Food Trucks

by Heather Shouse

  Tabor

  FIND IT: Stark St. just east of SW 5th St.

  KEEP UP WITH IT: www.schnitzelwich.com

  “You have to make sure you cross the river before the current sweeps you back to communism.”

  It’s strange to hear these words coming from within a cheerful, candy apple–red food cart in one of Portland’s busiest downtown street food spots. Karel Vitek, the man speaking, has crinkly eyes when he smiles, and as proof that he does that a lot, the creases seem permanent. But when he talks about his escape from communist Czechoslovakia, his eyes take on a detached thousand-yard stare. “Have you ever read 1984? That’s the kind of feeling when you live in communism. You cannot leave, you cannot travel freely, education is unattainable. You … have to know somebody to get somewhere.” He didn’t know any somebodies, so in 1985 he escaped, choosing to move through Yugoslavia after determining that other routes were “virtual suicide. They … would shoot you immediately, or if they didn’t shoot you, they would put you in jail for thirty years.” And so he walked. And ran. And eventually, when getting to the Mura River that forms the border between Austria and Yugoslavia (now Slovenia), he swam. He arrived at the Austrian immigration office tired and hungry, but free, or at least close to it—he was sent to a camp where he and other escapees awaited sponsorship in the United States. He made a few friends, played chess, foraged for mushrooms in the nearby woods, and dreamt of what he was headed toward. After nine months, sponsorship came … from a Mormon family in Nebraska. “Was I bored!” Karel laughs. “I left them swiftly and went to San Diego, where I had friends from Czechoslovakia. There I was kind of a beach bum.” Eventually, Karel found his way to Portland in the early 1990s, landing at Reed College. He sat in on classes, learning English and developing an interest in philosophy, which eventually led to a bachelor’s degree from Portland State University. And what does a wannabe philosopher with plenty of stories to tell do next? Open a food cart, of course.

  “For years friends told me I should open a restaurant. I said, ‘Oh sure, sure, right,’ ” Karel recalls, rolling his eyes. “I met Monika, my wife, and we bought this cart in 2002. It was just sitting in our driveway. We’d wake up and look at it every day, like, ‘Jesus, what do we do with this? What do we sell?’ ” He pauses, looks around, and lowers his voice. “I don’t look down upon taco stands, but I wanted to do something more spectacular.… I wanted to bring Grandma’s cooking to this little trailer. Nobody that knows this kind of food, it’s time-consuming cooking, could believe it. Czechs would walk by and just go, ‘This is impossible.’ ”

  A nose that knows could probably sniff out Tabor from a block away. But even for those unfamiliar with this food, the aroma of potent garlic and smoky-sweet paprika are tough to miss. Depending on the day of the week, you might also catch a whiff of onions caramelizing, lacy potato pancakes frying in olive oil, or orange-scented beets simmering their way into borscht. But none of these have been photographed and blown up into a poster, the size of which is usually reserved for babes on Corvettes, and attached to the side of the tiny wood-paneled cart.

  That honor is bestowed upon the “schnitzelwich,” the crispy pork loin sandwich that earned national attention a few years after Karel opened Tabor in 2005. Slices of pork loin as thick as your thumb are marinated overnight in salt and vinegar, which tenderizes the meat, and plenty of garlic, which is just plain tasty. Karel dredges each loin in a mix of panko and dried ciabatta crumbs before pan-frying it to order. Monika slathers a ciabatta roll with both ajvar, a condiment of red bell peppers, eggplant, garlic, and chiles, and her signature spread made from horseradish, sour cream, and olive oil. Onions caramelized to near extinction and a leaf of romaine complete the package, so beloved that bumper stickers reading “Schnitzelwich for President” almost outnumbered Obama swag around election time.

  As moving as the schnitzelwich is, it’s technically a specialty of the Germans. The cooking that’s truly aligned with Karel’s DNA produces beefy, garlicky goulash ladled over puffy white dumplings. Occasionally, usually on Thursdays, it manifests in halusky, herbed noodle-like dumplings a German might call spaetzle. And every now and then, Tabor’s shoebox-size kitchen turns out chicken paprikash, thighs simmered in a rusty-red paprika cream sauce until the meat falls apart with a gentle poke. As with many dishes handed down through generations, the recipe for Karel’s paprikash didn’t exist until I asked him to write it down. “If you are Czech, your grandma cooked different goulash, different paprikash, than other grandmas. Everything is custom-tailored to your street, your household,” Karel says. “I grew up with this particular taste. Yes, I have looked in famous Czech cookbooks, but I would close the book and find the taste. I had the target all along.”

