Eat Mobile

This was my requested birthday celebration for this year (since the festival fell exactly on my birthday!), and boy was it awesome!
We elected to join the crowd of suckers/​crowd-​haters that pay $ 50 for early entrance, which I felt less bad about since it was for my birthday. Seeing the hoards of hungry people waiting when we left the early entrance, if you love food carts and can spare the extra cash, I left confidently knowing that going early was so worth it!
There were very short lines. There was hot and ample portions of food ready for the taking. And lots of free booze.
We were given a gift bag when we arrived that included a token for a free glass of the bota box red or white, or a PBR when we arrived, as well as an ENTIRE bota box (aka 1.5 bottles of decent 2-​buck-​chuck wine in a box) that we could redeem before we left. This I believe was to encourage sobriety, which did a fair job of it I believe.
We went hungry into this event, as I wanted to try all of the different food carts, but there was too much food even for our heavy appetites! We started at the back, sampling from the likes of Mama Chow’s garlic noodles and wings, to Thick’s deep dish pizza and ice cream prepared with liquid nitrogen! The samples are not small Costco-​sized bites; they’re full-​on tastes of the food that the the cart prides themselves on. Honestly, I was a little upset that I was stuffed by the time we were halfway through, so I then had to try a bite of something then pawn the rest off onto the larger-​stomached BF. I wish I could’ve tried more though, since the samples were absolutely fantastic.
My favorite was a dumpling made by the little cart out past 80^th, and for the life of me I’ve been unable to figure out who made them (any help would be greatly appreciated!). Lots of excellent fare overall though.
Our gift bag (a Whole Foods reusable) also included a free pass into OMSI (a $ 13 value on their own), a drink koozi, some cute backpack pins from EatMobile, a mini-​Frisbee and the aforementioned wine box ticket. Not a bad value when considering we had no lines to fight through! Tickets are limited, though I’m not sure if they sold out this year.

Willamette Weekly has a YEARLY «EAT MOBILE» event where several of Portland’s food carts come and meet up, serve some hors devours. This event occurs at the end of April every year. It’s worth visiting if you’re in the area and want to check out PDX’s food cart scene.
Fee: $ 20 for 2013 (it was $ 15 in 2012 and $ 10 in 2011) — expect this to go up next year as well… If you want to avoid lines and do a pre-​tasting (you get in 1 hour ahead), pay $ 50!!! (may or may not be worth it — depends on your $$ situation).
FYI — $ is donated to charity. The food carts get their name out there for networking, but also do it for a cause.
Tickets can be purchased online or at OMSI and are usually sold at the end of March or early April of that year.
I paid the $ 20 and came early to wait in line with fellow foodie grubbers. Perks of standing in line early, is that when you’re let into the venue, you can quickly peruse the area and grab the appetizers as you go. Consider the opening as crazy as Black Friday Shopping. (Yes this event is pretty big!) I think the event can be a bit more organized in the future with how they let people in. But that’ll probably be in the works.
Parking can be tough as everyone and their momma is here. So try to come a bit early to grab good parking. If you don’t mind walking and parking a few blocks down, it’s not that bad either.
PDX Food Carts Featured in 2013
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*808 Grinds (one of my personal Hawaiian faves)
*Bora Bora Tacos
*Brazi Bites
*Bunk Truck
*Cheese & Crack (***WON: «Best Style» 2013***)
*Chez Dodo
*Creperie Du Lys
*Euro Trash
*Fifty-​Licks Ice Cream (I’m a fan of this place!)
*Fuego Food Carts
*Gamila
*Garcelon’s Soup & Grilled Cheese (***WON: «People’s Choice» 2013***)
*Gaufre Gourmet
*Gonzo
*Hungry Heart Cupcakes
*La Sangucheria (***WON: «Best Overall Food» 2013***)
*J Mo’s Sandwich Shack
*Kesone Asian Fusion
*Masala Pop
*Moberi
*Organic Island Snow Shaved Ice
*PDX 671
*Pizza Contadino
*Popcorn Publishers
*Ramy’s Lamb Shack
*Scoop Handmade Ice Cream (I’m also a fan of this ice cream place!)
*Snow White Crêpe House
*So Cold Shaved Ice
*Soup Cycle
*Taco Pedaler
*Tamale Boy (My personal fave is their chicken tamales!)
*Taqueria la Merced
*Sugar Shop
*Vietnamese Banh Mi
If I’m still living in PDX next year, I will definitely attend the event! Other than that this experience is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Unilocal 2013 100 for 100 Challenge — Review #89

