7.18.2011

Food Carts I Have Known

The big thing in Portland w/r/t* food is the food cart phenomenon. There are tons of those guys, packed with mostly really great food for very little money. A few notes:
  1. Until recently, my favorite was Creme de la Creme, a French bistro cart in the pod by our apartment (the pod is at Belmont and about SE 44th.) Croque madames, onion tarts, etc., with amazing salads with amazing vinaigrette. Unfortunately, they started copping some attitude ("best French restaurant in Portland," per Yelp) and they now charge a 50 cent to-go fee, which is a big what-the-fuck since they're a bloody FOOD CART and the whole POINT is that you get it to go. They also charge too much: 8 bucks a meal is 2 - 3 bucks more than I want to spend at a food cart. Still tastes good, anyway.
  2. Thai! I always go to Thai Sky at the square-block-big pod at 4th and Oak, a block from my job. It's in direct competition with two other Thai carts at the same pod, so they're all locked in a "lunch = 5 dollars, that's it" kind of price war. The Pad Khee Mao is just divine. I have yet to get anything else, because why bother?
  3. There are lots of other really good food carts! I already ran out of literary steam, however, as it is 9pm on a work night and B and I polished off some booze and played with Plan C.
Mostly I just bring peanut butter sandwiches to work, but boy do I count down the days in between Pad Khee Mao days. There are six of them.

* "With regard to" - funny prickish abbreviation I got from David Foster Wallace, essays by which I am perusing on days where I don't ride "my" bike but instead take the bus.

3 comments:

JPearre said...

Hell yeah, Pad Khee Mao! Let me know next time you're going over there. My office is just a few blocks away.

noncoupable said...

Haha - same nonsense happens in Beijing with the "best" award as it usually means the next time you go back they've fired the good (high priced and usually foreign) staff that got the place going, replaced with incompetent and cheap teenage / college-age labor and jacked up the prices a couple bucks. Then they wonder why 4-5 star reviews suddenly become 1 stars.

Glad to hear things are going well for you guys! Let us all know about the house stuff.

Chrissy said...

Thai Sky is my favorite. Their green curry chicken is AWESOME.