Food Carts Portland

Location: Roaming The Story: One trend that really took the food cart world by storm was to use social media as a tool to build buzz and a loyal audience. One tactic is to announce your location via Twitter. In other cities where the carts can’t necessarily park in the same spot every day, it [...]

Location: SW 2nd and Stark Hours: Monday-Friday, 11am-2pm, Saturday lunch The Story: We don’t have many closures of late in the food cart scene of Portland, but many were saddened when SpudLocker and their unique military cart closed this past spring. Yet, with a closure comes change in the form of a new cart. Joslyn’s [...]

Location: SE 13th and Lexington Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 12:30-8 or 9pm The Story: Summer is here and it brings the heat. While Portland doesn’t experience the heat like the south or the muggy conditions like the east cost, when the mercury crosses 80, we start to sweat and seek out the nearest water. Portlander’s also look [...]

Location: Dreamer’s Marketplace, NE MLK and Graham Hours: Tues-Sun, 11am-7pm The Story: When I first heard of Wet Hot Beef, I thought it was a sandwich name and not the actual name of the cart. I chuckled and then full belly laughed to learn that it was the cart name. Ingenious! Catchy! Memorable. One of [...]

Location: SW Stark, between 2nd and 3rd Ave Hours: Mon-Fri, 7am-2:30pm The Story: I chuckled the first time I heard this cart’s name. Happy Grillmore. What a great play on words. When I visited, I learned that Grilly Madison had been an early front runner. Granted, a cart isn’t just the name, but have a [...]

Location: NW 23rd and Kearney Hours: Wed-Sun, 11am-6pm The Story: Memories of childhood – the first thought I had when I saw PBJ’s Grilled at Willamette Week’s Eat Mobile! event a couple of months ago. What they offered though was much different than the PB&J I remember as a child. My parents never thought to [...]

Location: SW 4th and Hall Hours: Weekdays, 11am-2:30pm The Story: Simplicity may be the root of success. Pick an item you like to cook, source the right ingredients and prepare it well and you too can make it in the food cart world. Pastrami on Rye does that with their namesake sandwich. The cart is [...]

Location: Lot 94, SW 3rd and Ash Hours: Monday-Friday, 8am-1pm; Saturday, 10am-2pm The Story: There was a time, not so long ago, when there was a dearth of food carts serving the neighborhoods. Every so often, a taco truck would setup shop, but rarely would they become a mainstay. In the first decade of the [...]

Location: SW Alder, between 10th and 11th Hours: Monday-Friday, 11am-4pm The Story: Over the past month or so we have been able to follow the opening story of The Dump Truck on Twitter, learning about building the cart, sourcing equipment and getting inspections. The challenge was, with the name dumptruckpdx on Twitter, we just couldn’t [...]

Location: NE MLK at Lombard The Story: When I heard of this new truck’s name, I asked my friend to repeat it so I could hear the emphasis on the Yeah! Say it loud – Truck YEAH. Love the ingenious naming. Truck Yeah, a fully mobile truck for you looking for one to come to [...]