I would love to be able to get something on the street besides a sausage. I know stuff needs to be sanitary to a point, but if no one is getting food poisoning, what is the foul?

This is awesome news. And street vending is huge for immigrant families. Lets do this!

It's finally happening -- Seattle's maybe, just maybe, going to turn into a real city. The stories and fears about "the eighties and early nineties" are ridiculously overblown -- the clampdown had nothing to do with safety, which was never at risk, but about competition from nearby fixed-abode businesses -- few of whom can compete on price OR QUALITY with good street food.

Look what's happening at the street fairs and farmer's markets -- Veraci Pizza BLOWS Via Tribunali or Ciao Bella OUT OF THE WATER (seriously, no contest); no restaurant north of South Park is serving better or more interesting Mexican food than those guys at the Fremont Sunday Market. This is where culture comes from: food in the street. And look at all the taco trucks!

And it spills over into new restaurants: Veraci and Rancho Bravo have set up in storefronts. Look at what's happening elsewhere in retail here: street food is SAVING SEATTLE. The mayor and the council should be making it MANDATORY.

@#4,

I too go to skillet and grimace at the $12+ tab..I know Ill catch guff for this but I started limiting my tip for my walk up food experience to $1, at a maximum always. I figure these guys are making a killing on the food (at least 50% profit) so to tip the owners seems redundant..they are making most of their money off of volume anyhow. If they want to make some killer money start selling draft beer where they can--a killing is made off that shit.

I highly doubt that these two outfits can do a good everyman so-called street food for $7 and under. That food in LA is ridiculous (korean BBQ burritos? awesome), the stuff in SF is good but more expensive, and Portland's street scene is pretty good for the size of that town. All of it even the gourmet stuff goes for way less than Skillet's offerings.

I hope the food fair succeeds and will hit it at least twice, but there are so many restaurants out there especially now that can give you a decent, honest operation for under $30 for a sit down experience..paying that for street food seems like the rental market here in town--meaning Seattle, as great of a place as it is to live in--thinks its cooler and more in demand than it is. Kinda like SIFF.

One of my first jobs in Seattle was selling popcorn from a cart at Rainier Square, right at the corner of Fourth and Union. The guy who owned the cart also owned one at Union Square (I dont' think there was yet a Two Union Square back in those days) and at another place down across from The Central Building.

That was one of the best jobs I ever had, and I was constantly busy. A few years ago I noticed that they were gone, and I wondered what had happened. Were they victims of the "crackdown"?

As a Portlander likely moving to Seattle in the fall, I was both excited and horrified to read this. As food carts have spread from the West Side over to the East Side in the past decade here, they have come to be a staple of my life, and the corner of Hawthorne & 12th (featuring a bunch of great things, but most notable the amazing frites cart Potato Champion) is one of the things I am advance-nostalgic for. These carts are open until 3am and the vibe in the lot is one of the most pleasant around. The food cart options in Portland really ARE fantastic. In the past couple weeks we've had a fried pie cart open, as well as Korean-Mexican fusion deal.

I keep looking for reasons to be excited about Seattle, but I feel like every time I check out the Stranger I encounter negative comparisons of the city to Portland. There must be some good carts in Seattle, no? Vegetarian, please. If not, well, I'm glad that some regulations may be changing to fix that. Street culture is an important component of livability, and, at least in Portland, the carts contribute to that greatly.

Also, incidentally, what's the best pizza in Seattle?

Did somebody say Costco? Because Costco's huge food counter in Kirkland started as a hot dog cart and a cooler full of Pepsis.

We should get rid of all the health regulations and let people make their own judgements as to what's safe and what's not.

@13, the best pizza in Seattle by a long, long ways is Veraci, in Ballard. Not at all coincidentally, they started as street food, towing their clay oven to the Ballard Farmer's Market and other places. Now they have a sit-down shop, with an even more amazing oven. Other places with the same style of clay oven, like the mediocre and overpriced Via Tribunali, and the frankly pretty horrible Tutta Bella, can't come within a mile of them.

As for price, Skillet's going to have trouble competing with the hoped-for wave of immigrant street food that's coming. If this city didn't have the world's largest stick up its ass, we'd already be competing with Portland; as it stands, they ABSOLUTELY DESTROY US on the street-food front.

Screw the Bite of Seattle. Every day should be the Bite of Seattle, everywhere in the city.

@19 - Some people like to go to restaurants to sit down to eat, street food is just that, STREET food. It doesn't compete with a sit-down restaurant because it's OUTSIDE. You don't happen to own Smarty Pants down in Georgetown do you? Because that jackass seemed to have the same problem with the falafel truck that was operating near his establishment. And guess what - the street vendor also pays taxes. Fuck, I hate the idiots in Seattle.

