New vegan food cart opens at Troutdale Station

TROUTDALE Ore. (KPTV) - After going through a battle with cancer - one Vancouver man used his fight as motivation for a new start. Steve Larsen opened the P53 food cart last week and he said so far, so good.

“When I feel like a steak, I have the chili bowl. We’ve got a veggie rice bowl with a teriyaki sauce we have in house that has no sugar,” Larsen said. “I was looking for something to do and this just went click - the light came on.”

The cart is named after a diet Larsen started during his second battle with cancer. He said it helped him feel better. Larsen was first diagnosed with stage three colorectal cancer in 2018 and he came up with the idea to open the food cart last year after his cancer came back.

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“I was diagnosed in remission in 2019 and we went almost three years being tested every year. Last year, in January, it came back in my lungs. Very little bit, but it was there,” he said.

He said starting up the food cart has been a great distraction as he recovers.

“I found that sitting at home doing nothing was the worst thing to do,” Larsen said.

He’s got the experience to help him run it too. He said he’s been working in restaurants since he was 15 and the only thing he has to get used to now is a much smaller kitchen.

“Cooking, sous chef, chef, manager, general manager,” he said. “I learn something new every day. Like, don’t run out of rice!”

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