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Behind Each Dish

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Behind Each Dish

"Behind Each Dish" is a photography project, featuring food carts in the Portland area. Have you ever wonder about the people behind your favorite food carts?

Who they are? Why and how they created the dishes we love? We have. For each feature, we interview and photograph some of our favorite food carts in Portland, and distill them into three quotes and photo pairing for you to enjoy. Through this project, we hope to have given you a chance to look behind the dishes of amazing food in front of you, and into the lives of the people that created them and cooked them for you.

09/21/2018

Thank you so much for Mama Chow's Kitchen for being amazing and working with us to produce this story!

09/19/2018

(2/3)

Portland is a very seasonal city. Winter is typically hard for food carts. I needed to figure out how I was going to survive in the winter. When I looked at different Asian carts, I realized that no one did wonton soup.

Back home [in San Francisco], my mom, who retired years ago, lived by herself. Then she had open heart surgery and she started living with me. She started wrapping and freezing wontons at home. When it was Monday night football, my friends would come over and see me cooking wontons for dinner. “Make me a bowl!” That was how it got started.

At some point, I thought to myself, “Wait, something is not exactly right here. They are coming over just for the wontons.” My mom is retired and spending a lot of her own money making this for us. It is a bit not fair to my mom. So I was like, “Mom, we are going to start selling these wontons”.

“Mom. You are going to wrap these and my friends are going to eat these, and we are going to charge them for it.” It is money coming out of her pocket. It also keep her busy. This is great because people say that if you are retired and you don’t stay busy, you slow down… this will give her something to do, something fun to stay somewhat busy.

So now mom has a little hustle at home wrapping wontons. She puts them in the freezer and sells them. At first, it was just my friends, then it was their friends. She couldn’t really keep up. Even today, she is still doing it. She is almost 80.

So when I was thinking about special things for the food cart, I thought about her and her wontons. I asked for her recipe, and now we serve wontons.
Photo taken by Studio Define - Photography and Katharine Chen

09/17/2018

(1/3)

I took a trip in May to explore Portland. I’d just finished the outline of my tattoo. I knew that the guy that does coloring at Optic Nerve Arts is great at shading so I scheduled a two hour appointment the day before I flew back to the Bay Area. An hour into the session, he had to go pick up his kid. He only did half of my tattoo so I rebooked for the end of July. For July, I scheduled my vacation for two weeks. This time, I really explored Portland and tried to explore every single food cart pod.

After my initial trip in May, things at work got worse. I didn’t like how I was being treated. I started taking leaves of absence just to collect myself. It got to the point that I was so stressed at work that I couldn’t find the strength to lift up a tray of food. I couldn’t even carry a glass or a tray. I honestly didn’t realize how much a job can impact you physically. So when I came back to Portland in July and visited the food carts, I thought to myself, “This is something that I can do. Let’s see what opportunities can happen from starting a food cart.”

To figure out how much it took to start, I sat in front of some of the busiest food carts in town. I would have lunch every single day at a different food cart. I would take 15 minute time intervals and count how many people were in line. If you are serving 10 customers every 15 minutes... that is 40 customers per hour. If I can serve at that rate for $8 per customer, I can make it happen. I can do this.

I had a trip planned for October to go to Brazil for my birthday. I had money saved up. I had saved up for a year. I didn’t board that flight. I took a flight to Portland instead.
Photo taken by Studio Define - Photography and Katharine Chen

09/16/2018

Haha! We are still alive! Hot off the press, 1 year in the making (because who doesn't love to procrastinate)... our newest series will start Monday at noon! :)

Hope you guys will enjoy!

07/24/2017

(3/3)

I hope that [our customers] can understand the love and the passion. Even though it takes 15 minutes to get your food, [I hope that the customer thought] …it was cooked perfectly, the flavor was spot on, and that it was worth the wait.

There's one thing that is a little unique to a cart than a restaurant. When you go to a restaurant, you expect it to be at least 15 minutes. That would not be an issue. People tend to think that cart food is fast food. It can be, but there are a lot of really good carts in the city with really good chef behind them, and it some might take a little bit of extra time.

