Illustrations by James Yates

It’s Friday night in South Seattle. I’m standing in a short line for tacos sold by what is officially called an “unpermitted pop-up vendor.” The setup is small and under a flimsy blue tent that’s planted next to a Rainier Avenue sidewalk. There is a table, two mild-mannered young men (they are brown and Indigenous), containers with salsas and other taco toppings, an iconic rotating tower of al pastor, a commercial-grade but portable griddle, a pot stewing beef brisket, and the whirring of a small Westinghouse gas generator. Behind all of this is a huge parking lot for a supermarket under a clear August sky. 

In front of me is a young Muslim couple that looks like they might be recently married: arms tightly linked, a head rested on the other’s shoulder. A moment later, they walk into the night with their meal on a paper plate covered by tin foil. I make my order. Beef brisket tacos. They are served in no time at all. One costs just $3. I eat them inside my partner’s car. It only takes a few bites for me to reach an important personal discovery: A great taco is nothing without an excellent tortilla, and what makes an excellent tortilla is a distinct and dense (but not chewy) and even burntish earthiness. And I’m not even a taco fan, but tonight the pleasure of this form of Mexican food that has for so long eluded me became apparent: simple, rich, short-lived.  

As we leave the parking lot, I spotted the Muslim couple eating their tacos on the hood of a red car that’s not new. Others are doing the same on the hoods or inside of their cars: some are Black, some white, some in the dark. And as we turn onto Rainier, which has several unpermitted vendors here and there, I have that swelling feeling that is so important to the essence of my existence, the feeling that I’m in a city.

“Seattle, King County must enforce mobile food-vendor laws for safety,” roared the Seattle Times editorial board nearly a year ago. The column was packed with outrage: “Authorities have every right to be concerned about the threat of foodborne illness,” “unpermitted sellers threatened the livelihoods of established restaurants and cafes,” “unpermitted vendors… don’t pay fees, rent, or possibly appropriate wages,” and so on. “There are no fines, and inspectors don’t confiscate carts or other equipment,” they complained.

“In Santa Monica,” claimed the board, “enforcement is conducted collaboratively between Code Enforcement, the Santa Monica Police Department and the Santa Monica Fire Department. That kind of coordinated effort is needed here.”  (The Seattle Police Department has, so far, wisely decided to not to add this common infraction to its list of priorities.)  

Though the board identifies small businesses that follow the codes and pay the fees as the primary victims of this outrageous law-breaking behavior, it conveniently ignores its most salient feature: Many of the vendors are not white. This fact represents a social/class factor that the board refused to consider because it would demand a deeper and less strident and more complex analysis of a cultural development that raises a host of very thorny issues. 

More recently, the Capitol Hill Seattle Blog noted that the “Health Department’s unpermitted vendor crackdown has barely made a dent in Capitol Hill street-food scene,” had nothing substantial or positive to say about the unpermitted vendors, often found near Cal Anderson Park, and often selling great food (check out the superb burgers sold by a multicultural crew of young men posted near the Black Lives Matter street mural), and instead reiterated the Seattle Times board’s concern for permitted businesses, which saw the crowds gathered around these venues as dangerous. “Late last year, Pike/Pine retailers, bars, and restaurants worked with District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth to address the surge in unpermitted food vendors they said were creating public safety issues,” they wrote. CHSB was also unhappy about SPD’s decision to “not get involved.”

“They are just trying to make a living,” says a Mexican American woman who asked not to be named. She works in brick-and-mortar restaurants around South Seattle, and she knows it’s not easy to get a legitimate business started in this very expensive city. And for many people, the sidewalk pop-up is not their only job. They do this over here and that over there to make ends meet. And most of the vendors can’t even afford to live in this city. They come here from Skyway and Burien. 

“Of course, many of them prepare their food in their kitchens, even those who have figured out a way to get a permit—and there are ways of doing that—I know the food came from their kitchen,” she says with a dry burst of laughter. She describes an old woman from Guatemala who has a table in the heart of Beacon Hill. “Eating her food is like eating at her house. No difference. That’s why people like it so much.”

