A colorful mural behind Matt's BBQ Tacos on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard (Mark Graves/staff)

Any conversation about street food in Portland right now starts and ends with the 40-odd food carts at Southwest 10th Avenue and Alder Street that were

last month, given 30 days to make way for an incoming hotel and condo project.

Those carts,

, made up one of Portland’s biggest and certainly its best-known food cart pod, a legitimate tourist draw and a dining model first improved upon in Portland’s East Side then copied by cities across America.

For the ninth straight year, we scoured the metro area in search of great new food carts, places with intriguing, impressive menus or dishes we’d never seen before. Conveniently, we found nine. We also found a heightened anxiety around these smallest of small businesses. What value do food carts hold for the city? Are they merely placeholders for future boutique hotels? Could a pod ever be considered permanent?

Oddly enough, several of the most exciting carts to open in the past year were lone wolves, podless wonders such as Jojo or Botto’s. Others were parked in packs of twos or threes, including Hit The Spot. Perhaps Portland’s food cart future looks like The Whale pod, a small Northeast Alberta Street lot with a good beer tent and three exemplary food carts: the pasta-making wizards at Gumba, the French-focused Fine Goose and Vietnamese soul food spot Matta, each a current or former member of The Oregonian/OregonLive’s best new food carts club.

Or it could look like Southeast Portland’s Hawthorne Asylum, a new pod with some serious built-in infrastructure, including fire pits at night, shaded tables during the day and a maze of carts both new and old (including at least one 10th and Alder refugee). If you’re there, drop by Peri Koshari, which specializes in the signature street food dish of Egypt. Find it, and eight others, below.



9. PoBoyz

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Former Oregon Ducks running back Randall Willhite owns PoBoyz. (Michael Russell/staff)

Before opening his new po' boy cart downtown, Sacramento-raised Randall Willhite sought advice from one of New Orleans' leading lights, Leah Chase, the beloved chef and owner of fried chicken destination Dooky Chase. Whatever lessons he learned at the feet of the Queen of Creole Cuisine, who died last month at 96, the visit seems to have paid off. Willhite, who followed brother Kevin to Oregon in the 1980s to play football for the Ducks, might not have been born in New Orleans, but cajun/creole cooking is in his blood. On good days, the simple fried oyster and gulf shrimp po' boys at PoBoyz are as good as any in town, maybe better, with juicy, pristine, fried seafood sharing space with tomato, lettuce and remoulade on fluffy rolls. PoBoyz flies the flag for Leidenheimer, the classic fluffy po' boy roll of New Orleans, though the cart was out both times I went by; on the second visit, the replacement bun was a too-soft bummer. It seems that Willhite could use a little help keeping orders on track -- I've seen customers complaining about missing sandwiches -- as disorganization seems to be the most common kiss of death for food carts. Here's hoping PoBoyz' po' boys are around for a long time.





PoBoyz: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 438 S.W. Third Ave., 503-610-0804, poboyz.com

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A fried oyster po' boy from PoBoyz. (Michael Russell/staff)

8. Peri Koshari

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Peri Koshari at Hawthorne Asylum Food Carts. (Mark Graves/staff)

Given koshari’s growing popularity, it’s a bit surprising it took this long for Egypt’s favorite street food to get a cart of its own. Enter Peri Koshari, a tiny cart almost entirely devoted to this sort-of Middle Eastern Whole Bowl. (With its lentils, rice, macaroni and fried onions, think of koshari like an Italian-influenced version of Lebanese mujadra, or as a good lunchtime alternative to Cafe Yumm.) Faisal Faisal -- yup, he has the same first and last name -- loved going out for koshari as a boy growing up in Cairo, where the dish is as common as hot dogs or halal carts in New York. Born of those memories, Faisal’s koshari at the Hawthorne Asylum pod is naturally vegan and carefully considered, top to bottom. That’s especially true when it comes to the key ingredients: onions (dry, yellow, preferably from Oregon) fried to a gorgeous golden brown; and two sauces, koshari, a spiced tomato sauce, and dakka, a garlic-vinegar with cumin and aqua faba. The condiments counter might also hold a hot sauce made from doctored Tapatio, a close facsimile of Egyptian shatta. According to Faisal, koshari has begun popping up on the East Coast, and chains such as Abou Tarek have recently expanded beyond Egypt’s borders. And now, thanks to Peri Koshari, it’s making inroads in Oregon.



