This is not a (fire) drill. But the team behind Cotto does, surprisingly, have the fire marshal to thank for the situation they currently find themselves in. It’s no secret that The Podski’s Mikel Lomsky likes to collect Bend’s finest at his centrally located, Old Bend gathering place for carts and locals, and Cotto has quickly become one of the city’s rising stars.
If you’ve been around Italian cuisine, you’ve likely heard the phrase, “cotto o crudo” — cooked or raw. Prosciutto crudo from Parma is a global delicacy, but as the name suggests, Cotto specializes in fried and flat-top grilled to-go bites and sandos, alongside a pair of salads. Launched in January 2024 by the Fink family in The Ale Apothecary’s west side courtyard, Cotto quickly attracted attention for its Italian-American street food fare and was voted Best New Food Cart in last summer’s Source Weekly readers’ poll.
It had always been Michael Fink’s dream to sling their wares at The Podski, and the aforementioned fire marshal unwittingly made this dream in Italian a reality when it was determined that space restrictions made Cotto’s presence at The Ale Apothecary untenable. Meanwhile, across town, The Podski was also reorganizing its layout thanks to a similar crackdown, but in a stroke of luck, it actually opened up a space for Cotto’s cart.
“We had set the goal to be in The Podski — it was a pipe dream,” says Sarah Fink, Cotto’s behind-the-scenes manager of HR, financials and marketing. They made the move in late September and haven’t looked back, recently growing to eight employees including themselves.
“It all happened for the right reasons,” adds Michael Fink, her brother-in-law. The idea for starting a cart may have been his, but the chef mastermind behind it all is James Fink, the elder and taller.
Classically trained with decades of restaurant experience in Bay Area Italian joints as well as Central Oregon institutions like Jackson’s Corner, Deschutes Brewery and Brasada Ranch, the trio ran the beloved farm-to-table eatery Wild Oregon Foods for several years before the pandemic.
There’s a lot of overhead with a restaurant and the cart was instantly “easier to manage, not quite as much stuff going on,” Michael explains. They didn’t have a lot of startup cash, but were inspired by Americana’s success. “Between the three of us, we had everything we needed. I mean, three of us ran it for the first six months — just us,” Sarah laughs.
“All three of us had full-time jobs and still ran the cart in the afternoon,” Michael continues.
“Yeah, that was a fun balancing act,” Sarah adds.
Being experienced chefs and restaurateurs, the three were intentional in choosing the concept for Cotto — one that mixed traditional Italian street food with Americanized options from New York and Chicago, like chicken Parmesan and porchetta sandwiches, fried mozzarella sticks and takes on chopped and caprese salads.
People often think of Italian as either fine dining or pizza, Sarah says. “I think that there’s this whole middle space that is wide open — that is very accessible, very casual, bursting with flavor and that people are just opening their eyes to.”
This is where the arancini come in. A common Sicilian snack, Cotto’s balls of rice are stuffed with ingredients like cheese, mushrooms or a carbonara blend, which pays homage to the pasta dish, before being coated in breadcrumbs and deep fried, each emerging with a solid, crunchy shell. “Nobody knows what an arancini is around here,” Sarah laughs — but they do now!
The best-selling chicken Parm also contributes to Cotto going through 20 to 40 pounds of chicken breasts every single day. Cotto has sold more than 1,500 of these monster sandwiches — with three layers of pounded, fried chicken — this year alone.
A new spring menu features pepperoni pizza-inspired arancini (“feed the masses,” Sarah chimes in) and a grilled sausage, onion and bell pepper sandwich with an Italian cheese blend, marinara and Parmesan on a Big Ed’s hoagie — which keeps the integrity of all the sandos intact.
And don’t forget dessert: You can’t go wrong with classic cannolis (filled with lemon-vanilla creme and a choice of pistachio or dark chocolate chunks), but the zeppole doughnuts come straight outta Sarah’s Coney Island childhood.
This article appears in Source Weekly April 24, 2025.
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