April 19 — JMW
We did the Portland thing and hit the carts for a quick bite on a beautiful Saturday in Portland.
Cartlandia is a great little community of food carts on SE 82nd and Harney. We went looking for lobster rolls at Main Street Lobster Company but came up empty when they put up a sign saying "sold out".
As a consolation, we went to Kesone, an Asian fusion cart and we were not diasappinted. We ordered the Namm Kao Vientiane, crunchy rice bits with peanuts, scallions, coconut, line juice and ground chicken served in crisp romain lettuce leaves.
Our food adventure continued on with a trip to the Portland Farmers market in downtown Portland.
Booze is the news this year at the market. A number of distilleries are selling and sampling their products which range from the traditional to Portland hip like Stumptown coffee rum by House Spirits Distillery and Ginger Liqueur by New Deal Distillery as a unique twist on the newly popular Moscow Mule.
Something else new to the market is In Town Ag, a garden sharing program that cultivates unused garden space on homeowners property then shares the crop with the homeowner. The rest of the produce is then sold at farmers markets around the city.
What trip to Portland would be complete without a trip to Voodoo Doughnuts? We of course took our guests to one of the two Portland Voodoo Doughnut locations, this one being on the East side in a former Arctic Circle burger joint. Bacon maple bars were the choice of the day and were enough to tide us over until our next stop.
We spent the next few hours exploring NE Portland and needed a little another little sugar rush so we stopped into Salt and Straw on NE Alberta Street.
Blue cheese and pear? Arbequina olive oil flavor from Oregon Olive Mill? These are two of the choices that were tempting us as we waited in a line that went outside and stretched halfway down the block.
The ice cream was excellent and our out of town guests were dumbfounded that we were already discussing our next meal. Little Big Burger?