 

 

Oddly enough, I found King County’s Food Safety Program manager, Dr. Eyob Mazengia, to be more sympathetic than the Seattle Times and other outlets. During our conversation he immediately points out that most of the closures conducted by his department are “Hispanic,” and so they are trying to work with community organizations to resolve this unappetizing matter. He knows that many of the vendors are really just trying to make a living, and doesn’t want to criminalize them. But he has to do his job, which is to protect the city from vendors who are not cleaning their hands or preparing the foods properly.

“We are offering a one-time 50 percent reduction in operational permit cost,” he says. “So, we’re [trying to] lower the financial barrier a bit, granted that the permitting cost is not a significant cost for starting a business.” The significant cost is, in his opinion, access to a commercial kitchen. So “for beginners, [we are giving] them up to six months of free access to a commercial kitchen.” 

It’s a start, but not a solution. When I ask if there’s something innovative that he thinks his department can do, something that’s way outside the usual law-and-order formula, he thought that design changes to carts is of great importance. The present ones are really for hotdogs and hamburgers. What we need, he points out, are carts that match the needs of other cultures. “We are collaborating [with manufacturers] and looking into vendors at this point to see [if we can] actually collaborate [to make carts] that make sense… so that the [entry] costs hopefully will be reasonable.”

But that’s a long term-plan. What’s needed today are policies that keep vendors outside of the shadow of crime. And so I wonder if the best solution at present is just to inform people of carts that are permitted and those that are not and leave it to the customer to decide what they will and will not put in their stomach.

At the end of the day, street food has to be good because, as my Mexican American friend explained, the food is all street vendors have. No ambiance, no table service, no manager to direct your complaints. “You want people to come back. Bad tacos [are] not going to do that,” she says. “That’s why I go to the [taco vendor] on Rainier, which I think is run by the same guys on Beacon Hill. It’s a great deal and it’s so good.” 

The KEXP DJ Riz Rollins also knows this place on Beacon Hill. It has “saved his life” when he needed something good to eat at 3 a.m. And isn’t that just what a city should be? It never sleeps, it’s constantly mixing and introducing cultures from around the world, and it’s always generating new and soul-expanding encounters. 

I have been to the pop-up on Rainier twice. It’s nothing but a party there. Long lines. Music blasting. People having a good time and eating in an abandoned parking lot. As for the taco spot on Beacon Hill, I go there at least once a week, because I can’t find a brick-and-mortar business that comes even close to their Mission District–grade burritos. None. Indeed, when I have visitors from New York City, I take them there because I want them to see that I’m not in the middle of a cultural nowhere—that Seattle is not just about big tech, the Space Needle, and people throwing fish at the Pike Place Market. No. This is a real city—one whose fringes are not cold, but sparkle like the stars at the edge of the Milky Way.  

The joint on Beacon Hill has become legendary. And yes, we all know it’s flying under the radar. We all know what we are getting into. But the place has never made me sick, which I can’t say about that licensed and regularly inspected Seattle deli that made me so sick that I couldn’t eat a thing during a short visit to Rome, one of the world’s culinary capitals. And what did I miss in Rome, one of the oldest cities in the world? The vibrant street-food culture. 

Seattle is growing. We are becoming big. And with a big city, comes big, delicious food tents.

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Street Food by the Numbers

Last November, four Capitol Hill street food vendors were shut down in one night. Local blogs called it a “crackdown” on unpermitted vendors—a term the Public Health office of Seattle and King County does not appreciate. King County’s Food Safety Program manager, Dr. Eyob Mazengia, emphasized that they’re “doing more than just closing businesses.” In addition to permit enforcement, they’re providing “guidance and support to vendors,” he says. “We do sympathize with people who are out there trying to make a living.” Still, he says, the permitting process, for restaurants and street vendors alike, is meant to protect the public. “I mean, we’re not talking about just simple illnesses or inconveniences for a day or two,” he says. “It could result in chronic illness, it could result in kidney failures, it could result in death and hospitalization, right?” 

So is there really a crackdown? And is it warranted? We decided to look at the numbers—some of theirs, and some of ours. 

Number of unpermitted food vendors shut down by authorities in 2023: 27

Number in 2024: 109

Number so far in 2025: 151

Number of street vendors that have gotten new permits so far in 2025: 60

Number of Stranger employees who have gotten food poisoning from a permitted restaurant: 8

Number of Stranger employees who have gotten food poisoning from a street vendor: 0

Number of Stranger employees who have had their life saved by a street food vendor after 11 p.m.: 14