#20. Pretend for a second (yes, you probably are going to have to go deep into "make believe" land for this) that you have ever had more then a couple hundred dollars to your name. Pretend that you have spent a couple hundred thousand dollars to open a small food establishment. Because of rent, utilities, garbage, recycling, a multitude of permits and countless other costs, you have to sell a thousand dollars worth of food before you even start to make money on any given day. Despite this, you are doing it and you are starting to pay down that big debt. Now here comes the city of Seattle, suddenly OK'ing street food vendors to park right outside your business. This guy doesn't have to deal with 1/10th of your expenses, so he can undercut you in a big way. Bye, bye business. Bye, bye a whole lot of revenue for Seattle. Hello unemployment for a hell of a lot of people. Not all of us operate sit down restaurants. Street vendors will create direct competition for many of us and probably put us out of business. It is deeply unfair and changes the rules in the middle of the game.

#24. i guarantee i've been to more places on this planet then you know how to spell. my main problem is this changing of the rules after the fact. i located in seattle where i did after researching the competition. i looked at street vendor rules and saw that basically hot dogs were the only ones that were approved. now, after dropping a couple hundred g's the city is going to pull the rug from under me and allow someone to park a truck in front of my business and undercut me? that is bullshit.
#26 well, i guess we'll see how good it is for this already almost bankrupt city and state when the tax revenue dries up. how many cash registers do you see at the hot dog carts? what do you think that means - underreporting maybe? if my business goes under it will mean 12 more unemployed people out there - will street vendors hire them? i don't really know what the rest of your comment is about.

I'm not sure exactly what people are envisioning here when we use the ward "cart." I know that many cities feature mobile taco trucks and things like that but, for what it's worth, the food carts in Portland are almost all stationary. They are clustered in otherwise empty, eyesore parking lots downtown. They are hooked up to plumbing, pay taxes, permit fees and all that kind of thing. Some of the owners I've spoken with recently are investigating the option of getting some smaller mobile units so as to be able to serve at festivals, fairs and things of that nature; as it us, they are reluctant to leave their established spots even for a night so as not to confuse customers. I guess my point is that, at least in Portland, food carts are not some fly-by-night shadow operation like some commentators assume; rather, they contribute greatly to their surrounding communities and attract pedestrians and cyclists - something we have a lot of. A fried pie or bowl of veggie poutine at 2am after a show (when most sit-down restaurants aren't even open) is the perfect cap to a night out. Street food and sit-down restaurants are decidedly different entities and thinking that they are in direct competition with one another - at least in my experience - seems really inaccurate.

In culinary school they taught us that 1 out of every 9 restaurants will stay open after the first year. It also cost over $1,900 to train a new employee. If you start small you can eventually get a brick and mortar place because of success. And intelligence. Don't whine and complain because you opened up more than you can handle. It is and was your choice to start a place based off of stupid laws like only selling hot dogs. In the game of life you're losing because you don't know how to win.

@ 13 & 17.

The Best Pizza in Seattle?

I'd say ignore Fnarf on his child like rant on this subject. Veraci is ... Okay. They do a decent attempt at a Neopolitan pizza. For some reason Fnarf has zoned in on this as a poster child an up an coming Pizza empire that far suprasses any pizza every made in Seattle.

Veraci opened a storefront in Ballard that just absolutely cries as a place that will be out of business by the end of the year. They may do a good job at Street fares but that a far cry from operating a restaurant. I've never seen this restaurant even remotely full, they have an awful location and they've don't have anything unique enough to cause a stir.

In response to the original question of What's the best Pizza in Seattle? All depends on what you are looking for in a Pizza and where you grew up, no? NY Style, Chicago..., California, or are you looking for Neoplitan as was already suggested. Pizza is a comfort food and your going to always elevate for that favorite Pizza you had as a kid.

Veraci is actually pretty damn good (expensive, but damn good). It's thin crispy crust and not too much sauce.

If you like NY Style, there's another pretty damn good place, but you have to go to Westwood Village Shopping Center way the hell down in SW Seattle to get it. The place is called Giannoni's Pizzeria. Not cheap either, but the pies are 18 inches, so at least you're getting the right size large.

Been on a quest for the best Pizza in Seattle since we moved here 2 years ago. Most of the pizza in this town sucks. The above two don't.

There's also some joint named Post Alley Pizza downtown close to the waterfront. Good if you're near there.

Don'tlikesoggyfood,

Clearly you don't even live here, because it doesn't rain 9 months out of the year...

Seattle city council = premature group of morons.

The main point of this article, the street food fair, is being missed. We are NYC ex-pats that moved here with business plan in hand. Seattle is awesome and so is the food scene. Adjustments were necessary due to the economy. Now with a second business plan in hand, this fair seemed like an awesome idea. Until the coordinator emailed the "application". Seriously, a bankrupt food snob wants me to send him a check for $35, and I can't even get a list of requirements prior? The time commitments are completely unrealistic, If I have to actually work for a living while attempting a start-up, I don't have three full days(plus prep time) to devote for two months. If I did I would already have a restaurant. How about a one shot deal to see if it goes somewhere. This is exactly how Culinary Communion got in over their heads. Talk about a sketchy proposition. Anyone want to attempt something realistic before summer is over?

Relatedly, this article about Portland's SE 12th & Hawthorne cart zone just ran in The Oregonian:

http://www.oregonlive.com/dining/index.s…

Any progress yet?????

Any progress yet?????

@45/46: It's not looking especially good.