Portland Saturday food cart hopping

My brother lives in a ghost town. It's about an hour from Maupin (where many white water rafting trips originate). The town is called Antelope, Oregon, and he works as a videographer at the Young Life Washington Family Ranch (formerly Wildhorse Canyon). It's so far out, the internet signal there is only 3mbs.

So needless to say he's in town for the week and on this first beautiful and warm Saturday of spring he needed a few things: to use fast internet, to experience civilization, and to eat some tasty food. So we went food cart hopping.

So I loaded Regen (my Bernese Mountain Dog) into the car with us and we headed up to the food carts at approximately 42nd and Belmont. It was packed with people and after making the rounds at the carts we decided on try out the Euro Trash cart. My brother ordered the Oregon Doner, inspired by the traditional doner kebab, and I got the fishy chips.

The fishy chips ($6) are whole sardines (no head, but you can get the fried heads only for $3) with seasoning and lemon and "trashy sauce" which is a tangy yogurt sauce.

I would have liked to see the fish come with a small side like some slaw or something to round out the meal. My dog was happy to eat the tails.

The Oregon doner is a falafel waffle (falafel batter made in a waffle iron, with yogurt sauce and tomato, shredded carrots, olives, and cucumber. So it's not really like an authentic doner, but you can get some meat with it. For $7, it's pretty tasty and healthy, but I think probably a tad too expensive.

After the kebab we opted out of Fifty Licks (note to self...maple bacon ice cream). And headed down to Cartopia on 12th & Hawthorne for Wiffies Fried Pies and Potato Champion.

At Wiffies we opted for the basic apple sweet pie. They are like the McDonald's pocket pies, but SO much better. The crust is the perfect flakiness, and not too greasy. The filling is tasty, pretty basic apple filling, but a good consistency. They were also offering a mounds pie (coconut cream and chocolate chips), and I have been in the past when they had peanut butter chocolate chip cream pies and double chocolate pies (to die for). They also have savory pies (yet to try) including brisket and mac and cheese.

My brother being 21 and a growing boy was still not satisfied so he headed over to Potato Champion while Regen hoovered for crumbs underneath the picnic tables. After some debate over their monstrous list of french fry dipping sauces he finally settled on the legendary Potato Champion poutine. Poutine is comfort food to Canadians like like peanut butter and jelly is to Americans (Potato Champion has PB&J fries too). If you haven't tried it yet, it's fries with cheese curd and smothered in gravy. The Original Dinerant downtown also has it and it's also very good. I'd be tempted to mention I prefer the consistency of the gravy, but I really don't like the Portland hipster "dain to serve you" service there, so I'll refrain. :)

There is also a pizza place on 12th and Hawthorne called Pyro Pizza that actually has somehow managed to put a traditional brick pizza oven into a food cart. These pizzas are totally gourmet and who knew you could get real wood fired Italian style pizza from a food cart? They told me the oven renders their cart immobile, so they can probably never move it. The only one I've tried to far is the romano cheese and white truffle oil pizza. I think it ranks highly amongst the best pizzas I've had in this town. (But I haven't been to Apizza Scholls yet.)

IF you make it to 12th & Hawthorne, they stay open late for after bar hopping fun, have heaters to keep you warm while you sit outside, and there's even one of those tiny merry go round's that you used to put a quarter in and play on outside Fred Meyer's when you were a kid. So just picture yourself, gleefully eating a savory pie, a belly full of poutine, riding on a merry go round. It doesn't get much better than that.