The food carts are coming.

Foodies rejoice. Tickets are now on sale for Willamette Week’s 2011 Eat Mobile Food Cart Festival to be held on April 23rd. A mere $15 gives you access to 40 food carts featuring diverse cuisines and styles. Now in it’s fourth year, Eat Mobile promises to be bigger and better than ever, and will showcase Portland’s enormous and diverse community of gourmands operating out of mobile carts.

Proceeds from the event will support Mercy Corps Northwest and our business development programs. Your admission will be an investment in what we do best: supporting local entrepreneurs. Just like the ones that will be serving up delicious treats for you at the festival. So mark your calendars and get ready for a righteous feast.

What Willamette Week has to say about Eat Mobile:

“With more than 400 food carts selling their tasty goods within our city limits, Portland has become a destination for mobile eats. In July, Portland was named the No. 1 street food city in the world by CNN Travel, and according to Gourmet.com, the Pacific Northwest is “doing for street food today what it did for coffee in the 1990s.”

With an annual attendance of over 2,000, Eat Mobile showcases the food, music and people that make Portland’s food scene so special. Part food festival, part cart competition, Eat Mobile allows attendees to sample from 40 of Willamette Week’s favorite food carts as vendors compete for the coveted Carty Award.”

Get your tickets here.

The Lineup

• 808 Grinds
• Artigiano
• Aybla Grill
• Brown Chicken Brown Cow
• The Baowry
• Bora Bora
• Crème de la Crème
• The Dump Truck
• Eat This!
• El Gallo Taqueria
• Emame’s Ethiopian Cuisine
• Eurodish
• EuroTrash Food Cart
• Fifty Licks Ice Cream
• FlavourSpot
• Fon-due-it
• Garden State
• Happy Grillmore
• The Kettle Kitchen
• Kim Jong Grillin’
• KOi Fusion
• Leroy’s Familiar Vittles
• Nuevo Mexico
• Oregon Ice Works
• Over the Top Wild Game Burgers
• PDX 671
• Philippine Cuisine Food Cart
• Pizza Contadino
• Pyro Pizza
• Robb’s Really Good Food
• The Rolling Stoves Gimme Sandwich
• Sawasdee Thai
• Shut Up and Eat
• Slice Brick Oven Pizza
• SomTum Gai Yang
• Tábor
• Wet Hot Beef
• Whiffies
• Yogio
• Vietnamese Banh Mi Sandwiches Food Cart

Save the Date: Book Release Party!

We are very excited to announce that we will be hosting a book release party for “The Portland Bottom Line” on Wednesday, November 10th from 5-8pm at the Mercy Corps Northwest Gallery (45 SW Ankeny St.) The book release will feature the book’s editors and contributors as well as members from the Mercy Corps Northwest Team.

The event will also serve as a fundraiser for Mercy Corps Northwest! The contributors of this book are generously going to donate the profits to us.

So mark your calendars, get excited, and we’ll see you at the event. Here is a teaser from the book…

SAMPLE CHAPTER Think Small, by Kat Schon

My partner and I started our business selling used store fixtures in a much smaller space with a much smaller budget and we were the staff. In the beginning, every decision, no matter how small, was important and we were green because it made the best budgetary sense. We reused packing materials, bags, boxes, hardware, and whatever else we could because it meant not having to buy those things new. What we didn’t reuse, we recycled, even if that meant breaking a giant showcase down into its smallest parts. It was simple math: The less we put into our dumpster, the less it cost to have it emptied. 

Continue reading >

(We do need your help. Please email Loren if you know anyone who’d be interested in donating beverages or food (hors d’ouvres) to the event in exchange for a promotion plug.)