High-End Street-Food Project Still Waiting for Wheels

Skenes: Cooling his heels

The hot young chef who'd hoped to roll out his upscale lunch cart in FiDi last week is still cooling his heels. Joshua Skenes told SFoodie his plans to launch Carte415 at Second Street and Mission are being held up by paperwork, and, well, the arrival of the custom cart itself. It's still being fabricated in Canada.

Skenes gigged as exec chef at Chez TJ in Mountain View before Michael Mina recruited him to open Stonehill Tavern in the OC. He slogged north to work on another Mina project, but caught the entrepreneurial bug. Thank the Great Recession for giving the 29-year-old chef the idea to bring farm-to-table street food to SF. Skenes was finalizing plans for a sit-down place (he'd been looking downtown and in Mission Bay), when the economy curdled, souring his brick-and-mortar dreams.

When it finally rolls into its atrium space downtown and starts dishing out things like Cava-cured salmon, Carte415 will be only the latest flavor in the ingredient-driven street-food trend that's stirred fierce buzz in town (think Kitchenette, and the phantom Magic Curry Kart and Crème Brulee Cart). Skenes seemed almost thankful that his sit-down plans got scrapped. "It's refreshing to have great food and not be in a formal dining room," he told SFoodie. "Even as chefs, we like to eat at a barstool or in a lounge."