Food Carts of Portland Bike Tour local flavors and stories

Food Carts of Portland Bike Tour local flavors and stories

Portland’s famous food carts are scattered all over the city's five (now six) quadrants, over 600 in total, in over 60 pods — collections of food carts! Let us put you on one of our lightweight, beautiful bicycles and guide you on a 8-12 mile (11-17 km) culinary experience through some of our best-loved chefs and makers, sampling everything from Oregon farm-to-table delights to snacks appropriate to late-night cravings.

Our focus is on locally-owned businesses with a great story; we’ll take you to our favorites, many of which were important in creating the food cart scene as it exists today. Without these unique and passionate people, we may not have even half of what Portland offers to residents and guests alike. Expect flavors and fusions that tell not only a culinary, but also a cultural, tale. Bikes, helmets and plentiful food samples provided.

We keep groups very small, so you'll have an intimate experience with your passionate guides!

Itinerary
This is a typical itinerary for this product

Stop At: Cartopia, 1207 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR 97214, USA

Cartopia was the first-ever permanent food cart pod in the city! This one is the epicenter of the food cart craze. We'll talk about how the food cart explosion began (a story told uniquely by us) before getting on our bikes again and working up an appetite with a pretty neighborhood ride.

Duration: 10 minutes

Stop At: 3345 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR 97214-5046

Hawthorne Boulevard is part of our hometown story: the heart of all that's delicious, funky, and hippie, a thoroughfare with a street food soul! We'll ride into our personal and the city's foodie history (this goes back over a century!) and stop at a special coffee food cart made in a unique vehicle. Here we'll get some caffeinated beverage (if that's what you like) to begin our day!

Duration: 30 minutes

Stop At: The Lot @ Scout Beer, 5029 SE Division St, Portland, OR 97206, USA

We'll ride up in the direction of Mt. Tabor (one of four extinct volcanoes within the city's core!) toward another food cart pod, this one the descendant of our dearest departed collections of food cart -- RIP Tidbit. Luckily the carts themselves live on, especially some fun and beautifully executed versions of favorite snacks from our childhood. These are made with sustainable ingredients, interesting and delicious flavor combinations, so we'll sample these and maybe we'll teach you a few new words, too!

Duration: 30 minutes

Stop At: The Bite on Belmont, 4255 SE Belmont St, Portland, OR 97215, USA

After snacks, we'll head north, toward the location of another of the earliest food cart pods. This one launched a number of great businesses that now have multiple brick & mortar locations, like Fifty Licks ice cream shops. While the pod had to move across the street a few years ago, we're lucky it still hosts a bunch of the pods we can't properly do a food cart tour without, like the Korean/Hawaiian fusion cart Namu, and another cart with a Viking past. This pod has an option for beer and dessert, too, if you can't fit much more savory food in (though we'll beg you to try, as no tour is complete without Namu!). These business owners are some of our most beloved, as they've been with the food cart trend in Portland since almost day one! After a little more sampling we'll head (downhill!) back to the shop.

Duration: 30 minutes