Shomler - Portland food cart stories: behind the scenes with the citys culinary entrepreneurs

Published by American Palate

A Division of The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright 2014 by Steven Shomler

All rights reserved

All photos by author unless otherwise noted.

First published 2014

e-book edition 2014

ISBN 978.1.62584.866.6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shomler, Steven, author.

Portland food cart stories : behind the scenes with the citys culinary entrepreneurs / Steven Shomler.

pages cm -- (American palate)

Summary: A survey of Portlands food cart scene-- Provided by publisher.

print edition ISBN 978-1-62619-373-4 (paperback)

1. Food trucks--Oregon--Portland--Guidebooks 2. Cooking--Oregon--Portland--Guidebooks. 3. Portland (Or.)--Guidebooks. I. Title.

TX907.3.O72P677 2014

641.5979549--dc 3

2014008348

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is dedicated to all the chefs out there who are bootstrapping their way to a better life.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

December in Portland is a little different than December in my hometown of Austin. The wet Pacific Northwest weather didnt stave off my hunger for learning about the food carts, but the daily drizzle and gray chilled my Texas-thin blood to the bone.

While there on my initial trip, I slogged on some borrowed galoshes and rain gear and went to as many food carts as a girl could handle in a week. The amount of not just food carts but really good food carts is overwhelming, with several hundred being open each day. I found that Portland, like Austin, is a city that is passionate about supporting the local economy. As an outsider, I networked with Steven Shomler, Brett Burmeister, Scott Batchelar and all the local authorities to connect me to some of their favorite carts. After eating at almost fifty carts, You should really come back in the spring, is what many who pitied my shivering would say. So, I booked another trip for April of the following year to enjoy Eat Mobile and fairer weather.

By then, I was working on the second volume of the Portland edition of the Trailer Food Diaries Cookbook series. I had eaten at tons of downtown carts and a few pods in little pockets peppered through the outskirts of main hubs. I conquered Eat Mobile, hugging some of my food cart friends from the previous years and eager to meet more new cart owners. After the festivities ended, it was Steven who really took me under his wing and said, All right chick, I see that you want to do this and you want to do it right, so let me help you out. He planned my cart itinerary over the week I was there, personally taking me to cart openings and some of his favorite places, as well as some I had high on my wish list. The cart owners were consistently thrilled to see Steven, and he would immediately start photographing and tagging everyone on social media to document and promote the occasion.

After interviewing food cart/truck owners and collecting their recipes in more than ten states, I feel confident in saying that Portland is the true mecca of food carts because of their longevity, diversity and commitment to uniqueness in the market. And after spending time there with Steven, his passion is clear to me: he loves promoting food cart owners in order to share their stories and encourage their successes.

This book illustrates a portion of people in Portland willing to take their chance at living the American dream. Every walk of life is represented among the food cart owners, and their behind-the-scenes stories are fascinating. In his interviews, Steven found that most cart owners were working for six to seven days a week while they were starting up. They were willing to work eighty-plus hours a week to avoid working forty hours a week, all in pursuit of their own happiness and finding their own version of the American dream. Stevens first book is a tribute to all Portlands cart owners, acknowledging all it takes to be a bootstrap chef.

TIFFANY HARELIK

Author of the Trailer Food Diaries Cookbook series

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am very grateful to the people who helped make this book possible.

Adam Whalen, thank you for insisting that I go with you that beautiful fall day in September 2010 to eat lunch at a food cart for the very first time in my life. My life is very different because of that day, and I am very grateful.

Al Gallo, thank you for all the inspiration and encouragement you have given me for the past twenty-five years or more.

Ken Wilson, thank you for being a terrific food cart wingman and for designing the Portland Food Cart Adventures logo, business cards and so on.

Kevin Brusett, thank you for providing me with life-changing, brand-legitimizing T-shirts.

Tiffany Harelik, thank for being kind enough to sit with me outside a food cart at a picnic table and listen to me tell you about the hopes I had to write a food cart book. Your You can write that book, and I am happy to help you any way I can comment meant more to me than you will ever know.

Many thanks to Molly Woodstock and Ken Wilson for helping out with taking some of photos found in this book. My deadline was looming, and you both came through.

Thank you to Pro Photo Supply and your awesome man behind the counter, Kevin, for helping me learn to take real photos with a real camera.

Lori Nold, thank you for all the care and kindness you provided my family and I over the summer, fall and winter of 2013. I dont think that I could have done this book without you.

Thank you to the people in my Dream Stoker Nation community and to all of my Facebook friends! The support you gave me as I worked on this book night after night was invaluable.

Thank you to my History Press commissioning editors Aubrie Koenig and Will McKay, as well as my production editor Ryan Finn. You were all awesome and incredibly helpful.

Thank you to the guys at CityTeam for putting up with my many absences at the end of 2013 as I finished up this book.

Thank you to Zayne Shomler for spending many Saturdays with me in the fall of 2013 as I took hundreds and hundreds of food cart photos. You were a big help, and I enjoyed spending those days with you so much.

Thank you to Zac, Zayne and Zoe Shomler for your ongoing encouragement and being understanding all those times that dad was monopolizing the computer so he could write.

Thank you to the bootstrap chefs featured in this book for trusting me with your precious stories. Much love to each of you.

Lastly and most importantly, thank you to my lovely wife, Gayla, for always believing in this book and in my dream to be an author and a speaker.

INTRODUCTION

WHATS IN THIS BOOK?

Within the pages of this book, you will find lots of storiesforty of them grouped into eight different parts.

There are stories of the owners of thirty different food carts. When I visit a food cart, I am always curious to know certain things: How did these people end up here doing this? Where did that name come from? Why this cuisine? And so on. The stories in here will provide answers to some of those questions.