You are really getting a restaurant quality food just out of a window.

Thank you Straits Kitchen for your awesomeness, and for allowing us a glimpse into your lives.

Photo taken by Katharine Chen and Victoria Chen Photography

07/19/2017

(2/3)

Right now we have a soup. It is a broth soup. It sounds like it is something that is really simple. It is [just] a soup right? But honestly when she is serving the soup, it is in no means the fastest thing we do. Part of it is because you are still building flavors at that point.

So she has the garlic ginger shallot mixture that gets fried because you are adding flavors. Then she add something else, and it gives it more flavor. Then you put in the already prepared stock, and then you have to taste it so that you can get the flavor the way you want. So even for something that sounds as simple as soup that you would just ladle is not actually simple.

It is [also] because [ingredients] can vary. You can buy a shallot or an orange. One day, the orange might taste sweet, another day the orange might be more tart. Even if an orange is "an orange", it is really not [just] an orange. Even though we have recipes that we follow to a T, each batch is slightly different and you have to make adjustments as you go.

I am trying to give you what I remember as a child and as an adult eating [Malaysian food]. I am trying to pass that flavor profile and experience to you when I give you the bowl of laksa or samba. I was very lucky to grow up with my grandmother living with us. We had home cooked meals everyday. That’s what I missed and want to bring to others.

You always have to make minor adjustments here and there, and to try to give you the bowl that I am proud of giving to you. There is nothing more frustrating or disappointing to give you something that we are not proud of. If I am proud of giving you something and you don't like it, I am sorry. But if I gave you something that I am not proud of and you don’t like it, then I feel bad. You paid me to do something; I have to give you my hundred percent.

So sometimes it can be 17 minutes [before it is ready] because I am trying to get it right. Sometimes when I am cooking the 17th bowl, my palette is numb. I have to ask her, "hey taste this" because I can't taste anything anymore.

We are trying to give you something we are proud of. As long as we have that, I think we are okay.

Like, comment with your guess for a chance to win a $20 gift card to the feature cart. Last chance to guess! Final photo and quote pairing for this food cart will be released Monday at 11:00 a.m.

Photo taken by Katharine and Victoria Chen Photography

07/17/2017

(1/3)

[Is it worth it?]

That is really great question… some days it’s rough and you wonder why you are doing it? Somedays you are excited because people love your food. You know? It gives you great joy to give joy to people.

Another thing that makes it easier for us, sometimes, is that we are doing this together. In the past, we might have been working fewer hours (or not), but we never really saw each other. There are definitely some challenges that come with being with your spouse 24/7 in a tiny little box, but on the flip side, [in the past] a big part of our life was to find time to say hi or have a meal together. It is nice to not have to worry about it anymore. Doing it together, for a large part, makes it worth it.

Like, comment with your guess, and tag your friend for a chance to win a $20 gift card to the feature cart. Next photo and quote pairing will be released Wednesday, 9:00 a.m.

Photo taken by Katharine Chen and Victoria Chen Photography

07/16/2017

Have you ever wonder about the people behind your favorite food carts? Who they are? Why and how they created the dishes we love? We have.

“Behind A Dish” is a photography project, featuring food carts in the Portland area. For this project, we interview and photograph some of our favorite food carts, and distill them into three quote and photo pairing for you to enjoy.

To make it even more entertaining, we invite you to guess! Guess which Portland food cart we are featuring before we tell you in the third pairing, and you will get a chance to win a $20 gift card to the feature food cart!

To enter the game:
- Like/Heart our post on our official site (either on Facebook or Instagram)
- In a comment, write in your guess and tag a friend.

Drawing completed by our magical elves, and the winner will be announced after the third photo pairing.

Are you in? Do you know your food carts will enough? Wait and see! First post will be tomorrow at 9:00 a.m.

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2415 SE 35th Place
Portland, OR
97204

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