We’re still no Portland, with its 400 or so street food vendors, but here’s further evidence that we’re at least allowed to folllow the word “Seattle” with “street food” and keep a straight face: The folks behind a 3-month-old webcast devoted entirely to street food around the nation decided to pay us a visit. VendrTV just broadcast its look at Maximus/Minimus (which I like to call “The Pigstream” despite it not being an Airstream), focusing on artist Colin Reedy’s urban pig design (they were here too early to actually taste the pulled pork). Here’s the video, and, after the jump, my chat with the site’s Daniel Delaney, who currently lives in Brooklyn. He’s filming this week in San Francisco.

 

On what brought the show to Seattle: The street food fiends are doing a West Coast tour, and we were only three hours from Portland, where they just shot 17 episodes of the show. (Choke.) We shouldn’t feel bad, though. “Portland is a freak,” Delaney said, and what we have is high in quality, even if not in numbers.

On what they found: They shot three shows here, two more than originally planned. They came for Skillet, but were tipped to Maximus when Kari Brunson told them “there’s this giant pig…”, then stumbled on Veraci and found it “really incredible.” Look for the Skillet and Veraci shows in coming weeks. They wanted to include Marination Mobile, but it still isn’t quite rolling.

“It’s not like the three we covered are small little hot dog weiner carts,” Delaney said, and he thinks there is probably more going on in our city than has been discovered yet. “Street food comes in all different forms.” (Like, maybe, Tako Truk, which sounds pretty mobile despite not being on wheels?)

“If you were to compare the street food scene in a city like, I’ll say, Seattle, to Philadelphia, Philadelphia has far more carts and far more trucks, but none of them compare in quality or grandeur or even, I think, in pride to the two (trucks) we covered.”

On what possessed a 23-year-old to cover street food full-time (the web show, with a rotating crew of eight, has just been picked up by a distributor, he said): In a theoretical way, Delaney said, it’s a way to embrace three of his passions — food, entrepreneurship (and supporting entrepreneurs), and technology. And, he’s been thinking about the subject for a while: He earned his fine arts degree in design at the University of the Arts by writing a senior thesis on how design affects the business of mobile food vendors.

On where to find more: Extra shots, behind-the-scenes looks, and giveaways are usually found on their Facebook page. I was fascinated to see the page currently has 7,000+ fans, twice the number of Martha Stewart, which speaks either to the difference in their demographics or the frequency of their updates. The other Northwest shows will be spread out over the weeks, interspersed with other areas, not shown in a steady stream.

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