Fuego, Fusion and Pie

One of the things I love about Portland is the food carts. Food carts here are not just a typical street-side hot dog stand. Think creative, outlandish-- often gourmet-- food at affordable prices and you have Portland food carts. Many of you know my love for "Cartopia," the food cart "pod" at SE 12th and Hawthorne (Belgian fries with great dipping sauces, deep-fried pies, a wood-fired pizza cart and gourmet crepes). A new fave of mine is the "D-Street Noshery," on SE Division near 32nd. They have a collection of carts featuring choices ranging from Venezualan Arepas to Korean tacos.

Fuego de Lotus: your Portland spot for Venezuelan arepas to go

The first place I tried at D-Street Noshery was Fuego de Lotus. This cart features "Arepas," a Venezuelan wheat-free corn cake that serves as a stand-in for bread in giant sandwich-like-but-eat-with-a-fork creations. I got the pork belly with red chili maple sauce (topped with cotija cheese and cabbage salad). It was tasty but very heavy and a little bit greasy. (Full disclosure- I caught my kids' 24-hour stomach flu the next day and that may very well have influenced my assessment of the dish).

A Venezuelan "Arepa" filled with pork belly in chili maple sauce.

I finished my meal by sampling a pecan "Pie Hole" (a muffin-sized personal pie) from The Pie Spot. Their crust is amazing-- light and flaky, embodying buttery deliciousness. And their cart is so dang cute, to boot. I also sampled the Lemon Curd with Vanilla Bean pie hole on another visit. I had it topped with real whipped cream (no out-of-the-can stuff here). Seriously yum!

The Pie Spot: the home of the "Pie Hole"-- a delicious muffin-sized single-serving pie

A pecan and brown sugar "pie hole."

Perhaps my favorite lunch munchie spot here is Koi Fusion. It created a stir when it first opened in spring 2009 as a single mobile cart that advertised its whereabouts to loyal fans via Twitter. Now it has two mobile trucks and a stationary location (here at D-Street Noshery). They specialize in "Korean Mexican BBQ." Yes, you heard that right. Their signature dish is the "Korean Taco": a corn tortilla with cilantro and lime-- filled with Korean Bulgogi and bean sprouts. It may sound a bit out there, but it works.

Korean tacos

Not all of the offerings are quite so creative. There is a pizza-by-the-slice cart that I haven't tried (nothing stands out as being unique on the menu) as well as a soup cart that looks a bit more promising. Herb's Mac & Cheese looks like a definite must try as soon as I'm in the mood for a carb overload. The newest cart, Awesome Cone, looks intriguing: it uses homemade waffle cones as the vehicle for delivering savory fillings like pulled pork or sauteed mushrooms in rosemary glaze. So many options, so little time....

Pizza-- not one of the most creative options in the pod.

Herb's Mac & Cheese: Definitely on my "to-try" list-- and it's so cute!

Shazam!

I love restaurants. I am lucky that Portland happens to have a particularly fantastic food scene for a city of its size. I say "food scene" because Portland food is not just about restaurants. No, no, no, this is "Keep Portland Weird" Portland. (Incidentally, I saw a "Keep Salem Lame" bumper sticker today. Somehow that just doesn't quite have the same ring to it....) Portland's food scene extends beyond restaurants and markets and into food carts.

This is one of those weird Portland things that I love and find so endearing. Food carts are a huge thing here- there are over 400 of them in the city. And they are not just turf for folks peddling hot dogs or pretzels. No, no, no. Food carts are a way for budding chefs to break out with very little overhead. They have food carts with gourmet desserts, waffle sandwiches, wood-fired pizza, Korean tacos, you name it. You can get some really awesome food from these carts and at very reasonable prices.

Last weekend I was bugging Dave to take me to Pok Pok (I've been craving it ever since my fantastic lunch there in August) but he wanted to do something more budget-friendly. So we decided to go food-cart hopping. We decided to hit the late-night pod on Hawthorne. It's basically a bunch of carts in an old parking lot/street corner-- complete with a few covered picnic tables and some string lights to complete the flower-child-carnival atmosphere.

We started with an "appetizer" from Potato Champion -- home of insanely delicious french fries. I've been itching to try their specialty: a Canadian concoction called "poutine." They top French fries with cheese curds and gravy. Let me just tell you, this is not your ordinary gravy. The word conjures images of KFC potato pearls topped with a salty-greasy powder-based sauce. This gravy is from a different planet entirely. Only $4.50 to transport you to french-fry heaven.

We got our main course at a cute new cart called "Pyro Pizza". Aside from having cute "decor", they made gourmet wood-fired pizza in a brick oven in a stinkin' cart! How cool is that! You peek in the side door and there is the brick oven, right in the middle of the trailer.

We ordered a caramelized onion pizza with gorgonzola and parmigiano-reggiano cheese and pistachios. They were out of the onions, so we substituted sausage for the onions and they even took a dollar off, knocking the price down to $6-- for an awesome pizza.

They also featured house-made soda (made with cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup) in fun flavors.

We paired our pizza with a Chicken Pot Pie from Whiffies Fried Pies. C'mon, the only way that you could love a place called "Whiffies" more is if they added the words "Fried Pies." Just like the only way you could possibly love pie crust more is by dumping it in a vat of boiling oil. Seriously awesome. (The current pie champion ate 9 pies in 60 minutes. Wow.) Serious calories. Serious yum.

Golden-fried, artery-clogging goodness.

I'm starting to get good at these self-taken pictures.

