Mike McKinnon has mastered the basics of premium french-fry cookery for his Potato Champion food cart, so he is embracing ever more unusual sauce offerings. How does peanut butter and jelly - a.k.a. satay peanut sauce and chipotle raspberry sauce - sound?
"I think it will be really big," Mr. McKinnon, 30, said this week, sitting at a table before his modest cart.
Mr. McKinnon, who juggles drum duties in a Portland-area band with his cart entrepreneurship, is part of the gung-ho cart tradition that has become a notable feature of this foodie city.
Brett Burmeister, managing editor of the definitive Food Carts Portland website, has seen it all. "While the first food carts may have been taquerias or Thai noodles, you now have chefs opening carts and serving porchetta sandwiches or duck confit with cabbage on a mini baguette," he wrote in an e-mail. "Portland loves their food and seeks out the best in everything."
Mr. McKinnon, inspired by an absence of premium fries in Portland, gathered $20,000 (U.S.) in loans two years ago, "started messing around" with a fryer at home and developed his basic recipe. Now he pays $650 in rent for his space in a lot among other carts.
Unlike other such entrepreneurs in Portland, Mr. McKinnon does not talk of opening his own restaurant. But 32-year-old Kir Jensen says "the idea of brick and mortar" is a possible step, eventually.
Ms. Jensen's Sugar Cube cart is in the city's North Mississippi area in a tidy space beside an appealing brewpub. Available "dessert awesomeness" includes the $3 Amy Winehouse cupcake - "boozy yellow cake infused with copious amounts of brandy" - vanilla bean lemonade and tropic thunder smoothies.
"I was tired of working for other people, but didn't have the funds to start a full-scale bakery," she said. So she raised $40,000 in loans to get things going.
Ms. Jensen takes pride in running a clean operation. "We have to go through inspection like everyone else. It's not a roach coach." Some carts, she says, are cleaner than restaurants - there's no choice. "Everyone is looking right into your cart so they can see what your cart looks like."