Let me make this short and sweet. I’m not an expert on the street food regulations in Seattle. They may be on the verge of changing. They may not. But here’s where things are at this very moment.

Portland, Oregon is filled with multiple clusters of street food vendors organized in little parks of vans, trucks, trailers, and shacks. Some of the street food is ok, but a non-trivial percentage of it is fantastic. It’s simple, it’s often cheap, it’s focused, and it adds a dimension of choice in eating across Portland that makes it somewhere you want to be. The best trucks are positively magnificent. And from what I’ve read (feel free to disagree in the comments if you’ve got data) the good restaurants in Portland are not going out of business.

On the other hand… Seattle has essentially none of this.

Seattle… you should be ashamed. Vancouver has incredible Asian food. Portland has food carts. And Seattle… has… well… Ivar’s. (Not that there’s anything wrong with Ivar’s.)

I would have hoped Seattle could do better. I still hope it can.