Peri Koshari: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, 1080 S.E. Madison St., 971-570-2012

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Faisal’s koshari at the Hawthorne Asylum pod is naturally vegan. (Mark Graves/staff)

7. Botto’s BBQ

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Smoked pork ribs, belly and sausage at Botto's BBQ. (Michael Russell/staff)

I first learned that Botto Barbecue had reopened -- and that owner Darren Bottinelli had been released from prison early -- when the cart’s Instagram suddenly came back to life in April. The barbecue truck, now stylized as Botto’s BBQ, technically opened in 2016 (typically, we only include carts that opened in the previous year on these annual lists), but it closed soon after when Bottinelli was sentenced to nearly four years in the minimum security prison in Sheridan. Bottinelli was put behind bars for stealing $3 million from clients of his health care funds management company, including some who were elderly and disabled, to pay for a lavish lifestyle of hotels, golf and fine restaurants. But Bottinelli did his time, and nearly as soon as he got out, he was back at the skinny industrial Northwest Portland lot sandwiched between a commercial paint store and a crossfit gym, stoking the burning wood that smokes the dry-rubbed, Texas-style brisket and ribs he first fell in love with while in college in Austin, Texas. Depending on your thoughts on the redemptive power of doing time, you might decide to skip Botto’s altogether (Holy Trinity, also on this list, is worth your time). Just know that Bottinelli’s pork ribs, wrapped in craggy bark, smoky and a little sweet, are as good today as they were two years ago.

Botto's: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 2204 N.W. Roosevelt St., 971-334-5397

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Botto's BBQ smokes dry-rubbed, Texas-style brisket and ribs. (Mark Graves/staff)

6. Hit The Spot

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Jeremy Sivers runs Hit the Spot food truck with his son Elijah. (Mark Graves/staff)

Is opening a burger cart directly across from Killer Burger foolish, or brave? Ask Jeremy Sivers, who did just that last September, when the 35-year-old moved his Montavilla farmer’s market stand into this blue and orange truck parked directly across the street from Portland’s most popular burger chain. Then again, Sivers, who runs the stand with son Elijah, has good reason to be sure of his product. Hit The Spot’s classic smash burger gets just about everything right, with a simple chuck blend seared to a gorgeous crust on the flat top grill, a nicely griddled Franz’ bun, dill pickles, sweet onion, shredded iceberg, sliced tomato and a barely-there tingle from some smoky chipotle aioli. A single burger costs $4.95. A double is $6.90. Crispy little shoestring fries are an extra $2.45 (or free on Fridays), and the cart offers a further 10 percent discount for teachers on Mondays, first responders on Tuesdays, single parents on Wednesdays, children and students on Thursdays and veterans daily. A plan to donate a portion of the carts profits to struggling families has yet to bear fruit; Sivers says those funds are being held in a separate account. He now hopes to use it to help install metal detectors in schools. We’ll keep an eye on that. For now, Hit The Spot is a worthy addition to Portland’s ongoing classic burger revival, and Sivers hopes to keep it going -- he’s already on the lookout for a brick-and-mortar location, preferably one with a drive-through.

