Portland Food Carts @ Mississippi Marketplace
Various stands
Skidmore Street & Mississippi Ave
Portland, OR
Garden State 
The Big Egg 
Continuing with my trip around Portland, specifically that of food carts, one noon, I decided to go around yet another parts of town for that again, street food. At this point, I was wondering if street food was a bit of a misnomer. I mean, they aren’t necessarily sold at the curb but it has been organized to the point some of them are settled on the lots rather than sidewalks, not to mention communal areas/tables for patrons to consume their goods. So, just for sake of consistency, I will assume food carts == street food, despite they aren’t necessarily the same.
For today’s post, I went to a place called Mississippi Marketplace, I assume it name as such because it is located in Mississippi Avenue (interesting enough, there is a Vancouver Avenue; however, I doubt it is named after Vancouver, BC. Most likely Vancouver, WA?). Getting there was a bit confusing for me, as you go through residential sections and suddenly you are in a corner with several restaurants and other services. I have the odd feeling I am getting a bit too used to our city’s layout (or lack of planning)! But, I didn’t care, I was there and ready to eat….
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Tagged as:
Portland,
Sandwich,
Street Food
MSM Deli
2220 6th Ave
Tacoma, WA
There are a lot of guide on-lines now a days to where to eat. From a global perspective, there is Urbanspoon and Yelp (the later, plagued with some issues). From a local Vancouver perspective, there is Dinehere.ca. And, of course, in almost every city, there is your local food blog, which I am proud to belong; though, my usual caveat is that, despite a lot of emails of people coming with pitchforks demanding my head, I do NOT do reviews. Rather, what I do describe my visit to restaurants and the meal I had. Then, based on that visit, whether if it is a place I would consider coming back in the future. The funny thing is that, given the frequency I blog, there has been few times I have revisited a restaurant! But I am digressing here… The real reason I bring out on-line sites is because there are at times some really wacky trends, specifically, which restaurants are the highest ranked. Now, forget for a moment places like Zagat or Michelin. I am not talking about places for a dining experience written by professionals; rather, I am talking about average people “voting” for the spots they have visited, which brings back to Urbanspoon and Yelp. In the particular case of Urbanspoon, I used it quite frequently as a guide and, while in Tacoma, checked which one was the highest ranked one and that ended up being MSM Deli. A deli as highest ranked? “There ought to be something wrong with that!” Well, in Vancouver we have as the highest ranked a hot dog cart so you draw some wacky comparisons…
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Tagged as:
Sandwich,
Tacoma
Crème de la Crumb
466 Granville Street
Vancouver, BC
Whenever there are high notes and/or excitement when a new place opens, I approach it with certain skepticism. More often than not, it is hype; others, the “free” food factor. However, as I mentioned in my Bella Gelateria post, there are people I trust, like Mijune and Sherman. When Mijune wrote about Crème de la Crumb in her Granville Foodie Tour post, I knew I had to visit it, despite sweets are not my first option and a lot of what is sold here are pastries…
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Tagged as:
Downtown,
Pastry,
Sandwich,
Vancouver
A couple of weeks ago, I had a really great week because… Well, a lot of things happened, all of them in a good way. Needless to say, me and my camera = some pictures!
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Tagged as:
Sandwich,
Vancouver
Euro Deli & Market
3665 Kingsway
Vancouver, BC
I apologize if I offend anybody for using this word: Nazi. Unfortunately, that term has taking its own twist and turns, specially with a certain episode of Seinfeld which immortalized the phrase “Soup Nazi”, in reference to . (The funny thing is that, while I have watch snipplets of it, I haven’t watched the full episode! Yeah, shame on me…). So what does “Soup Nazi” has to do with Vancouver? Well, let me remind everybody of Salam of Le Charcuterie, the self proclaimed “Sandwich Nazi”. Jokes aside, when I went there last summer (wow, it sounds like it was a LONG time ago!), he mentioned he used to own a second location that he eventually sold. That location became Euro Deli & Market.
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Tagged as:
Sandwich,
Vancouver
Giovane
1038 Canada Place
Vancouver, BC
For some reason, embedded in my head is that concept that most hotel restaurants are… Well, disappointed. Of course, given that I travel on a budget, the hotels I end up staying aren’t necessarily a five star hotel; instead, they are usually your regular hotel chains, i.e., Hilton, Marriott, Sheraton, et al. And, then again, even if they have fancy locations, I seldom end up staying in those. After all, why should I? If travelling on business, it is my customer’s money, not to mention I spend the whole day at the customer’s site; if it is leisure, chances are I am only there to sleep and some basic necessities.
But, even when I stay in the “fancier” locations of those hotel chains, more often than not, the food has been average at best. But, then again, Fairmont is a luxury hotel chain so comparing them to the other chains might be akin to comparing apples to oranges. With that in mind, I went to Giovane, the “cafeteria” located in the recently opened Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel and little sibling to Oru, the main restaurant in the hotel. Hey, I wasn’t in mood to fork big bucks to Oru, given the mixed feedback!
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Tagged as:
Eggs,
Hotel,
Italian,
Sandwich,
Soup,
Vancouver
Checkers Bar & Grill
1755 Davie Street
Vancouver, BC
OK, OK, the World Cup is over but I still have posts in the queue from those days… Sorry? ^_^;;; So, similar to my posts to Fogg N’ Suds and Dover Arms Pub, PO and I chose to go to pubs to watch the games – except that day there was no game. Despite that, PO was fine to visit a pub just for kicks (or drinks). At first, we were planning to go to some pubs in English Bay but, guess what? When we arrived, despite it had a sandwich board outside and the doors weren’t locked, there was absolutely nobody there! We took a peek around and there was absolutely nobody. So, without further hesitation, we just turned around and look for the closest pub and, among the several ones, we ended up going to Checkers Bar & Grill.
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Tagged as:
pub,
Sandwich,
West End
