How Deep Is Too Deep? (Or: Why Taco'Bout Exists)

I found a note I wrote in June 2020 — years before the first taco was served. Reading it back, I realise I'd already written the recipe. I just hadn't added the margaritas yet.

The 2020 note

Mid-2020, deep in the strange quiet of that year, I was planning a podcast with a friend about deep conversation — and I wrote myself a question: how deep is too deep? What is evoked when a question is experienced as "too deep" — by you, or by someone else? Can you meet another person deeper than you've reached in yourself?

I wrote about how "that's too deep" so often really means "you're too much" — how it can land as shaming, and trigger a knee-jerk retreat to the shallows. And how, on the other side of it, being met with someone's depth is one of the great honours: a person bringing their talk up from deep inside rather than off the top of their head. Felt through, rather than thought out.

Intimacy: into-me-see. Deeper than what meets the eye.

The confession

Here's what I knew about myself even then: I love deep, meaningful conversation. I seek it out — maybe more with every year. I'm lucky to work with people whose whole craft is deep conversation, and I love that I can dive straight in with them and walk away having learned something. (Don't get me wrong — I equally love ridiculous, rude, fun and funny. The two aren't opposites; they're dance partners.)

But the note names the real problem: it's hard to find a space for deep conversation. You almost have to set it up.

So I set one up

That podcast didn't become the thing. But read that sentence again — "you almost have to set it up" — and then look at what happened: a monthly night at a cosy bar in Dubbo where the depth is the menu. One spicy topic. One local expert. A room of curious minds given explicit permission to go deep — or to sit back and soak it in, which is its own kind of participation. Tacos, because food softens a room. Margaritas, because so do they.

Identity. Uncertainty. Death. Rejection. Legacy. Belonging. Showing up. The illusion of choice. Four years after I asked myself how deep is too deep, a whole town keeps answering: deeper, please.

Depth can't be measured — what's deep to one person is small talk to another. So the only rule that works is the one Taco'Bout runs on: build the space, and let people choose their depth.

The ideas shelf — every deep conversation we've served — lives under Let's Taco'Bout It. Come to the next one: first Wednesday of the month, The Establishment, Dubbo.