Portland Food Carts

We’ve recently been praising the food we are eating at lunch time at the office by going to what we call ‘cart row’.  Eric, my co-worker, and I make it a point to head to the carts for lunch each Wednesday – the only day I need to be in the office.  We are one of the those progressive companies that work from home and only meet once a week together as team.  Otherwise we use all the modern tools, instant messenger, live meeting and even Ventrilo to have discussions.

Anyway, we been surprised at the quality and freshness of the food at such a reasonable price.  It’s just over your standard $5 McDonald's price range – around $6-7 ish dollars for a meal but the quality is easily in range of some of your best restaurants – sometimes better.  Just yesterday Eric bought a sandwich and soup from the Portland Soup Company cart and they sliced the apple right in front of us that was making his topping for his Pork Butt with Apple and Cabbage Slaw.  How cool is that?

We both got the Beef Borscht soup.  I’ve never had beets in soup before, and it was a fantastic and a brilliant bright purple soup.

It seems to come in a wave and this seems to be a movement that has been going on in the background for awhile.  That same day, another co-worker, Serena, email us a link to a video touting the Portland Food Carts.  Then via twitter this morning I see Sam Adams, the Portland Mayor, has tweeted the same video plus an additional one.

I guess Portland is proclaiming itself the Food Cart Capital.

I have been thinking lately of posting some things about my cooking at home.  I’ve gone native.  Before moving out here I was easily your glorified meal guy.  Hamburger Helper, Tuna Helper.  I bought things in boxes at the grocery store with 30-40 ingredients of things you can’t even pronounce.  Today I cook mostly everything from scratch, buy veggies and fruits at the farmers market, and try to eat in season.

I don’t know if it’s the culture here or more of a national thing.  My Dad says there’s not the choice of grocery stores back in Illinois like we have here.  Portland does seem to love good food.  I sure do love eating it.

Here’s a couple videos just recently created about it.  There’s even supposed to be some kind of late night, evening food cart area where you can buy a beer and eat food under this tent that Eric has been mentioning at work.  Some kind of new hang out.  I see they mention what looks to be that place in video #2.

Video #1