They beckon first to our noses: the deep smell of hot oil emanating from falafel carts, the rich aroma of grilled meat filling the air around kabob and wiener stands, the tangy scent of salsa drifting from burrito trucks. They appeal second to our wallets: lunch menus in the $5-to-$10 range have a thrifty thrill. Even during fall’s gray days, outdoor chow vendors – some even offer covered seating – provide the pure pleasure of eating in the fresh air, ketchup splotches and all.

The Portland area is cluttered with food carts: Multnomah County has been home to an average of 356 mobile vendors each year since 2001. Many of these, to be sure, are the ubiquitous espresso carts and taco trucks, parked higgledy-piggledy next to gas stations and shopping malls. Some disappear at night, rolling off to safe storage. Others, such as the carts scattered throughout the city’s downtown parking lots, are literal fixtures, shuttering their windows at night and reopening the next day. Few keep typical restaurant hours. But figuring out their schedules is well worth the effort, for Portland’s food carts offer a globe-spanning array of grub.

By 10 a.m. on a summer Saturday, for example, the food carts at the Hollywood Farmers Market have been flipping crepes and pulling espressos for two hours. Moms juggle lattes, toddlers and boxes of fresh strawberries. A young man stands in front of hot-dog stand Buns on the Run, tilting his head sideways to chomp down on a wiener, while his black Labrador sits patiently at his feet, waiting for stray onions and sauerkraut. Down at the Saturday Market in Old Town, tattooed teens stretch their mouths around slices of pizza and wings of fried dough, chewing away while browsing the craft stalls or lounging around Ankeny Fountain. Later that night, tired club-hoppers in search of a sugar fix crowd the hole-in-the-wall just south of Burnside known as Voodoo Doughnut, licking fingers sticky with chocolate glaze and cream filling. And by noon on the following Monday, the carts dotting the downtown business district come to life, the most popular ones obvious from the women in heels and men in ties trying politely to not crowd the sidewalk. On Southwest Alder Street, a bike messenger inverts his bike so it won’t roll away while he slurps noodles at Sawasdee Thai Food. And two students from the Western Culinary Institute, still clad in their white chef’s jackets, smoke cigarettes while waiting for the line to dwindle at Aybla Mediterranean Grill.

Aybla’s chef and owner, Saied Samaiel, says he’s never had to do any marketing for his cart. “It’s all word of mouth,” he says. “I regularly have 20, 25 people waiting in line.” A young man dressed like an aspiring banker orders one of Samaiel’s enormous kabob sandwiches, hands over cash in exchange for a foil-wrapped pita, and takes a big bite as he walks away. His arms carefully hold the sandwich away from his flopping tie, but his eyes are closed in bliss.

“I was patient, patient, patient just to get where I am now,” Samaiel says. Originally from Syria, Samaiel worked as a chef on Crete before moving to Portland six years ago. He opened Aybla just over two years ago. “I’m very limited in my trailer,” he says. “One percent of what I know about food is what I am doing in my trailer right now.” But he is practically evangelical about that one percent. “I cut my own chicken, do my own dolmades, my own kofta. I do a lot of homemade dressing and buy a lot of herbs from the farmers market. Pita – I grill it fresh, right when you order it. Falafel – I fry it right then. I don’t care how many people are waiting; it has to be fresh,” he says. “Everybody sees my hands when I chop, make the food, my white chef clothes. Everything is clean and white and shining, everything. Cold for cold food, hot for hot food. All those things bring people back.”

Samaiel says he would like to open a real restaurant someday, perhaps downtown, but hasn’t found the right space yet. He also wishes he wasn’t going it alone; if he had just his family working for him, he says, he wouldn’t have to worry so much about employee turnover. “It’s not about location,” he says. “Since I’ve opened, seven to nine trailers have opened near me and left.” Rich Eisenhauer, a program manager with the city of Portland, agrees that running a food cart can be more daunting than it looks. “I think a lot of people think it’s an easy way to make money, but it’s not as easy as they think,” he says. “Besides, it’s rainy here.”

Given the rain factor – Portland averages 155 wet days annually, or 42 percent of the year – it’s rather surprising that carts are so popular here. In October of last year, the New York City parks department launched a plan to increase food diversity among the 400 food carts operating in city parks, most of which serve hot dogs. New York City – already crammed with restaurants and more than 8 million people – sports several thousand licensed food carts. But it’s also huge and, apparently, blighted with hot dogs. Portland’s 350-odd carts serve only half a million people, and yet we get to choose between sandwiches and crepes, soups and noodles, sushi and burritos, all within a radius of a few miles. A surfeit of options, certainly. And, yeah, bratwurst if we feel like it.

Of course, as Samaiel points out, food carts often struggle to make it. But many stick it out. “Most of our licensed carts have been around for years,” says Eisenhauer. Others morph into bricks-and-mortar operations, such as Veganopolis (which began as a cart called Chef to Go), or function as mobile outposts of regular restaurants, such as the downtown cart run by No Fish! Go Fish!. Longtime downtown cart Snow White House Crêpes closed in mid-June so its owners could devote more time to their restaurant in southeast Portland, the curiously named Husky or Maltese Whatever. And newer vendor Pok Pok, on Southeast Division Street, plans to open an adjacent restaurant sometime this fall.

