In today’s post on Portland, Oregon from a Fort Worth-based urbanism perspective, we’re taking a look at one of the smaller pieces of Portland urbanism, but one which we thought was pretty cool indeed:

Food carts.

Yes, the humble food cart. We’re sure some of you are questioning our sanity at this point – what’s so great about food carts, after all? Well, plenty is great about them.

Food carts appear all around Portland – in Downtown as well as the surrounding neighborhoods and districts. What’s so great about them is the way they’re used. Often, the food carts are clustered along the edges of parking lots and other under-used plots of land. What would normally be a deadening influence on street activity is transformed by these little carts into a perfectly urban and vibrant place.

The food carts are, essentially, “instant urbanism,” helping to enliven the area around what would otherwise be blight, like parking lots. They serve inexpensive, tasty food from all manner of genres.

There’s even a blog, Food Carts Portland, which serves as a guide and review center. Just reading down the list of genres on Food Carts Portland, one can see the sheer variety in the city’s food cart universe: everything from BBQ to Bosnian, Cheese Steaks to Czech, Pizza to Polish, Venezuelan to Vegan, and everything in between. (One we regret not being able to try was Potato Champion, which is – seriously – a late-night French fry cart in SE Portland serving vegan poutine. How could you not love that?)

We tried various options while in Portland. Here, we’re looking at Shelly’s Honkin’ Huge Burritos, a Portland landmark in Pioneer Courthouse Square. She has been serving up fresh-made, ridiculously tasty burritos to lines of devoted patrons in the square since the early ’90s.

Shelly’s burritos do, indeed, deserve the moniker “Honkin’ Huge.” Look at that above – then realize that Shelly offers three sizes of burritos, and those are the small ones. There’s still Medium and Honkin’ Huge above that.

Best of all, Shelly’s burritos are vegetarian, and can be made vegan (which are cheaper still). What’s in a Honkin’ Huge Burrito? Food Carts Portland has the rundown:

A Honkin’ Huge Burrito features a grilled flour tortilla with refried pinto beans, fresh Spanish rice, cheddar cheese, guacamole, romaine lettuce, tomato salsa, and sour cream/or yogurt. There is usually an additional fresh salsa you can add if you choose. Do you see how simple that is? At first glance, many wonder – where’s the meat? Honestly, you don’t need it. An HH burrito will fill you and your small family up with leftovers. Seriously, I ordered a large once and had it for 3 days. I always order a small and still it is too much and I like to eat!

Should you ever find yourself in Portland, Shelly’s is a destination you must try.

“Ample portions” is something you often see at Portland’s food carts. For example, the Pad Thai from this little Thai cart:

These food carts are a simple, but wonderful, piece of real urbanism. They give people options for food and help add liveliness to the street, helping to negate the effects of things like parking lots and the like. We’re a bit curious as to why these sort of things have never sprung up in urban Fort Worth – is there some city regulation that discourages them? Why there aren’t a dozen food carts around the various parking lots in Downtown or the vacant lots on Magnolia (for just a couple of examples), we’re not sure, but they’d be a great addition to our own urban environment. Simple, inexpensive ways to add urbanism until large development does so. They also add life to parks and plazas, as Shelly’s at Pioneer Courthouse Square so perfectly illustrates – it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have a food cart or three in the long-planned Sundance Square plaza, for example.