DINER: “Cartel Taco” Street Cart To Make Appearance At West End Farmer’s Market
July 22, 2011
Cartel Taco preparing to feed our taco-hungry citizens with its blessed street fare this May at Hamilton & Dunsmuir
The GOODS from Cartel Taco
Vancouver, BC | After an amorous courtship, Cartel and eatlocal.org have partnered up and TACOS WILL BE SERVED at the West End Farmers’ Market starting this Saturday through October. The sun will be shining and that’s when tacos taste best! Come visit us between 9am and 2pm at Thurlow & Comox, and check out the Food Network as they film us for the second season of Eat Street. Fawning is encouraged. See you Saturday! Read more
GOODS: “Cartel Taco” Cart To Make Special Appearance On Granville Over The Weekend
June 30, 2011
Cartel Taco preparing to feed our taco-hungry citizens with its blessed street fare this May at Hamilton & Dunsmuir
Job Posting from Cartel Taco
Vancouver, BC | Happy Canada Day! Cartel will be rolling down to Viva Vancouver this long weekend, setting up on the 800 block of Granville Street in the middle of the party along with some of our other street vendor friends. There’s Flashmob, tango dancing in the street, a breakdancing competition and crazy music, all outdoors in the sun! Mellow, sunny weekends are made all the better when you have delicious, sweet and spicy tacos in your mouth (our new tortillas alone will make you happy to be out). Come find us and we’ll feed you what you need… Read more
Awesome Thing We Ate #839: The Fish Taco From New Street Food Purveyor “Tacofino”
June 23, 2011
Once upon a summer there was a food truck in a gravel parking lot in Tofino called Tacofino. We frequented it plenty, because it was good, really good, as in awesome tacos and the best-tortilla-soup-we’d-ever-had good. Rejoice, Vancouver, for now that goodness is here among us, rocking lunches on the corner at Robson and Howe. Keep up with their movements here. Should you ever catch up to ‘em, pounce.
GOODS: Awesome Local Street Food Cart “Re-Up BBQ” Joins The Scout Community
June 9, 2011
We’ve invited The Re-Up BBQ street cart to join our GOODS section as a recommended local company. They’re now proud members of Scout, and as such we’ll be publishing their news front and center and hosting a page for them on our list of independent goodnesses. We’d thank them for their support of Scout, and hope you’ll take this chance to get to know them a little better…
If you think your business would be a good fit with us, we want to know.
ALL THE SCOUT GOODS
DINER: Harry Kambolis Launches Souvlaki Street Cart At Corner Of Georgia & Granville
June 7, 2011
Major congrats to Harry Kambolis – owner of Raincity Grill, “C” and Nu restaurants – on the opening of his Nu Souvlaki street food cart, which is enjoying its second full day of service today on the corner of Granville and West Georgia (moves to Dunsmuir and Howe next week). Here’s Harry yesterday on Urban Rush with Mike and Fi. Looking tasty!
GOODS: Local Street Foodists “Cartel Taco” Hiring For Their Second Summer Season
April 27, 2011
Cartel Taco preparing to feed our taco-hungry citizens with its blessed street fare this May at Hamilton & Dunsmuir
Job Posting from Cartel Taco
Vancouver, BC | Cartel Taco is back on the streets of Vancouver this May and needs great personalities to work our mobile kitchen. We operate weekday lunch service from a street cart stationed in a beautiful park at Hamilton & Dunsmuir in downtown Vancouver, serving Mexican fusion tacos. We also serve at the beach and cater private events on weekends. We’re hiring F/T & P/T cooks and servers for regular work until October, to start immediately. Get the deets after the leap… Read more
DINER: City Hall Reveals Names & Concepts Of Vancouver’s New Street Food Vendors…
April 4, 2011
City Hall has just released the names, concepts and addresses of this summer’s new street vendor licenses. Looks like local restaurateurs Harry Kambolis and James Iranzad have something to smile about, as do the boys behind Roaming Dragon. Expect LOTS of tacos, plenty of Levantine, banh mi, grilled cheese and even sweet and savoury parantha! Check ‘em all out after the jump… Read more
2011 Street Food Landscape To Be Injected With More Awesome
January 12, 2011
Tonight we can bring you some very promising “almost” news on the Vancouver street food front. I say “almost” because none of it is official, but rather pooled together from reliable sources. I ask those journalists who are reading this to confirm what I am about to write, because I am now going to go out and celebrate for the next 72 hours…
Word is City Hall is going to vote next Thursday on increasing the number of street vendors from 80 to 140 by this summer. If all goes according to plan, applications for these new slots will be made available to the public next month. So hoorah for that, and the 15 new vendors that will then be allowed every year thereafter, until a presumably arbitrary ceiling is reached (or we all explode from over-consumption in the year 2213).
