Who would have believed that one day the abandoned filling station at 72nd & Prescott would host a real food cart pod? Certainly not me. And yet, today, it definitely does, with a taproom, coffee, five carts and a restaurant across the street.

This page is the best guide you'll find to all these food carts. Bookmark it; I'll update it periodically with the changes in the pod.

They are carts, though, so opening hours and menus can vary. Particularly, most of the carts cut back on hours during the rainy season, and expand them during the summer. But sometimes, carts are just closed.

The Pod consists of the old filling station and its grounds, and neighboring properties. Inside the filling station is Junior's Coffee in the mornings and early afternoon, and Upright Brewing in the late afternoon/evening. Three carts sit on the Upright/Juniors property. Next door, in front of a disused HVAC shop, are two additional carts. Finally, there is a middle eastern deli (Samo's) across 72nd from the whole complex.

The food cart pod has ample outdoor seating, about 1/3 of which is covered from rain. Because of the angle of the sun, during sunny days you'll want to move around the outdoor seating; only about 1/3 is actually shaded in the aftenoon. Upright/Juniors has a small amount of indoor seating, including three small tables, and around 12 bar seats. If you're eating inside, you should really order a drink from whichever business is open (Juniors or Upright).

Information last updated November 9, 2024

Junior's Coffee

Serves: Coffee, espresso, and tea

Location: Inside the main building

Hours: 7am to 3pm, 7 days a week

Junior's coffee is the 2nd coffee outlet by the folks who also own Guilder (the Princess-Bride themed cafe). They offer espresso drinks, coffee and tea 7 days a week, and a very small selection of pastries. They roast their own fair trade, organic, family-farm coffee, which is also available by the bag.

Juniors/Guilder is the only coffeehouse I know of in Portland that offers shakeratos in the summer.

Upright Brewing

Serves: 10-12 beers on tap, plus assorted things in bottles and cans.

Location: Inside the main building, behind the bar

Hours: 3pm-ish to 10pm, weekdays, noon-10pm Sat & Sun

This is the 2nd taproom for Portland-based Upright Brewing. Their beers skew towards real ale, side-taps, and other artisan service, including sours, a British-style bitter, lager, pilsner, and saison, as well as the mandatory IPAs. Particularly, if you appreciate a lower-alcohol beer (4.5-5.5%) so that you can have multiple pints without falling off your stool, this is your place.

DesiPDX

Sadly Closed

Maybe they'll come back someday. Their original location, in the Prost! foodcart pod, is still open.

Schmunchburger

Serves: Burgers, fries, and the Schnitzelwich

Location: Cart along 72nd ave

Hours: 1pm to 8pm Tues-Sat (usually)

Schmunch adds a burger-and-fries option to the food cart pod, although their burgers are a little special.

Yes, they do have a veggie burger option. They also theoretically have schnizel sandwiches, although those seem to run out a lot.

Niños Birrieria

Serves: Tacos, quesadillas, birria, quesabirria, chips, etc.

Location: truck in front of 7131 Prescott Street

Hours: 10am to 9pm 7 days a week

Niños is the always-open standby for this pod, rarely closed during dining hours. Birria lovers will find lots to eat here, but others have options as well, including fish tacos and taquitos; they have quite the menu for a food cart.

Note that when they say "hot", they mean it. Do not take the "bomb shell challenge" unless you regularly participate in hot pepper eating contests.

They have a breakfast menu too.

They're also a good option for non-beer-drinkers since they regularly have aquas frescas.

R-Haan Thai Kitchen

Serves: Thai standards, including noodles, stir-fries and rice dishes

Location: cart in front of 7131 Presscot Street

Hours: 11am to 8pm Thursday-Monday

R-Haan is the newest cart, and I've eaten there only once so far. The cart offers everything a typical American Thai restaurant would offer, including Pad Thai, Tom Yum and Panang Curry.

Pine State Biscuits

Serves: Biscuits and Gravy

Location: Airstream on the left side of Upright building

Hours: Friday 4pm-9pm, Sat/Sun 8am-2pm

This is yet another outlet of the Portland-leading biscuit franchise. They offer biscuits, biscuit sandwiches, and biscuits with both meat and vegetarian gravy, plus assorted seasonal specials. They're pretty much just open for brunch on weekends.

Samo's

Serves: Middle eastern street food, plus diner griddle standards

Location: Across 72nd ave. from the food cart pod, in the Samo's building

Hours: 9am to 10pm 7 days a week

You may have noticed the lack of a felafel/schwarma cart. Well, that's because Samo's is just across the street. If that's what you have a yen for, hop across the street, get your schwarma wrap, and come back for an Upgright beer.

The decline of the Food Network into "reality" programming doesn't mean you have to stop watching good cooking video. It just means you need to go elsewhere to get it, particularly YouTube! There's a bunch of really good, regular cooking shows these days on YouTube covering all kinds of aspects of cooking. Here's our favorites:

Hot Thai Kitchen is the video series that got us started on watching YouTube cooking videos. It stars Pailin Chongchitnant, a super-charming Thai chef from Vancouver. She demystifies a lot of Thai recipes without dumbing them down, and a few of her recipes, such as Pad Macaroni, have become household favorites. She also has a cookbook.

Joshua John Russell of Man About Cake creates crazy, fanciful layer cakes on screen. While you're unlikely to ever make anything like them yourself (unless you're a professional baker), they're way fun to watch, especially the choctopus cake. The best part of his show is the banter between him and the camera crew, so turn the sound up.

If you fondly remember the Frugal Gourmet before the scandals, Food Wishes will appeal to you. Chef John has videos for almost every dish you can think of, with a strong emphasis on making recipes easier to follow and easier to make. We just used his super-simple recipe for Persian rice at Christmas.

Historical food buffs will enjoy Townsend's, a vendor of historical recreation equipment who have some five or six years of cooking videos. His focus is on the 18th and early 19th century, and he interprets recipes from multiple historical sources and then demonstrates making them in a historical open-hearth kitchen. Some of the recipes are actually useful, too; we made the 18th Century Milk Pancakes for one breakfast. Plus you can get into the debate about the portable soup!

For more historically accurate cooking, the English Heritage channel has quite a few cooking videos. The best are the ones staring a woman playing Mrs. Crocombe, the head cook on an English country estate, and making recipes from her diary. Maybe you could make a gin punch for your next party.

Alex French Guy's main appeal lies in his frantic, relentless energy. Whether he's making his own wine, chopping onions, or just cooking, he's fun just to watch. Plus, French food!

PBS's The Art Assignment is mostly about art, but they have five episodes about food. These cover some historically interesting recipes, combined with fascinating stories about the artists they came from (such as Georgia O'Keefe). Even if you don't watch any of the others, you need to see the Modernist Tower Of Meat.

Gavin Webber, Australian home cheesemaker, pretty much makes every kind of cheese there is. You need to be really into cheesemaking, though, because many of his videos are twenty minutes to an hour long. Try some of his shorter videos like Paneer or Mysost to see how much you like him.

"Cowboy" Kent Rollins, who's had a little Food Channel fame, has a YouTube channel and a cookbook. Aside from the highly amusing poor cowboy act (Kent is also an award-winning storyteller), this is a good channel for rustic American basics and learning how to take care of your cast iron.

America's Test Kitchen has put their cooking equipment reviews online, and they're quite watchable and interesting even if you've read the articles.

Sadly, Bon Appetit's YouTube videos aren't so good. They could stand to spend a bit more on production; what might otherwise be useful videos are obscured by poor lighting and camera angles, and weak sound.