26 | EDIBLE PORTLAND SPRING 2025 Imagine Disneyland or Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory if they had been designed with a broader, subtler, more urban, and more mature sensibility. That's the cohesive reality you'll enter when you visit WonderLove, a food-cart hub and cultural destination on the Central Eastside. Come for lunch, and you may stay for the afternoon. Time has a way of waiting politely outside the walls of WonderLove. Clocks and schedules have no place in leisure, pleasure, or wonder, the domains in which WonderLove resides. The space invites you to linger or come and go as your whims determine. The food trucks, selected for quality and variety from dozens of applicants, orbit a central mass of tented picnic tables strung above with lights like stars. To the south stands WonderLove's pièce de resistance, a two-story bar assembled from shipping containers with rooftop seating offering an iconic view of downtown and, if you time it right, the sun setting over the West Hills. The cosmic vibes aren’t coincidental. A mural on the outer west wall on Southeast Second Avenue depicts a Big Bang–like moment of creation that reflects the revitalization that WonderLove represents to its neighborhood, a revitalization that was far from assured when Joel Beaudoin and Michael Morrow began laying out plans to develop the block. It was early 2021. The chaos of the pandemic and its fallout was inescapable. Violent crime was spiking. Reports of businesses shuttering competed for attention, with reports of businesses being burgled. The meanings of riot and protest had escaped reality for the simpler realm of ideology. Those who weren't scared to leave their homes for fear of getting sick were growing increasingly scared to leave their homes for fear of what they might encounter. Tent encampments were proliferating. The experiment with decriminalization was yielding its results: drugs and paraphernalia were passed around in plain sight; men and women could be seen staggering across streets and nodding off on benches and sidewalks. In short, the city that had been Morrow's home for nearly three decades and Beaudoin's since always was suddenly not the city they had thought of as theirs, and they wanted that to change. To see the space now is to see it transformed. From the outer walls, including a public wall for street art, to the various inner walls and building exteriors, art is prominent at WonderLove, art of a particular style: vibrant, bold, celebratory, and impossible to ignore. A mural of black and white hearts within hearts is large enough and high enough on WonderLove’s office building to be seen from downtown. A simple stroll to the bathroom (i.e., the Cave of WonderLove) involves passing through the mouth of Munta Eric Mpwo’s fierce blue lion. Portland artists such as Mpwo and the Pander Brothers ensure that we take a moment or several to look around and feel good about where we have arrived. If there were a soundtrack to this experience, it would be Kanye West’s Graduation. I felt pretty good the first time I immersed myself in the vibes of WonderLove. My group, a mix of adults and children as young as two, was seated at a shaded picnic table on a sunny day, enjoying food from around the world. By the time we finished, we had all tasted pizza (Wondercat), Guyanese (Bake on the Run), Indian (Platter Division), Greek (Gyro Bistro) and waffles The View from WonderLove By Scott F. Parker | Photos by Mike Gaskins
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