But that isn’t the especially awesome part. Are you ready for this? Read more
New “Cartel” Invades Georgia & Burrard With Korean Tacos…
October 1, 2010
by Andrew Morrison | Several months ago, Abigail’s Party owner James Iranzad (interview) teamed up with Jesse Grasso and Joel Watanabe (the two kitchen rulers at Chinatown’s Bao Bei) to create “Cartel”, a street cart serving Korean-style tacos.
They’d hoped to win one of the coveted 17 mobile food vendor slots given out in City Hall’s famously messed up pilot project lottery, but no such luck. With concept, brand and menu ready to go, they were forced to wait patiently until granted a location and an operational green light. That assent from on high came late yesterday, and today – their first day of trade – went down swimmingly on the southwest corner of Georgia and Burrard.
The first thing I noticed when I arrived during noon’s final prep was the smell. It was intoxicating. It caused hundreds of hungry passersby on their lunch break to slow down long enough to catch the quick zephyr wiffs. “What are you guys cooking?” was asked just about every ten seconds. You’d think “Korean tacos” would be the least expected answer imaginable, but no one was overheard replying “that’s crazy” or worse, “ew, gross“. The expressions on all the passing faces seemed to say “whatever it is, it smells freakin’ good”. It’s rare that a deadly fine aroma is also unfamiliar. Our brains trick us into thinking we know all smells, but when a new one comes along and it’s so rad that it makes your olfactory toot, it also quickens the pulse.
The tacos come in three guises: pork, beef and vegetarian. Both the beef and the pork are done in the Bulgogi style (a wet Korean marinade, literally “fire meat”). As mentioned, it’s very aromatic stuff. Both meats are local and organic, with the pork from Fraser Valley Farms and the beef from Two Rivers. Thinly shaven, they’re sizzled on a square flat-top before landing on corn tortillas (also local, from Burnaby’s El Comal). Once plated, they’re topped with cilantro, onion and a mild kimchi. The vegetarian version is with mushroom and tofu from Sunrise Organics, but I could give a damn about that (sorry guys).
The prices are reasonable. One double tortilla taco is $3. For two, it’s $5.75; three, $8; and four, $10. I had a pair, and I’m still thinking about them 10 hours later. I’ll talk about the taste in my column on five new and upcoming eateries in the next issue of the Westender. Some food porn above (video) and below (big photos) to tide you over until you bumrush the joint at lunch tomorrow… Read more
Seen In Vancouver #253: Food Network Descends On Japadog
September 22, 2010
A short video from yesterday’s Japadog shoot with the Food Network. It’s for a new show on street food called “Eat Street”. My segment discussed the “unique nature” of Vancouver’s street food scene (ie. City Hall is a devil guilty of serious crimes against our culinary culture), the history of Japadog, the obligatory food porn close-ups (insert hotdog into face) and not a few “Mmm…this is so good” sound bites coupled with facial expressions of orgasmic delirium. It was a fun day. For today’s shoot, we move to Roaming Dragon.
