It’s the final month of the year, and in the local food world that means “best of” lists for the year that was. (Eater just named its “best ofs,” and published its readers’ "best of" votes as well. Turns out you guys really like Hey Love.) But before we tackle the local scene, here’s some regional—no, national—news to report. This week, the San Francisco Chronicle named its newest food reviewer: Former Portland resident, Bitch contributor, and Racist Sandwich podcaster Soleil Ho. Head over to Twitter to congratulate her!

Okay, here we go…

This week, the Mercury visited Little Conejo, the new Vancouver-based taco cart, and guess what? We liked it. And even though there’s a Portland-based version of the taco-and-mezcal cart, the Vancouver one is worth the drive across the river, especially for Sunday brunch. This week, we also profiled the owner of the still-new burger-based food cart, Hit the Spot, as he prepares to launch a new project to use a portion of his sales to directly assist Portlanders in need with the kind of help they want.

PoMo got the first look at Abagail Hall, the new sister bar to chef Doug Adams’ long-awaited Bullard restaurant, which will finally open on the ground floor of downtown’s Woodlark Hotel later this month. For the project, Adams teamed up with Jennifer Quist (Multnomah Whiskey Library), Daniel Osborne (Teardrop Lounge, Bull in China), and a local historian to help design the space in a nod to its namesake, the Oregon suffragist Abigail Scott Duniway.

Willamette Week this week published a year-end food guide, and it broke the news that a local developer plans to open a new 13-cart food cart pod called Pegasus in Montavilla this May. It’ll feature a statue of its mascot, a stage for local bands, and a desire to be the destination for food cart foodies.

Finally, Eater took the first look at Delores, BJ Smith’s new Polish and stoner food restaurant (and an homage to his recently passed on mother) in his old and now shuttered Smokehouse Tavern digs. Plus the site reported that Paragon, present in the Pearl for two decades, will shutter at the end of the month. And it explored an OPB story in which the city might start penalizing restaurant owner with fines of up to $500 fines for giving carry-out customers plastic straws and cutlery unless said customers ask for them. The idea, of course, is to try to keep plastic out of our oceans, but as the story suggests, in light of the administration’s recent environmental policy analysis on climate change, ain’t this small beer compared to more pressing (read: cataclysmic) issues?