EAT MOBILE

Last Saturday, at the suggestion* of some friends, Mike and I ventured under the Morrison Bridge to partake in EAT MOBILE. As you can see above, this is Portland's Food Cart Festival.
$8 buys you a wrist band, and a whole lot of food samples.

For an additional $2 you can wrap your hands around a tall boy (we did).

There were lots of wonderful food choices, and the sample sizes varied considerably. Above, Mike is eating the largest sample that we got, which was a curry/rice dish. The smallest sample we saw was a tiny little scoop of Red Bull ice cream. Amazingly this line was the longest we saw (Red Bull isn't even a food cart - they borrowed a truck for the event and taped white paper over the side and put up a red paper logo). I couldn't see the appeal of waiting for such a small scoop, so we passed it by (we also ended the evening over at Staccato Gelato on NE 28th, where the scoops are significantly larger).

There were a lot of people here, and some pretty long lines, but for the most part the lines moved quickly, and everybody we encountered was friendly and respectful. Neither Mike nor I are much for crowds or lines, but neither of us came close to a melt-down, so I consider it pretty successful.

We only sampled about half of the options available, as we had the good sense to stop ourselves before our stomach-aches became too severe (there were a lot of cuisines mixing around down there). The one thing that I would suggest for future Food Cart Festivals is that they could cut down on the plastic utensil waste by handing out a spoon or spork with every admission, which each patron could keep through the whole event (many food carts handed out a spoon or fork with every sample).

In honor of our backyard pizza oven: a mobile variation

The whole event was a lot of fun, and was a nice introduction to some of the city's food carts. It's unlikely that we'll visit many of them again, as I think of the carts as a lunch option, and the Pearl District is not a hot spot for them. But who knows, maybe we'll swing by some of the North Portland carts on our bikes this summer - on the way to the bar.
For those who are enamored by food carts, check out www.portlandfoodcartsbook.com, for information on a book due out this September.

*by "suggestion" I mean that our dear friends invited us, but then forgot to buy their own tickets. We definitely had fun, but it would have been more fun with them. Oh well, there's always next year.