Hit the Spot: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 4615 N.E. Sandy Blvd., hitthespot.net

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Hit the Spot's smash burgers are an instant classic. (Mark Graves/staff)

5. Holy Trinity Barbecue

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Menu add-ons at Holy Trinity. (Michael Russell/staff)

How does a home cook get the nerve to launch a proper food business? For Kyle Rensmeyer, the moment came around 2015, when the Dallas native tried a barbecue stand at a Portland street fair. “It was boiled ribs and crockpot pulled pork,” Rensmeyer recalls. “I was just like, ‘God, I could do better than this.’ ” Soon, Rensmeyer was popping up at breweries on weekends and selling smoked meats on Instagram under his old Q PDX handle. Rensmeyer made the jump to a food cart in May, setting up his intensely blue cart and 500-gallon smoker next to stacks of Oregon oak in the old Original Taco House parking lot on Southeast Powell Boulevard. On Saturday and Sunday, Rensmeyer serves some of the best brisket, pork ribs and beef sausage in town (the “Texas trinity” referenced in the cart’s name), forming a new cart quartet of great barbecue with Matt’s, Bark City and Botto’s. Down the line, Holy Trinity could be the main draw in a new cart pod planned -- along with a second location of beer shop John’s Marketplace -- for the lot. On our visit, the bottled cola was cold, the line was long and the brisket had been slow-smoked for 14 hours. Rensmeyer and his small crew slice that brisket neatly and serve it alongside gently glazed pork ribs, a snappy Czech-style brisket-and-mustard-seed sausage and some better-than-average sides, including cheesy grits and a sweet banana pudding. Amen.

Holy Trinity:

11 a.m. until sold out Saturday and Sunday, 3582 S.E. Powell Blvd.,

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The Holy Trinity (brisket, pork ribs and sausage) from Holy Trinity. (Michael Russell/staff)

4. Yoshi’s Sushi

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Yoshi's Sushi in Multnomah Village. (Michael Russell/staff)

Yoshi’s isn’t Portland’s first sushi cart (before opening its brick-and-mortar lounge, Sellwood’s Zenbu had a nearly decade-long run as a cart). It’s not even the first sushi cart from a former chef at sustainable seafood joint Bamboo Sushi (that would be St. John’s Kazumi). But at a time when utilitarian sushi burrito trucks seem to pop up wherever carts are found, Yoshi Ikeda’s bright green Yoshi’s Sushi in Multnomah Village stands out. That’s in large part because Ikeda, a second-generation sushi chef whose father’s restaurant just celebrated its 50th year in Tokyo, goes the extra mile to ensure freshness, driving from his Beaverton home to Vancouver each morning to pick up just the right amount of fish for the cart that day and making relatively small eight-cup batches of rice every hour. No, Yoshi’s sushi isn’t on the level of elite Portland sushi restaurants Nodoguro, Nimblefish and Zilla. But Ikeda, who ended his four-year run at Bamboo Sushi overseeing sushi operations for the chain’s Northwest restaurants, brings serious finesse to the cramped quarters he shares with right-hand-man Nino Ortiz. Seared sea scallop nigiri is dabbed with a fragrant yuzu marmalade. The vegan, gluten-free-friendly Lime Green roll comes with micro greens Ikeda picks up in Tigard. Sweet tamago is branded with the cart’s name. And every once in a while, Ikeda and Ortiz take over the French Quarter pod’s empty bar for an all-out omakase sushi pop-up.

Yoshi's Sushi: Noon to 7 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, 3530 S.W. Multnomah Blvd., 503-833-2940, yoshispdx.com

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Yoshi's Sushi is at 3530 S.W. Multnomah Blvd. (Mark Graves/staff)

3. Matta

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Richard and Sophia Le, owners of Matta food cart. (Mark Graves/staff)

It took a honeymoon trip to Vietnam -- and some fish-sauce-marinated steak frites -- for Richard Le to rediscover the food of his youth.



Le was already dreaming of opening a Portland food cart, but Matta wasn't really born until he and wife, Sophia, visited his uncle's house in Saigon, where a bite of deeply flavorful steak and fried potatoes brought memories of the version his grandmother cooked for him growing up in San Jose, California.



Before that trip, going out for Vietnamese food had meant the same thing for Le as it does for many Portlanders: banh mi sandwiches or pho, the ubiquitous beef noodle soup. The kind of homestyle food made by his family, who fled Vietnam after the war, was just a fact of life, not necessarily something worth celebrating.



"It was just this surge of memories that I had forgotten about, because I guess I had domesticated myself," Le says. "So I started to really figure out my family's recipes, what I enjoyed as a kid."



