from the dept. of mobile dining

When the weather is as unseasonably beautiful as it was last week, what better to do than to bike out (mobile) and sample some N. Mississippi food carts (also mobile)? Of course you can't think of an answer to that question; that's what makes it rhetorical. And we couldn't think of a suitable response either (even though we had plenty of other errands to take care of), so off we went on our new bikes to seek out some early spring bites.

After huffing and puffing our way over to North Portland (hey, it's been a while since we've ridden across town - rainy-old-Portland's a tough place to bike half the year!), we pulled up to Moxie Rx. Take all of the Americana kitsch of a roadside dinner and cram it into a sunny little turquoise-and-red trailer and you've got a sense of what Moxie looks like. Sitting on their lot makes you feel like you're somewhere in the South, maybe Texas. The food, though, is 100% Portland, focusing on "elixirs" and "tonics" (juice blends) and comforting breakfast sandwiches and pastries that would probably fill the prescription just as well for a hangover cure as for a bright-eyed early riser. We'd gotten there around noon, so many of their breakfast options were sadly sold out. We decided to share a homemade cheddar biscuit with an herbed egg and smoked salmon, along with a grapefruit fizz (fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice, basil, soda water) to cool us off from the hot ride over. The biscuit was cute-as-a-button and very tasty; its cheese just beginning to melt from the heat of the egg. Our freshly-blended soda was just the refreshing sip that we needed and it made us anxious for summer weather. But we were still hungry (surprise!), so we climbed back on our bikes and pedaled a little ways up the street.

Junior Ambassador's looks more like a Home Depot storage shed than something on wheels, but that doesn't slow its emissary down from sharing his Mostlandian home cuisine with Portlanders. Springing out of the diplomatic successes of their early ice cream deliveries, Rudy (the T. in the M.O.S.T), started a food cart featuring panwiches (savory pancake-sandwiches) and fresh, unusual ice creams. We shared a Turkey Ruby panwich (turkey and red cabbage sauerkraut on rye pancake), which was toothsome and delicious. The pancake was much denser than a breakfast flapjake, probably yeasted, and more like a muffin or sponge-y blin. Before we'd even finished our panwich though, we already had our ice cream requests in: one strawberry chipotle and one maple "strip tease." The strawberry could have had more of the smokiness from the chipotle peppers, but it did have a nice, very subtle spiciness. The maple flavor, however, was a perfect 10 with just the right amount of sweetness. As for the "strip tease?" That would be a bacon strip, the crispy, salty bits of which perk up every single bite.

Now, rather than only regaling you with tales of what we already ate, this post has a participation portion! This Saturday, if you are in Portland, Willamette Week and foodcartsportland.com are hosting a food cart confab called Eat Mobile, featuring Altengartz Bratwurst, Asian Station Cafe, Biggs Bros Wings, Micro-Mercantes (homemade Tamales), India Chaat House, Junior Ambassador, Julia’s Mobile Cafe (Russian Food), Moxie RX, NW Hotdogs (Mercy Corps vendor), Tabor (czech food), Tita’s Pista. We can't tell you about a lot of these places, but we can definitely speak to the awesomeness of Jr. A's, Moxie and Chaat House. Since we'll be out of town (eating from New York carts, no doubt), the duty falls upon you all to go as our representatives and eat like you imagine we would.

It's only five dollars.
There will be one-dollar Bridgeport beers.
All of the money goes to help MercyCorps NW's awesome small-business programs (which help out a lot of local restaurants).

See the Willamette Week site for details/directions.