  Karel’s Chicken Paprikash

  Serves 4

  Ajvar is a red pepper spread found in some European and Middle Eastern grocery stores.

  2 tablespoons vegetable oil

  1 small yellow onion, diced

  3 tablespoons unsalted butter

  1 tablespoon Hungarian paprika

  1½ cups plus 2 tablespoons water

  ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

  1 teaspoon salt

  1 pound boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 3-inch pieces

  2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

  ¼ cup heavy cream

  ¼ cup sour cream

  ¼ cup ajvar (optional)

  Karel’s Dumplings (see below), for serving

  Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil over medium heat in a large sauté pan. Add the onion and cook, stirring every few minutes, until the onions are nice and brown and the oil has been absorbed. Add the butter and paprika, followed immediately by the 1½ cups water (paprika turns bitter when burned, so be sure to add the water quickly). Add the pepper and salt and turn the heat down to a low simmer.

  Heat a large nonstick pan over high heat. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon oil and slowly place the chicken, one piece at a time, into the pan, being careful not to crowd (cook the chicken in batches if your pan isn’t large enough so that the pieces doesn’t overlap). Don’t touch the chicken for 4 to 5 minutes, then turn each piece to allow the other side to brown. Once the pieces are brown, transfer them to the sauté pan holding the sauce and simmer for 10 minutes.

  Meanwhile, in a small mixing bowl, combine the flour with the remaining 2 tablespoons water and whisk until smooth. Slowly add the flour mixture to the chicken mixture while gently stirring. Bring just to the boiling point, then turn off the heat. Gently stir in the cream, sour cream, and ajvar. Spoon over the dumplings and serve.

  Karel’s Dumplings

  Serves 4 to 6

  3½ cups all-purpose flour, plus more as needed

  1 teaspoon dry yeast

  1 cup whole milk, at room temperature, plus more as needed

  2 eggs, beaten

  1 teaspoon salt

  Mix 1 cup of the flour and the yeast together with a fork in a large mixing bowl, then whisk in the milk. Let the mixture rest for about 1 hour.

  Add the eggs, mixing with a fork as you add them, then slowly add the remaining 2½ cups flour. Knead the dough until it thickens, is somewhat springy, and no longer sticks to your hands (add more flour or milk if necessary to get the right consistency). Divide the dough into two equal pieces and roll each piece into a log about 2 inches in diameter. Allow the dough to rise until the logs have doubled in size, 1 to 2 hours.

  Fill a large stockpot about ¾ full with water, add the salt, and bring to a boil. Carefully place each roll of dough into the pot. Let the water return to a boil, lower the heat to medium, cover, and cook for 13 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove the dumpling rolls from the water, and quickly stab each side a few times with a sharp knife. Allow the dumplings to rest for at least 5 minutes. Slice the dumplings crosswise into rounds ½ inch thick just before serving.

  ( SIDE DISH )

  Waffles are nothing new in the world of food trucks, but when your waffle iron is powered
by the sun, people tend to take notice. A joint venture of Portland Public Schools and the nonprofit energy education group SolTrekker, Solar Waffle Works (NE 23rd Ave. and Alberta St.) pulls more than half of the energy it uses from gleaming solar panels attached to the roof of its sea-blue trailer. Recent high school grads in the Community Transition Program take turns working the register, prepping waffle batter, and filling piping-hot waffles with whipped cream and toasted nuts, all the while gaining on-the-job experience and people skills intended to give them a leg up in the real world. The teens seem to appreciate the responsibility, and what’s not to like when the perks include a free waffle each shift?

