When we decided to retry the website we’d originally found the place off, we were finally given a concrete destination. I set my sneakers to the ground as furiously determined as any girl on an empty stomach.

Bowl’n is a shop tucked into one of the busy walkways of St Georges Terrace. Between the flashy business men walking and talking on their phones and the illustrious-looking women darting past, is Bowl'n glowing with faint neon lights. Beneath the counter, is a fish tank — I don’t know why, but that just made me so much more excited to be there. I, a pretty average girl from Bunbury, went to a café at 8AM where they have fish tanks beneath the counter. How wild!

Image Credit: Gloria Sim

The enormous Cheshire cat grin on my face when I walked inside would’ve alarmed most but, by the unperturbed look on the staffs’ faces, it must’ve been a common sight. My friend and I were handed the menu. From memory, the menu consisted of five or six types of smoothie bowls. The small collection of choices made the decision so much harder. Did I want an antioxidant-rich dish? Oh god, what were my goals for today? Did I need a pick-me-up? A detox? What even is a dragon fruit?

My friend went with the easy decision of a cacao-based bowl. I, after a five-minute pause, decided to go with a bowl called ‘Dragon’, which consisted mostly of kiwi and, of course, dragon fruit. The bowls are roughly $13 dollars each from memory — but, guaranteed, you’re as content as any other $13-dollar meal afterwards. As soon as our smoothie bowls were placed before us, I devoured mine as savagely as I would a damn good cheeseburger. In under ten minutes, I was scraping the leftovers off from the sides of the bowl and helping myself to my friend's as well. It’s great, starting out, to pick neatly at the top layer, making sure to keep the aesthetic appearance of the bowl well intact. It wasn’t long, however, until I was mixing the nut sprinkles, kiwi, coconut flakes, and dragon smoothie together to form a massive glob of thick, pink goodness. My friend, a devoted food Instagramer, watched on in horror. Alas, but the taste of all the ingredients together made it all that much better.

Afterwards, the meal left me in great shape. For the thrill of a risk, I had worn a half-top today as a way to restrain myself from over-eating (the fear of looking like Winnie the Pooh is a great way to keep my eating habits in check). To my surprise, while I felt so full I could barely get out of my seat, my stomach was still as flat as it had been before I had come into the store. For someone like me that usually bloats up like an over-pumped basketball after a hearty meal, this was an amazing discovery.

So, cheers to Bowl’n for fulfilling my white-girl fantasies of a perfectly Instagramable breakfast smoothie bowl.

 

Image Credit: Dee Jae