Food Cart Frenzy: Finding Portland's OG Food Cart

Food Cart Frenzy Day 1: The quest to find Portland's "original gangster" food cart

The chicken and dumpling treat from Awesome Cone

Checklist

• Awesome Cone: chicken and dumpling cone
• Herb's Mac and Cheese: mac and cheese with spinach, mac and cheese with bacon
• Koi Fusion PDX: bulgogi taco, bulgogi burrito
• Samba Shack: Brazilian quindim

We began our gluttonous journey with my wild, unfact-checked guess of the ground zero of food carts: Korean BBQ beef fusion tacos.

After all, the food truck that popularized mobile street food fare via Twitter was Kogi BBQ in Los Angeles. The success of Kogi inspired the birth of Koi Fusion in Portland, so we headed to the food cart pod off Southeast Division Street and Southeast 32nd Avenue.

Did the guy behind the sliding window know what might be the original food cart?

Nope. No clue.

I can see why. It's hard to say which one came first. There's more than 200 of them, and new ones pop up all the time on the Portland Food Cart Directory and Food Carts Portland websites.

We moved on to Herb's Mac and Cheese and met Herb, who said he sampled every place in Portland that served the dish before he opened his space ship-chrome shop. Some, he said, were so awful they were "an offense to nature."

I thought it would take a deliberate dimwit to botch mac and cheese. But Herb took his duty seriously, offering us samples drizzled with melted cheddar, asiago and parmesan cheese. No complaints there.

Nearby, I dipped into a Brazilian quindim, an egg custard dessert laid on top of a layer of coconut crumbs. Samba Shack is a newbie. The founders passed their inspection March 3 and officially opened March 5.

Then we made our next delicious mistake. The orange-and-turquoise Awesome Cone cart leered at us, daring our comatose stomachs. Their specialty is serving scoops of hearty meat stews into a thin, crisp waffle cone.

I couldn't resist its wacky humor. The special of the day: "Fat guy wearing shorts in a snowstorm."

"You need a picture to go with that," E said.

"Yeah, think of how many more 'fat guy' specials you'd sell," I said.

I would have given the fat guy a chance if I wasn't already stuffed with pasta.

E spoke up to the guy with a bandanna serving us: "Sooo... Do you have any idea of which food cart is the original?"

The guy with the bandanna tipped his head to the side.

"I've been here 10 years, and there were already 20 or so food carts... There's this little old Chinese lady off 9th and Washington who sells crepes. Called Snow White House Crepes. It's super cheap. Back then I was pretty f-ing broke... She'll talk your ear off. I don't think she's the first, but she could probably tell you who is."

Bam. Our first lead.

"Wait, you said 9th and Washington?" E said.

"Oh wait, no! It's 10th and Alder," the guy with the bandanna said.

Next stop: Snow White House.

About Us
We are the two pen-and-notebook-wielding musketeers: D, the daredevil, who likes to challenge the limits of her taste buds and stomach, trying new and unusual eats, and E, the swashbuckler, who likes to make a grand show of his meals, attacking the heartiest and largest of menu offerings. Together, we've taken on the epicurean call of the gut, tackling each and every Portland food cart. We pledge to fill our bellies with only the best of street fare.

-- Dominique Fong; @dominiquefong

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