  ( SIDE DISH )

  Drunks crave grilled cheese sandwiches, but drunks have been known to burn things, namely themselves. To the rescue is The Grilled Cheese Grill (1027 NE Alberta St.; www.grilledcheesegrill.com), a vintage Airstream that turns out a dozen varieties of the kiddie classic and stays open until 2:30 a.m. on weekends to feed the need. And to hammer home the nostalgia, patrons take their meal onto a rainbow-colored school bus to eat from converted bus seats and tables plastered with school photos, characteristically taken at the height of dorkdom.

  Moxie Rx

  FIND IT: N Mississippi Ave. and N Shaver St., Portland Oregon

  KEEP UP WITH IT: http://moxierx.blogspot.com

  When something that’s seven years old qualifies as “old-school,” you might be dealing with a relatively new phenomenon. But ask Portland food cart vendors whom they consider a pillar in the local scene and most will point to a teal trailer that’s been parked in a grassy lot in the city’s Northeast Side since 2004. It hides behind an iron rooster perched above a weathered wooden sign reading “Moxie Rx.” Throw in the 1967 Kenskill camping trailer plastered with vintage bakeware, the attached eating area ensconced between a dirt floor and a rippling aluminum roof, the mason jars serving as flower vases, and the menu board advertising “elixirs” and “remedies” and you might feel as if you’ve stumbled into the lair of an Old West traveling medicine show. Only there’s no snake oil here—Moxie’s Nancye Benson rejuvenates hungover hipsters and half-dead hippies with potent cure-alls concocted from kale, mint, spirulina, ginger, echinacea, bee pollen, and just about any fruit or vegetable she can fit into a juicer. If it’s good enough to keep Britney Spears and her back-up dancers on their toes and soothe John Mellencamp’s trademark throaty voice, Benson figured it was good enough for Portland, too.

  “I’ve been in the food business for a long time, catering and doing the personal chef thing, and was based in the San Francisco Bay Area for a while,” Nancye says. “I worked for Britney Spears on tour, making drinks and food for her and the crew, and then I was John Mellencamp’s personal chef for two years when he was traveling. But I decided I didn’t want to tour anymore. It’s really grueling, really long hours, and it’s not very challenging as far as food is concerned.”

  So she returned to her home base of Portland and stumbled upon an opportunity when an Airstream creperie called Fold decided to move out of its lot (which Nancye’s friend owns) and park itself in another spot across town. At the time, she was slinging coffee at a little local shop, but with some encouragement from her husband and the right trailer popping up for a good price on Craigslist, Nancye was suddenly a business owner. “This was 2004, so food carts were out there, but it was Asian food, tacos, and burritos, and I didn’t want to do any of that stuff,” she says. “I always loved the mid-century era and the earlier apothecary stuff, prescriptions, tonics … that kind of thing. And so one thing led to another from the concept to the name to the look, and I loved that I could do whatever I wanted. It was like an art installation.”

  But the artist wasn’t content to simply doll the place up with vintage finds and sell juices. A convection oven in the tiny trailer—big enough to hold two half-sheet pans or about two dozen buttermilk biscuits—is in use long before sunrise and most of the day until closing time at 3 p.m. Those biscuits are so rich and buttery that when they’re part of a cheesy breakfast sandwich with fluffy egg and applewood bacon, it’s tough to tell where the Cheddar ends and the biscuit begins. That little oven is also responsible for perfectly sweet-and-sour date-and-goat-cheese scones, delicate raspberry crumble muffins, and ciabatta varieties like rosemary pecan and anise fig, small rounds that get split and filled with fruit and cheese before being pressed into panini. A tabletop waffle maker turns buckwheat batter into browned gold; yogurt, apple butter, and maple syrup seal the deal. Plenty of ingenious baking goes on in that thirteen-foot camper trailer, but there’s just not enough counter real estate for an espresso machine. And because it’s mobile, Moxie can’t get a liquor license (regardless of the fact that the thing hasn’t moved from its spot since day one). Coffee and booze are a restaurant’s big moneymakers, so although one of Portland’s most popular food carts seems constantly buzzing, business is far from booming.

  “People are like, ‘Oh man, I want to open a food cart, they’re everywhere, everyone’s making dough,’ but for a lot of people it’s barely a living,” Nancye says. “It definitely sustains itself, but not necessarily me, and that’s because of the way I did it. We have really high labor, we make everything fresh every day. A lot of the new trucks I’m reading about in other cities are fueled through restaurants. Border Grill, Spencer’s in San Francisco, the Maximus guy in Seattle—that truck cost him $100,000 to put together—they have restaurants to cook out of. Here, I just can’t store enough stuff.”