I was pretty excited for this event because I missed it last year. However, it certainly had some flaws.
There seemed to be no system for admitting people; they just opened the flood gates and hoped that they caught anyone not wearing a wrist band. As someone who pre-​bought my wristband I was a little put off by this. Parking was full in both the main lot and the overflow lots. We ended up finding parking at a lot down the road. Not a huge deal, but a definite indicator that the event was over-​packed.
I am always prepared to stand in line at events like these, but the lines were overly ridiculous. We waited in line for roughly 20 – 30 minutes each to get a tasting at most booths, and much of the time the food that was supposed to be served hot was served completely cold from being dished too soon. One booth ran out of part of it’s advertised fare within the first 30 minutes.
There was actually a point in the evening where I texted my sister and her husband and told them to not bother coming. They dropped by anyway and left within 45 minutes, unimpressed by the insane lines and constant bum rushing of the packed event. Had I not carpooled with friends I would have followed them out.
On a positive note, the variety of carts was diverse. I especially liked the potato chips with Sriracha at the Euro Trash cart, and the Coconut Lemon Saffron Ice Cream from Fifty Licks. Also, though a PBR is fine sometimes, it would have been really nice to see some of our local breweries at the event, rather than having PBR be the only option.
I am on the fence about whether the event was worthwhile.

Wonderful event this year lots of new and old carts to sample from. The line wasn’t bad and traffic wasn’t out of control. Wish they had more than just Pabst beer for event. With the huge number of microbrews in Oregon they could have ordered a few more. Love the kombucha there.
Food was much better than last year in my opinion. Last year they had more fries and things on a roll. This year they had more specialty dishes and mini sandwiches.
For some reason this year I felt they had an excessive amount of dessert carts.

Another successful year at Eat Mobile where a lot of the Portland food carts get together to show off their grub.
This year I got a pre-​tasting ticket from a friend, and it was so worth it. Some might say they’d rather stand in the freak’n long lines, but after doing this, realize that the pre-​tasting is the way to go! For an extra $ 30.00 (unless you know someone) you get in and hour and a half early and have more than enough time to hit all the carts more than once before the masses get let in. Pre-​tasting tickets are $ 50.00 and General admission is $ 20.00.
Being at OMSI, the parking situation is great if you show up early, but can be a real pain and long walk if you’re usually late.
Some of the various food carts that were present this year were 808 Grinds, Bora Bora Tacos, Bunk Truck, Euro Trash, Fifty-​Licks, Fuego Food Carts, Gonzo, Hungry heart Cupcakes, Kesone Asian Fusion, Soup Cycle, Tamale Boy and many more.
Hands down my favorite was 808 Grinds with their fried chicken, but if you were in the «know», then you would have asked for their sweet wasabi sauce and that was Awesome!
I was a little disappointed this year not to see Lardo or Koi Fusion, but I guess success in the foodie world must allow a pass every now and then to allow some newbies to try their hand at making a name for themselves.
Overall Rating: 90%
Food: ⁴⁄₅
Location: ⁵⁄₅
Price: ⁴⁄₅
Service: ⁵⁄₅

Overall, my husband and I enjoyed the food we tried. There was a little bit of everything. Most of the vendors had lines that moved pretty quickly. There were some that had wait times but that is to be expected. All you can eat/​sample, yeah that is always a good thing.
The program was informative. It would have been nice to have larger signage for the tented vendors. It was hard to see who was who because of the lines.
As for the organization, I would disagree with the previous poster. It was somewhat organized but could have been a lot better. For example in the beginning the entrance line was very long (under the bridge long). Not sure if they were ID’ing people and then decided to ID as people were standing in line or what. As we approached the entranced, nobody checked our tickets. We could have entered without paying and nobody would have been the wiser. I feel like I wasted the money in that respect. Multiple entrances would have been better to cut the line down.
Also, instead of starting at 6pm for general admission, how about starting earlier in the day, say around 4pm?

Eat Mobile was a blast! Only in PDX would you expect such a huge turn out of vendors for the food cart festival! While an event of this magnitude could be a recipe for disaster, I was really impressed with how organized the entire event was. And trust me we were worried, the line to get in was easily 6 blocks long! However, once the gates opened the line moved rather quickly. Plus the were checking IDs in advance so you could get your wristband for beer and wine before opening.
There must have been nearly 50 carts serving and only a few ran out of food before we could sample them. But in all honesty most of us lost our appetite before anyone ran out of food! Most carts were super efficient with getting food prepared, only 10 or so had long lines develop but we were never in line for more that 4 – 5 minutes. You can buy tickets to the pre-​tasting if you wish but it really wasn’t necessary if you have a little patience. PBR $ 2 and Boto Box wine $ 3 was for sale, would have preferred a larger selection or a better beer but let’s face it you come for the food! Vitamin Water and Smart Water was handed out in abundance! All in all it was a well managed and very fun event! Can’t wait to attend again next year!