A la Cart: Power to the Pig!

From Bunk to Laurelhurst Market to Tails & Trotters to the brand new Olympic Provisions, Portland is head-over-heels over the pig. Back in the day, Fred Carlo spent months learning how to make traditional Italian porchetta from practitioners of the art in Italy (still not a bad way to go, if you ask me).

Cliff Allen carving him some pig. (If you look closely you can see the juices it's spitting out!)

But these days young chefs can get a taste of that tradition by working with many of this city's meat mavens, like Cathy Whims at Nostrana and Mark Doxtader at Tastebud. Which is precisely what young Cliff Allen did before he bought an old bread truck, painted it bright yellow, added some snappy custom wood paneling and opened The People's Pig.

He's been serving smashingly good porchetta and sopressata sandwiches from his location at the food-cart pod on SW 2nd and Stark downtown for a couple of weeks now, and he's attracting crowds clamoring for the luscious, pork-and-pickled pepper-filled buns he's putting out.

I had my first sample at the recent Olive Oil Garage Sale event, and I can tell you we're going to be hearing a lot more from this plucky fellow and his meaty talents in the future.

Details: The People's Pig, on SW 2nd and Stark, on Stark between 2nd and 3rd Aves.

Proper Porchetta

Talk about nose-to-tail eating! This is what Mark Doxtader was dishing up at his Tastebud stand at today's Eastbank Reunion Market. (Kids were dragging their moms over for a look.) With any luck, you'll find it on Saturdays at Tastebud at the Portland Farmers' Market at PSU through Dec. 19. Just look for the smoking brick oven.