  And of course there’s Portland’s infamous weather to deal with: plenty of rain and drizzly, cold winters (well, cold by West Coast standards). In the past few years Nancye has done plenty to keep business coming through during the rougher months, from adding homemade eggnog and hot chocolate to the menu to turning part of Moxie’s green space into a Christmas tree lot. She conceded in the winter of 2009–10, throwing in the towel from November through February while supplementing some R&R with occasional appearances at holiday bazaars, signature baked goods in tow. Still, she remains committed to her “art installation” spring through fall, her marriage to the little teal trailer intact. “I’ve asked myself a lot, ‘Is this a business or is it my personal project?’ But then I’ll come in in the morning and I’m like, ‘Oh, I love you.’ I do. I love it, and it really gives me such joy. But yeah,” she laughs, “this is clearly more of a personal project.”

  Moxie’s Cold Cure-All

  Serves 1

  Juice from ½ lemon

  1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger

  2 teaspoons agave nectar or honey

  Pinch of cayenne pepper

  1 dropperful Super Echinacea

  Soda water, for serving (optional)

  To make a warm tonic, combine the lemon, ginger, agave, cayenne, and echinacea in a mug, stirring to dissolve the agave. Add piping-hot water to fill the mug and let steep for a moment before drinking.

  To make a cold fizz, combine the lemon, ginger, agave, cayenne, and echinacea in a tall glass, stirring to dissolve the agave. Add enough ice to fill half the glass and top with soda water.

  ( SIDE DISH )

  “I’ve never been concerned about being the best. What I am is solid.” That solid dude is Ian Drake, a former tow truck driver in his fifties who decided that what Portland didn’t need more of was fancy coffee. So he opened Dogfeather’s (N Mississippi Ave. and Skidmore St.), a “working-class coffee cart” that sells drip coffee for $1. Drake’s blue-collar pride led him to name his coffee machine Tinisima after the Italian revolutionary activist Tina Modotti, but he admits it’s his hippie side that christened his juicer Buddha. Coffee snobs may stick with their specialty roaster shops, but for a buck this average Joe is tough to beat.

  CARTOPIA (SE 12th St. and SE Hawthorne Blvd.)

  Unofficially known as the late-night pod, this cluster of carts on SE 12th St. and SE Hawthorne Blvd. draws a good mix early (most carts are open by sundown), but tends to turn into a hipster party once the night wears on. If yo
u’re a drunk twentysomething in Portland, chances are you’ll end up searching for sustenance here. Cart owners know it, so most stay open until at least 3 a.m. most nights.

  Perierra Creperie Creative Euro-style crêpes are made to order at this cute little trailer (which is owned by the guy who constructed Cartopia’s picnic tables and heated tent structures to get business booming year-round). There are more than a dozen mouthwatering options on the menu, and that’s just the crêpes; there are also shakes in flavors like lavender-basil-coconut milk. Branch out from classics like Nutella and bananas to the killer combo of figs, prosciutto, goat cheese, and honey.

  Whiffies Fried Pies If you’re asking, “What’s a fried pie?” you must be a Yankee. This Southern staple resembles an empanada, and the hand-held filled pastries are fried to order. Whiffies offers both savory and sweet, so go ahead and be a glutton and start with the barbecue brisket, then finish with a marionberry. Seasonal selections come and go; look for the delicious pumpkin pies in fall.

  El Brasero While they get props for being the oldest on the lot, nothing on this Anglo-Mex menu wins out over the other adjacent options. Still, vegetarians will tell you that the veggie burrito isn’t half bad, and, given that Brasero usually stays open 24/7, a standard taco will do in a pinch.

  Bubba Bernies Cajun/Creole is this truck’s focus, but it’s actually the consistency of the pastrami dogs and Philly cheesesteaks that have helped keep Bernie’s afloat. For a warm dose of Southern comfort on a cold night, the brisket-studded black bean chili does the trick, while Portland’s sizable vegan crowd benefits from specials like jambalaya with kale and veggie sausage.