This post from Herbivoraceous, praising the food cart scene in Portland and Seattle, makes me incredibly jealous. We here in DC have nothing like what he describes: where Portland’s food carts are apparently ubiquitous, creative, delicious, and vegetarian-friendly, DC’s are mostly… just not there.
I know that the District used to have incredibly tight regulations about food carts, which they’ve recently started to relax, but even downtown there are few food carts, and most of them are dominated by tourist-friendly hot dogs and ice cream – nothing a hungry office worker would ever grab for lunch. In the neighborhood of my office, outside DC proper, there’s almost nothing.
DC has plenty of good, local restaurants. Why this lack of food carts? I have to believe it’s because of regulations and obstacles, not the lack of inspired entrepreneurs. If so, that’s a sad thing.