Food Carting in Portland, Part 1: Cartopia

Tamara Palmer

PB&J fries from Portland's Potato Champion.

​The Columbian in Vancouver, Wash., reports that there are presently more than 450 licensed food carts in neighboring Portland. A well-documented phenomenon, street food in Portland only continues to grow and has already developed into an attraction worthy of a San Franciscan's modest tourism dollars. At the very least, it should be added to a list of stuff to do next time you're headed north.

Food Carts Portland will be your Bible on this epic eating journey. That's what it was for us recently, taunting us with the impossibility of checking out everything that sounded intriguing, whether Bosnian, Caribbean, Czech, German, Korean, Thai, vegan, or just weird.

Tamara Palmer

Portland's Cartopia, an oasis of street food.

​We sampled three main congregations of carts in Portland, and already have plenty more we want to check out next time. One of the best-known spots in town is Cartopia in Southeast Portland, so that was a priority. The pod, as such food cart parking lots are called, features late-night hours and currently hosts six carts, collectively offering a balanced meal of fried pie (Whiffies Fried Pie Cart), pizza (Pyro Pizza), Cajun (Bubba Bernie's), more carbs (Perierra Creperie), Mexican (El Brasero), and more fried things (Potato Champion).

We're easily attracted to cute names, so Potato Champion has been on our agenda for a long time. We'd heard good things about the regular and vegan versions of poutine (fries in gravy with cheese curds, a Canadian favorite). But once actually there, a host of poutine options plus about a zillion different dipping sauces couldn't distract us once we saw our intended: PB&J fries. They're made by topping regular medium-cut fries with spicy peanut and raspberry chipotle sauces, a better idea than it should have been. Pyro Pizza's huge wood-fired oven took up most of its cart space, producing satisfying bubbles on a thick crust. PP has great, erm, cart-made sodas such as a zingy ginger ale and a hearty sarsaparilla, both for a buck, that are a good foil for optional strong flavors like truffle.

A deep-fried Whiffies filled with Mounds candybar(s?) was a heart-stopper. We were the only one at the table who guiltily and greedily kept picking at it after one bite. Whiffies has savory as well as fruit fillings and also does the vegan thing, but of course we made the most crackhead choice. For fun. (We were on vacation; don't judge.)

Cartopia 1200 SE Hawthorne (at SE 12th Ave.), Portland

Also in this series:

Food Carting in Portland, Part 2: Downtown