Last fall, Matta took over the former Filipino cart Bibingka, setting up shop next to Gumba and Fine Goose at The Whale pod (named for the mural that graces the eastern wall), one of the city's best pound-for-pound collections of carts. Specials change day-to-day, from caramel-scented braised pork belly to head-on shrimp (Le will encourage you to eat them whole). Most days, you'll find Sophia Le frying fluffy green pandan doughnuts glazed with coconut, iced coffee kissed with condensed milk and goi ga, a chicken salad with fried shallots and chicken skins, cabbage and a bouquet's worth of parilla, mint, basil and other herbs.



"As a kid, I was not about it, because I just wanted to eat cheeseburgers and fries," Le says of goi ga. "But now, yo, the level of flavor you get from all those herbs? It's incredible."



There's still room to dial in some of these recipes. A little extra treble -- in the form of lime or other acid -- might help brighten up the good caramel and fish sauce bass notes. But Le's second-generation rediscovery of his family's food already seems to point a way forward for Portland's Vietnamese restaurant scene. Instead of a hundred restaurants serving the same frozen-in-time menu of sandwiches, rice dishes and beef noodle soup, a new crop of indie carts and pop-ups -- and, eventually, restaurants -- could highlight the less heralded corners of the cuisine.



"There are thousands of Vietnamese dishes that are unknown to the public eye," Le says. "I wanted to showcase the food that doesn't get the spotlight."

Matta: 5 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, noon to 8 p.m. Thursday-Friday; 12 to 3 p.m., 6 to 8 p.m. and 9 to midnight Saturday; noon to 8 p.m. Sunday; 2314 N.E. Alberta St.; 971-258-2849; mattapdx.c

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Matta took over the former Filipino cart Bibingka, setting up shop next to Gumba and Fine Goose at The Whale pod. (Mark Graves/staff)

2. Jojo

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Loaded jojos and fried-chicken sandwiches inside the Jojo cart (Mark Graves/staff)

Justin Hintze estimates he tinkered with 30 or 40 versions of his cart's namesake fried potato wedges before settling on a winner.



"My roommate hated my guts," Hintze says "The house always smelled like fried food."



The research paid off. On a recent visit, after sneaking a few super-crunchy jojos out from under their blanket of American cheese, a stranger sitting next to me at the cart's lone picnic table turned around and expressed the same sentiment I had been feeling: These were the best damn jojos we'd ever had.



Some carts come from professional chefs sick of working for someone else. Jojo owner Justin Hintze is the other sort, a hobbyist cook who found himself counting down the hours at his real estate gig until he could head home and nerd out over the latest J. Kenji Lopez Alt recipe on the Serious Eats blog. Working his way up from dishwasher at a restaurant wasn't in the cards. "I had student loans to pay," he says. Instead, Hintze reached out to Ryan Rollins, whose PDX Sliders chain started life as a cart at the same Sellwood-Moreland car wash where Jojo now resides. Rollins agreed to consult on the project, and helped Hintze land the spot.



Despite the cart's name, Hintze thinks of his converted Frito Lay truck as a sandwich cart first, with a menu of fried-chicken sandwiches and burgers with mix-and-match toppings. Jojo's smoked and fried chicken sandwich, with its boneless, skin-on chicken thigh swaddled in acres of crunch, plus coleslaw, house pickles and fry sauce spilling out of a buttery An Xuyen bakery bun, can already go toe-to-toe with the best in town (that would be the one at Basilisk in Northeast Portland). The classic smash burger comes on that same brioche roll with melted American cheese, caramelized onions, shredded iceberg and pickles. Perhaps it was the fried chicken talking, but I found the burger overwhelmingly rich. Both sandwiches can be customized with bacon and ranch, while the chicken can come doused in Crystal hot sauce.



But the jojos are the best thing at Jojo. Served either unadorned or loaded, they're the Cadillac version of some thick and flabby potato wedges bought with a side of regret from under a gas station heat lamp. The key to the next-level crunch on Jojo's double-fried jojos is increasing the surface area of the potato, a trick accomplished through some dark arts I'm not at liberty to divulge, though longtime Serious Eats readers might be able to guess.



