I heard about this cute little cart called Zita's Pita from Fearless Critic. As they explained, the pita that Zita offers is not the Greek gyro-like pita at all, but a Bosnian pita: hand-stretched dough into sheets and brushed with butter (phyllo dough), and then filled with ingredients such as ground beef or spinach or zucchini and cheese layered almost like filled square puff pastry. This is what drew me to it, as I hadn't had anything like this before, and without that detail I probably would have, probably like other people, kept thinking it was something in pita bread.
I remember when I finally got to the cart, it was during the first snowfall of 2009 (a few months ago). I just never had a chance to share the photos. By the time I got there it was late into the lunch hour, so I think the food wasn't as fresh. At least, the spinach wasn't. Fearless Critic had recommended the simple cheese one (Sirnica), but I went for the Zeljanica, a mix of eggs, spinach, cottage cheese, and sour cream. But, the doughy pita and the sauce were great. This is pretty heavy food even though the taste is light, so I recommend sharing the pretty generous portion in the full plate, which you'll want since that also adds the ajvar (really balances the light flavor) and sour cream-cucumber salad to your order. The lightness of the pastry, the ajvar, and get the cheese! Or perhaps I just had an unlucky spinach batch.
Ziba's Pita and its motherly proprietor came to mind because I looked at my calendar and I'm excited… because this Saturday is the Willamette Week's Eat Mobile Portland Food Cart Festival. They'll be offering samplings from 30 carts, including one I have been hankering ever since I first saw it: Potato Champion. I'll be there ready to burst through the gates when they open, I hope! This is appropriate since the best food I had during my Asia trip was from food carts too- and I am sure that this coming Saturday will offer a wonderfully tasty and varied experience. And yes- Ziba's Pita will be there.
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