Location: 42nd and Belmont
Number of carts: 15
Types of Food: Veggie, Seafood, Korean, Norwegian, Ice Cream, Coffee, American, Mac and Cheese, Fried Chicken, etc.
Covered: yes
http://www.goodfoodherebelmont.com/

Tucked just off of 39th Ave, I mean, Ceasar Chavez Ave, lies the Good Food Here pod. This aptly-named pod boasts a maze of carts, many of which do indeed serve good food. (Seeing as I’ve only been there once, I didn’t eat at all of them, but we can always assume there’s a dud in the mix when you have anywhere over 5 carts.) Anyway.

The pod is pretty jam packed with options and in the middle is a covered portico with picnic tables surrounded by foliage. There’s an ATM and the vegetarian cart redeems itself by serving booze. It’s also crowded. On a Wednesday there was a steady flow of traffic and as Stan pointed out “way more hotties” than the previous cart pods. Over all, it’s a little overwhelming, but definitely a decent place to eat a meal.

As for food, I had heard rumor of the Viking Soul Food cart (who knew Vikings had souls?) and it being really, really good, so I went for a Lefse. Lefse’s are Norwegian potato pancakes, super thin, and then filled with all sorts of stuff. I had a special wrap that included chicken, collard greens, tomatoes and garlic-something. There was lots of garlic. As with any food that gets hyped up before I try it I had overly high standards, I was by no means blown away by my meal. It tasted really good, but for $8.50 (including a water cup and the credit card fee) left me a little unsatisfied. Next time, I’d go with the meatball and add some chips or something.

Veggie Reuben from Divine Cafe

Jared went to Divine Cafe and got a veggie Reuben that looked damn good for being, ya know, vegetarian. He also came back with Tofu tots, which while they looked amazing, actually tasted much like cardboard. I’m not sure if they purveyors of this cart know that potatoes are actually vegetarian and they could make regular tots just as easily that would have been filled more with delicious potato instead of what was basically air.

Kafta from Aybla

Stan went to the Mediterranean cart, Aybla Grill, as did our friend Kelly and at $5 a pop, both seemed stoked on their purchases. The cart that I’m mostly likely to go back for though is Namu, a combo Korean/Hawaiian spot. Most of the menu is plate lunches and from the pictures they looked damn good. Then when our friend Laura Lynn showed up with the vegan combo and it actually looked good, well, I’m sold on at least trying it. So that said, I’ll certainly return to Good Food Here.

Vegan Combo from Nabu

4615 SE Hawthorne Blvd

Date of visit: October 21, 2009

Price for 2 (with tip): $18.90

Toji is one of those places I’ve always wanted to go, but trying to drag a vegetarian to a restaurant where one of the main options is roasting raw meat on a grill in the middle of your table has proven difficult. But since this week has been designated for the 4600 block, it had to happen and today we hit up the Grill.

I guess I expected it to be expensive (it is designated with two dollar signs on Urbanspoon) and was pretty sure Jared would be forced to eat salad, so when I saw the lunch menu I was pleasantly surprised. I’m not trying to be racist here (or whatever the positive version of racism is), but damn, Asians “get” lunch. Like most Chinese and Thai places I’ve been to, the lunch options were complete meals for a very reasonable price.

I couldn’t resist the bento box, which came with your choice of meat (I got Chicken Katsu), salad, rice, pot stickers and noodles for under $8! I feel like Jared may have just ordered the bimbimbop for the sake of the blog, and I almost feel bad. It was one of the two vegetarian options on the lunch menu, but getting it without the typical ground beef and fried egg on top basically turned it into rice with veggies and tofu. Even though he was the one who ordered it with no flavor, he proceeded to complain that it was “bland.” Next time I’ll try the real version and be the actual judge.

My meal on the other hand, was awesome. Every individual element of it was really good. The salad was fresh lettuce, carrots and other veggies with a sweet sesame dressing. The chicken katsu was crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside, and cut into manageable strips even for me with chop sticks. Two potstickers and some noodles made it better than I even expected.

Not to mention, and our meal was served with a table full on miniature dishes of fermented goodies, which even though she described as she was placing them on the table, I’m not even going to pretend to know what they are. I was particularly fond though, of the kim chee cucumbers, one of three kim chee style options. Basically it was more food than we could eat, and cost less than $20. Not bad, not bad at all.

Veggie options: Tofu items yes, but limited and most include egg

Speed: respectable, but we didn’t order anything we grilled ourselves, which seems like it might slow things down.

Vegge bimbimbop

Chicken katsu bento

fermented shmorgasboard