Jojo: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday; 8064 S.E. 17th Ave., 503-309-4768, jojopdx.com

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The Jojo food truck at 8064 S.E. 17th Ave. (Mark Graves/staff)

1. Matt’s BBQ Tacos

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A selection of breakfast tacos from Matt's BBQ Tacos. (Michael Russell/staff)

If you find yourself thinking about Taco Bell while wolfing down a G.O.A.T. taco at Matt's BBQ Tacos, The Oregonian's 2019 Cart of the Year, don't worry, owner Matt Vicedomini won't be offended. In fact, the unholy union of smoked brisket and pulled pork wrapped in mismatched cheese-stuffed tortillas, one flour, one corn, is something of an homage.



"I was thinking about Taco Bell's Cheesy Gordita Crunch, the hard shell with cheese in the middle, the crunchy gordita outside. " Vicedomini confirms. "I've been eating Cheesy Gordita Crunches since I was 15. I've probably eaten more of those than all the fancy food in Portland."



It's true. Talking with Vicedomini about food means frequent digressions into his favorite fast food chains (Taco Bell, obviously) or vegan tacos (Mis Tacones, a weekend-only cart found at the Food Fight! vegan grocery store, 11155 N.E. Halsey St.). But the G.O.A.T. (in the Michael Jordan, "Greatest Of All Time" sense) actually owes a debt to Guy Fieri, the "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" host who left his Flavor Town man cave in 2017 to try a similarly over-the-top dish at Vicedomini's other cart, Matt's BBQ in North Portland.



"It's the Whole Shebamwich in taco form," Vicedomini says, referencing the towering, multi-meat sandwich spiked with a bone-in pork rib that Fieri braved on Triple D. But the sandwich is a stunt, an Instagram-baiting monstrosity that "you can't even really eat," admits Vicedomini, a Long Island native who first learned the smoked meat trade in Australia. The taco is a masterpiece. And it might not even be the main draw at Matt's BBQ Tacos.



That would be the breakfast tacos, a slam dunk combination of Texas-style smoked brisket or sweet glazed pork belly sharing space in greasy-good flour tortillas with eggs scrambled to order, roast potatoes and finely grated Tillamook cheddar. At their best, the tacos combine some of the city's best barbecue, smoked behind the cart in the original Matt's BBQ smoker, with a subtle crunch from the crispy home-fried potatoes (when those potatoes are soft, as they were on our most recent visit, the tacos are still very good; Vicedomini says he might be switching to fried potatoes soon to keep that consistent crunchy texture).



Nodding to the cart's Austin inspiration, Matt's cart-made flour tortillas are made with lard, which gluten-free corn tortillas come from Matt's BBQ's neighbor at the Prost Marketplace pod, Little Conejo. There's always a vegetarian option, typically smoked portobello mushrooms, while the post-11 a.m. lunch menu is mostly egg-free, save for a migas taco mined with crunchy little tortilla chips. Sauces are made at a commissary kitchen behind Eem, Vicedomini, Eric Nelson and Earl Ninsom's Thai-food-meets-Texas-barbecue restaurant.



If you want to try Matt's BBQ Tacos in its current cart form (and, at least so far, without significant lines), you might want to act fast. Vicedomini is already scouting out a brick-and-mortar, a place where he can serve those breakfast tacos all day alongside a lineup of fresh juices like the ones at Veracruz All Natural in Austin.



Between Matt's BBQ Tacos, La Osita (one of The Oregonian's best new carts of 2018), Bullard (Doug Adams' ode to Texas) and standbys such as Pepper Box Cafe, Podnah's brunch and Stella Taco, Portland suddenly has a respectable breakfast taco lineup. Add another great taco or two and we might soon take Austin's breakfast taco crown the way we took their slogan. Keep Portland Taco'd.

Matt's BBQ Tacos: 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday, 3207 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd., 503-956-7455

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The low-fi menu at Matt's BBQ Tacos (Mark Graves/staff)