Andy Ricker, who owns and operates Pok Pok, says his little food hut will stay open when the house next door becomes a full-fledged restaurant. Ricker, who used to cook at the now-defunct Zefiro’s, fell in love with the foods of southeast Asia as a traveler there in the late 1980s. Right now, Pok Pok offers only dishes from northern and northeastern Thailand, but when the restaurant opens, the menu will expand. “At the moment, everything on the menu is from Thailand, but that’s not the extent of what’s going to be done here,” Ricker says. “It has to do with a particular class of food in southeast Asia called kap kraem, which means ‘with whiskey.’ It’s food that you would eat while you’re drinking – things that tend to be salty and hot and not giant platters, more small plates.”

For now, Ricker says, he’s focusing on foods he discovered while traveling and cooking in Thailand, favorites such as green papaya salad and roasted game hen. “I’m doing very specific versions, and trying to make them as close to the originals as I possibly can,” he says. “I tried to figure out a) what would go well together and b) what would people here most enjoy eating. And then what would be, not the easiest, but that would work in the space that I had. And also I had to think about what ingredients were available on a year-round basis. A lot of things you get in Thailand you simply can’t get here all year round.”

The name Pok Pok, Ricker explains, is an onomatopoeia that describes the sound of the mortar and pestle used to make green papaya salad. (Pok Pok’s version is a wickedly spicy dish featuring shredded green papaya, tomatoes, long beans, dried shrimp and peanuts.) “You can’t really make green papaya salad without it,” he says. “The mortar and pestle are quite large. The mortar is made out of clay or wood, and the pestle is always made out of wood. It’s used to crush chiles and garlic and to macerate the vegetables a little bit; it kind of acts as a way to mix the dressing with the rest of everything, to break down the beans and smash the tomatoes a bit. If you were to take the same ingredients and just put them in a bowl, it would be different. I’m not sure what it would be – a tossed salad, I guess.”

This past summer, Ricker says, a local farmer grew him some of the specialized ingredients he craves, including chiles, greens and eggplant. He brings back spices himself from Thailand, and relies on local suppliers for the rest. “It’s definitely a challenge doing this kind of food,” he says. “Even for this really tiny six-item menu.”

Samaiel would agree. “It’s hard,” he says. “I wasn’t happy with the ground lamb I was getting, so I bought my own meat grinder. Cost me six hundred bucks, but it was worth it. I’m working my butt off here, and I’m still trying to make it better every day.”

Downtown Portland Food Carts

The two major banks of food carts in downtown Portland line the parking lots at Southwest Fifth Avenue between Oak and Stark streets and Southwest Alder Street between Ninth and 10th avenues. There are also several carts clustered around Pioneer Courthouse Square, Portland State University and the riverfront. Most are open weekdays from late morning till early evening.

Eastern European: You can’t beat the offbeat offerings at Tábor Authentic Czech Eatery (Fifth Avenue; 503-997-5467); try the Schnitzelwich.

Thai: Sawasdee Thai Food (Ninth Avenue; 503-330-2037) makes a mean dish of pad see ew noodles, among other exotic treats (pumpkin curry, anyone?).

Indian: Real Taste of India (Fifth Avenue; 503-295-5564) has a bogglingly diverse menu, while the all-vegetarian India Chaat House (Southwest 12th Avenue and Yamhill Street; 503-241-7944) offers mouth-searing spiciness and a “Big Big Big 5 course lunch special $5.00” featuring naan, rice and multiple masalas.

Eclectic: No Fish! Go Fish! (Pioneer Courthouse Square; 503-235-5378) specializes in funky little fish-shaped dumplings.

Middle Eastern: Aybla Mediterranean Grill (Ninth Avenue; 503-490-3387) makes succulent lamb kabobs, delicate falafel rounds and parsley-laden tabbouleh.

Dessert: Voodoo Doughnut (Southwest Third Avenue and Burnside Street; 503-241-4704) isn’t a cart, but it’s got the next-best thing: an actual hole in the wall of its bakery kitchen. Eighty-five cents gets you a basic chocolate-glazed piece of puffery.

East Side Food Carts

Southeast Division Street is the east side of the river’s answer to the downtown cart scene, with several carts along its length. Southeast Hawthorne Street isn’t too far behind, while Killingsworth Street brings carts to north and northeast Portland.

Thai: Pok Pok (3226 SE Division; 503-232-1387) specializes in the spicy food of northern Thailand, emphasizing meats and vegetables over noodles.

Mexican: Taqueria Lindo Michoacán (SE Division at SE 33rd Street; no phone) offers equal diversity in its wrappings (sopes and tortas) and its fillings (goat and tongue).

Hot dogs: Zach’s Shack (4611 SE Hawthorne Blvd; 971-235-9888) is definitely a shack, not a cart, but you can still order up a condiment-slathered wiener without stepping inside.

Dessert: Fold Crêperie (503-750-1415) used to sling organic French pancakes from a stand on Northeast Alberta Street, but is on hiatus pending a move to Killingsworth Street.

Farmers Market Food Carts

Some carts have brief but regular existences, including the vendors that pop up at local farmers markets (mostly May through October) and the Saturday Market (March through December, open Sundays as well). Food choices follow context: the farmers markets specialize in healthy local and organic fare, while the Saturday Market does grease with aplomb.

Mexican: Nourishment (Hollywood Farmers Market; 503-255-3295) wraps up enormous breakfast burritos, complete with black beans, scrambled eggs and salsa.

Dessert: The Original Elephant Ear Cart (Saturday Market; no phone) proffers those classic chewy pillows of deep-fried dough dipped in cinnamon and sugar.