It was very tempting to get a crepe for dessert (Lemon Curd, Lingonberry and Chevre, anyone?), but we were down to our last $1.50 of cash and didn't want to pay an ATM fee to get more. So we settled on sampling a glass of the Basil Lime soda from Pyro Pizza. It was great- not too sweet. That brought the total for our dinner to about $15.

We still had some time to kill, so after getting lost in Portland trying to find a cupcake cart (which had already closed when we found it) we decided to head somewhere that accepted credit card for dessert. (I'm the one in our relationship who doesn't like to ask for directions. I also have a problem with GPS. I enjoy maps and like to figure out my way around, even if it's more roundabout at first.) So we headed to Pix Patisserie, quite possibly the best dessert in Portland (it's a toss-up with Papa Haydn). We got the Pixie- a concoction involving pistachios, marzipan and raspberry jam- and one of my all-time-favorites: the Shazam. The Shazam is an evil creation of chocolate almond cake, topped by caramel mousse and coated in a wild flare of dark chocolate.

The Pixie, the Shazam, and Raspberry Almond bites.

It's one of those desserts that you take one bite and then just laugh, cry or shake your head in disbelief. It's that good. (Not bad for $6.)

The shop was built from a converted garage, so on nice summer nights they roll up the "wall" of the building to open up to the night air.

So we had a fun night of awesome food, including 3 desserts, for about $25. Now if only we could find an equally delicious way to minimize calories....

A Visit From Jen or "How Many Eateries Can You Cram Into Three Days?"

In June before we left for California, Dave's sister Jen came out for a long anticipated visit. (She's only been telling me she would come hang out with me for, oh, four years now.) :) Jen came into town for a friend's wedding, but we were able to squeeze in three fantastic trips to Portland: two with kids, and one sans kiddos.

Day 1: We piled all six of us out of the car to get sandwiches at Bunk, earning stares from all of the hipsters eating there with the ruckus we created. We wisely got take-out and headed to the waterfront to eat our delicious sandwiches.

The kids heeded my warnings to stay out of the warning fountain for oh, about three and half minutes.

Then they got completely drenched and enjoyed themselves fabulously doing so.

We headed to the car with three of the four kids completely soaked and no towels to be had. I had the kids strip down to their underwear and wrap themselves in a couple of spare baby blankets in the back seat. Which would have been just fine except... that I had forgotten we needed to pick up Jen's friend Sheri (who would also be staying at our house) on the way home as well. Oops. Can we say, "Welcome to my circus!"? So poor Sheri had the exciting experience of riding in the backseat between two half-naked wet children of mine. (Incidentally, I hadn't connected that Sheri was not just a random friend of Jen's, but is actually the daughter of my mom's college best friend/roommate. I knew her as a kid and have memories of going on vacation to their house... small world!)

Day 2: Our second trip involved a variation of our Portland "Grand Tour." We started the day by grabbing some delicious lunch at little t american baker. Almost as an afterthought at the end, Jen bought a loaf of "Sally Lunn" bread (because I had made a comment that I bought it once on vacation in Williamsburg when I was 13 and loved it). It was insanely good. A major discovery! For the main attraction, we hit the Portland Classical Chinese Gardens. (Thank you, free library cultural passes!)

Jared and Camryn really enjoyed the pictorial scavenger hunt for kids. Addy, on the other hand, wasn't so enamored with the place. (She was actually fine most of the time. I think she needed a diaper change in this picture.)

I loved the elaborate architecture and even more elaborate names and descriptions. How about "The Celestial Pathway to the Hall of Permeating Fragrance"? Hmmm... maybe I should rename my upstairs hallway "The not-so-celestial path over unfolded laundry to the bathroom of permeating odor." Nah, it loses something in translation.

Don't we look thrilled to be here?

After enjoying our view of The Tower of Cosmic Reflections and taking off our shoes to try walking barefoot on the carefully mosaic-ed stones, we decided to quell our hunger at that, er, uh, venerable Portland landmark, Voodoo Doughnuts. We got bubble yum doughnuts for the kids, a Memphis Mafia and an ODB- it's covered in crushed Oreo's, peanut butter and chocolate. Yum!

Jen sampling "Memphis Mafia": a banana fritter covered in chocolate, peanut butter and chocolate chips.

We then took the kids to the playground at Washington Park and worked off our sugar rush.

We then took all four kids to Pok Pok for dinner. Yes, it was one of the braver things I've ever attempted. But we did it and we all survived and my kids even behaved reasonably well (Note: My kids can be bribed and Pok Pok had lime-ade, so all was well.)

Jen with Addy at Pok Pok thinking, "How the heck did we end up in this tiny restaurant with four kids even if we are outside on a patio table?"

 

 

 

 

 

Day 3: Our trip to Portland sans kiddos was much less, er, exciting but every bit as fun. We had a fantastic lunch at Andina of Peruvian tapas.

Jen and I smiling benevolently over our awesome lunch with a random man in the background outside the window.

Exotic truffles and a caramel-filled cookie. Need I say more?

 We whiled away the afternoon at a consignment store where Jen found an amazing dress for $13 bucks and at a store with awesome vintage household decor. We finished the afternoon with a small snack at Papa Haydn.

Two words for you: Papa Haydn. That's right. Come to papa.

Okay, maybe it wasn't small or a snack, but it was insanely delicious and a fantastic end to a fantastic day. Sadly, we were only able to squeeze in eight Portland eateries in three days, but I guess that means that Jen will have to come visit again. :)