Bake on the Run Shows Off the Global Essence of Guyanese Food

Pause in front of the Bake on the Run food cart for more than a second, and mother-and-son team Bibi and Mike Singh will greet you with a trio of steaming hot samples. Mike will ask if you’ve ever had their food before, point to a map of Guyana, and launch into a mini crash course on the country’s cuisine. For the Singhs, this is more about making a sale.

“This is not just a food cart for me,” says Mike Singh of introducing diners to Guyanese food and culture. “I don’t have products on my menu. I have my culture, I have my history, I have my childhood.”

Located among several other food carts in a Southeast Portland pod called the Heist, Bake on the Run is the only Guyanese eatery on the West Coast, and Singh says many of the cart’s potential customers have never even heard of Guyana. The South American country, one of the most biodiverse areas of the world, is north of Brazil, east of Venezuela, and is considered part of the Caribbean. And according to Mike, its distinct cuisine — which is reflected in Guyanese dishes like bacalhau (Portuguese salted cod), chow mein, and chicken potato curry — is due to its diverse population. Guyana’s 800,000 residents descend primarily from nine different Indigenous tribes, as well as from India, China, Portugal, and West Africa. Its Afro-Guyanese population traces its roots back to people who came primarily from West Africa as slaves, while the Indo-Guyanese population — Guyana”s largest ethnic group today — is descended mainly from Indian indentured laborers who arrived starting in 1838, filling Guyana’s need for workers after slavery was abolished in the British Empire.

Singh left his desk job in New York City and moved to Portland to open Bake on the Run in 2018, looking to do something related to his culture. He fell in love with the idea of opening a food cart after a road trip with a friend led him to a food cart tour in Portland, where he found a thriving street food scene. Bibi, who had been enjoying retirement in Arizona, moved to Portland to take charge of the kitchen and join Mike in his mission.

While many visitors come to the Heist just to eat at Bake on the Run, the pod environment allows Singh to draw from a pool of potential customers who are open to trying something new. At a brick-and-mortar restaurant, not only are profit margins slimmer, but most visitors would have to plan a visit rather than arriving by chance — a tough thing for cuisines that are less well-known.

The namesake bake — a crisp and airy, slightly sweet fried bread — was the only dish on the menu when Bake on the Run first opened. “Bake and saltfish is something we had every Sunday morning — I’d make sure I could come home on Sundays for that bake,” Singh says. “One of my absolute favorite things on planet Earth.” Bake on the Run serves two savory versions: one stuffed with bacalhau and scrambled with egg, tomato, and scallions, making the fish extra fluffy; another that pairs the bake’s sweetness with gingery, tomatoey chana aloo, a textural array of al dente chickpeas, tender potatoes, and peas. Bake also makes for an excellent dessert stuffed with jam or Nutella, while mini versions are wrapped around chocolate truffles and showered in powdered sugar.

Over the years, the menu has expanded to include Guyanese chow mein, in which noodles are marinated in soy sauce and teriyaki sauce, then given a quick stir-fry with peas, carrots, and scallions. The Singhs use thick, chewy chow mein noodles imported from Guyana that can’t quite be duplicated elsewhere — maybe some combination of Guyana’s water, the wheat, or the people who make the noodles, Mike guesses. The chicken and potato curry over rice is Mike’s favorite dish, a cozy, slow-simmered, overnight-marinated dish using Chennai-style curry powder that’s, you guessed it, imported from Guyana.

Everything comes with a side of pepper sauce, an essential Guyanese condiment — “like the exclamation point on the end of the sentence,” Singh says poetically. Bibi’s version, a long standing family recipe, tempers the heat of habanero with a little cucumber, making it zippy and flavorful but not punishing. As of January, the Singhs have started selling bottles of Chef Bibi’s Famous Pepper Sauce at several grocery stores across Oregon, further expanding their reach in spreading Guyanese culture.

And being the only Guyanese eatery for hundreds of miles, people go out of their way to eat at Bake on the Run. Singh says he gets a lot of truck drivers tweaking their routes for a quick stop in Portland, and every weekend, he gets a handful of visitors who have driven several hours. It’s also a favorite for Portlanders to show off to out-of-town guests: “It’s almost, like, bragging rights for Portlanders taking people from big cities like LA or San Francisco,” Singh says.

In the future, Singh wants to host more Guyanese cultural events. In 2023, the cart held its first celebration of Phagwah, the Guyanese name for Holi. Around a thousand attendees showed up, a DJ played Bollywood tunes and Guyanese chutney soca music, and the cart served pepper pot, an Indigenous meat stew with cassava syrup that can take days to make. From time to time, specials will pop up on the cart’s Instagram, from cook-up rice with beans, chicken, and beef to Guyanese corned beef hash. In the background, Singh is always brainstorming what other dimensions of Guyanese culture he can introduce to his customers.

“It is not me just showing up, shutting down, and doing whatever I want when I leave,” he says. “It is me continuously thinking about how I can best introduce my culture to the West Coast.”