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Last night I attended the Portland Food Cart Festival with Z and a few friends. I'm capitalizing the letters as if that was its name. I have no idea. Zach and I talked a lot about the event on our drive home and we were both made uneasy by it for slightly different reasons. I thought I'd be overwhelmed by the crowds but I somehow managed to turn off that part of my brain. (I wish I could remember HOW I did that but that's a work in progress I suppose.) I even sustained a 15 minute conversation with a super friendly drunk guy behind us in the ice cream line.
What made me uncomfortable was that here was all this good food and it's suppose to be a festival (and therefor a celebration there of) but instead it was a feeding frenzy. People, including me, were eating as fast as they could often in line of the next cart and then pushing through this swarm of crisscrossing paths and grabbing the next thing, barely able to have enough time to read the ingredients sign and then off again to the next line. Inappropriate somehow. Like going wine tasting and just shooting these little glasses of wine. No sniffing. No swirling. No casual conversation between each savoring sip. Just shoot and pour. Shoot and pour.
Maybe there were people there really experiencing the food, but I sure wasn't one of them. I'm not sure I'd be able to in that environment. There was no system for crowd management once you were inside the venue. There wasn't an area designated for just hanging out enjoying your food. There were less busy areas but they were at the midway point of the booths and wouldn't be worth the trek for how long it would take you to eat the food in your hand (2 seconds) and then have to wander back down to the next line through the swarms.
I think the food cart festival idea is a really cool one, but the execution both as I did it on a personal level and as it was presented, was somewhat odd.
Z didn't like it for slightly different reasons: Crush of people. (Agreed.) And the whole notion of a food cart is something inexpensive and really authentic. The food cart is by the people and of the people (my words not his.) This event (and maybe some Portland food carts in general) are about taking something authentic and inexpensive and making it fancy and expensive. It's completely changing what he sees as the original role of the food cart. A change he doesn't necessarily see as a good one.
I don't know I actually have a problem with that change but I still find it really interesting.
I should say in closing though that I did like a lot of the food I tried, and it will encourage me to drive over that bridge and visit some of the west side carts once in awhile. So maybe that was the point...and I'm just blind to the obvious. :)
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That does sound very overwhelming. I really want to try more of Portland's food carts, but probably not in that sort of format! Now, the beer festival? That's another story :)
ReplyDeleteHa! Totally. And it was such a cool idea. Maybe I just got over thinking the symbolism or something. Like a Brain Trap.
ReplyDeletePS- YOU'RE MOVING TO PORTLAND!
ReplyDeleteYeah and the long line beforehand kinda got us into that mindset. It became a kind of competition (particularly for the drunk guy...but for us as well). I mean...why did I go to that Indian cart? I knew what they tasted like and the portion was huge. No reason for that. Probably why the sorbet and smoothie tasted so good.
ReplyDeleteWhat would be nice is if the Portland Food Cart Festival (you got it right!) was the weekend long and in the cart's normal place. I mean...you could have the feeding frenzy too for that matter...but the other carts, and those carts throughout the rest of the weekend, would still give out samples to wristband holders. It'd be worth it not to show up at the main festival for some people because of the crush...but not for others because of the inconvenience of driving round the city.
I do like the fancy food carts though. Point taken, but I like creative ideas in food. There are certainly authentic food carts...maybe mostly Mexican and Indian but they're there. The others...I dunno...the main draw for food carts for me is convenience and atmosphere. The food arrives relatively fast, you can get little pieces from a number of different carts quickly...and I'm mostly getting my food to go which can seem a little awkward in a restaurant. I don't know why exactly.
My favorite food cart for example is the creperie at 12th and Hawthorne. Fancy. Definitely fancy. Sopresseta and red pepper crepes, all kinds of stuff. Smoothies with fleur de sel in them. Crepes can be as high as 7 or 8 dollars. Cheaper than a restaurant would be for something that good. But maybe expensive for street food. But it's good. *shrug*
Maybe we should have just gone to 12th and Hawthorne and been able to talk and enjoy the meal.
...or maybe not. They are all pretty darn fancy. The Mexican cart there can run as high as $8 for a burrito. It's made with cactus or with jicama or whatever else you could think of...but it's expensive.
ReplyDeleteI guess what I like in the larger uber-scheme of things with food carts is that it democratizes things a bit. It only costs about $20,000 to get rolling with a cart in this town (compared to maybe half a million for a hot dog vendor in Manhattan). And goofy people with goofy ideas (like a peanut butter and jelly cart) can start vending. The cheap, authentic carts are still doing very well...but we are a pretty white, children of middle class suburbia city and the newer food carts reflect that. I mean...grilled peanut butter and jelly with thai chili? That's the kind of idea someone would have in college late at night as a study break...not gonna have much history there. But it tastes good.
This conversation really just makes me want a crepe. CREPE!
ReplyDeleteI am so sorry this was your experience! And I am yet still enjoying how different we people all can be. I had a leisurely chatty time with John at the Fest, just commenting on each bite while cozily attempting to eat at all 30 stands (we didn't even come close). It was sorta crazy but I was totally into it, not as the gourmand I sometimes style myself as, but as a way to check out new carts and which ones are worth further exploration. This is in NO way to say that your experience was less or false or anything, just utterly fascinating that ours were so different. (Perhaps it was being hungover and slightly stoopid? Perhaps it was just being with John with 'no agenda' which is different for us?)
ReplyDeleteActually, I kept thinking of you and John when I wrote the post b/c I would remember how I felt and then an image would flash of you and John eating the poutine and you both seemed like you were really just together and relaxed. I think next time I go into a similar event, I just need to have a game plan. And that game plan will go something like: Go slowly and enjoy this!
ReplyDeleteAlso yes! I love that we all had totally different experiences. I wish we could ask that drunk guy what his was. He's probably say, "What? I was on the east side?"
Actually I told Kelly that I've been impressed with how the Portland food carts have kept good prices. I find that the expensive ones in Portland tend to be really good, and for the most part they're not that expensive. If I was bitching at all about expensive stuff, it was coming from experiences in LA or San Francisco, not Portland.
ReplyDeleteAlso she was right about how forced I think the food cart phenomenon has become, but I only had a problem with it at that festival because cramming all the carts together shoved that notion in my face, and surrounding the carts with a ravenous crowd of people who are too cool for me (and drinking ironic beer) put it over the top. Maybe I have some cart limit. I find 12th and Hawthorne magical, but the festival was too much.
I'm glad to hear Emily's positive experience. I wish I could relax in those crowds or the crowds at brew festivals. Eat Mobile was just the wrong atmosphere for me to enjoy food. I can do wait-in-line all day for roller coasters, which I also like, but with food or drink, I apparently need a snail's pace.
Somewhere my journalism professors are crying at my ability to accurately represent a third party opinion. Ahem.
ReplyDeleteMy goodness this is a fun thread!
ReplyDelete