A couple of blogs back I wrote about the concept of being a regular away from home (Being A Regular When You Aren’t, May 19th). I hope that the concept resonated with you and to prove that I do ‘walk my talk’ I did just that this past weekend while attending my daughter’s 16/U fast pitch softball tournament down in Salinas (California).

Salinas is a serious food municipality- but not in the sense of the word that you may be thinking. No ‘haute cuisine’ here and you’d be hard pressed to find a sommelier in town. That said, one can dine well if you know what to look for, and where to look for it. While Zagat, Michelin and the like may be the culinary bibles when you hit San Francisco or New York, my sources for smaller town dining are yelp.com, chowhound.com and roadfood.com. I see what each has to say, where the ‘Venn diagram’ connections are and start there. It takes a little bit of planning, but it’s just that easy.

Salinas, as you might know, is all about Mexican food. More specifically, homey, comfort food mostly coming out of low key taquerias (often featuring a blaring TV with Univision’s offering of the hour) and an amazing array of eat ‘al fresco’ taco trucks and carts that pepper the streets (generally in or around East Market Street). Between games on the seeding day (day one) of the tournament, I started my hunt with a list, a fully charged GPS, and a mind frame to taste-test. That is to say, we picked a couple of litmus test items (in our case carnitas, lengua (toungue) and pastor tacos with all the trimmings) and compared and contrasted. After 8-10 trucks and taquerias, we picked our favorite and brought a good chunk of the team and families there on the last day after the last game. They were thrilled and so were my new good friends at the standout taqueria of this trip: Taqueria El Grullense, 976 Acosta Plaza, Salinas, CA 93905, Phone: (831) 754-4440

OK, so they don’t have great wine lists (if any) but in my case an ice cold Negra Modelo beer did the trick. And for those taco trucks on the street that don’t even have seats…well, we brought our own (a slightly chilled Monterey County Grenache from Bonny Doon- perfect with the carnitas and the pastor tacos).

Do you have any favorite taquerias or taco trucks that have become your faithful “regular”?