The trucks and the trailers

Half of Baytown's best food doesn't have a building. Here's how the trucks work and where they park.

Where they are. - The plant gates and the contractor lots at shift change — early morning, noon, late afternoon. Breakfast tacos, plate lunches, the smash-burger truck when it's in town. If you don't work inside the fence you'll never see these; they're the crews' kitchens, and the best breakfast tacos in Baytown are sold to people in FR at 5 a.m. from a window on a gravel lot. - Garth Road lots — the parking lots of the auto-parts stores and the washaterias, by arrangement with the landlord, lunch and dinner. The Salvadoran, the Honduran, the barbacoa-on-weekends trucks. - Decker and North Main — the taco trucks that have been in the same spot so long they have regulars who don't know the truck's name, only the corner. - Downtown on Market Saturday and Grito Fest — the trucks come to Town Square for the crowd; the calendar lists which ones when the city posts the vendor list. - The Nature Center on Nurture Nature day, the youth-league fields on tournament Saturdays, the church lots on boil days, and the RV parks some evenings — Cedar Grove and Mont Belvieu RV Resort get a truck when a big turnaround's on.

How to find them. The ones with a social page post their week's positions and we carry those on the calendar. The ones without — most — are found by driving Garth at noon and looking for the line. The directory lists every truck we've verified with its usual corner and the days; if yours isn't there, the submit form takes a truck, and a photo of the menu board is all we need.

What to order. Breakfast tacos before eight — chorizo-and-egg, papa-and-egg, barbacoa on Saturday, and the salsa verde is the test. Plate lunches at noon — the guisado, the pollo asado, the pupusa plate from El Rey's truck when it runs one. Elotes and aguas frescas on a hot afternoon. The smash burger from the burger truck, which is the best burger in town on the days it's here and the burger list says so.

The rules. Cash, always; some take cards, none take a check. The line is the review. A truck that's been on the same corner for five years is a restaurant without the rent, and the food is priced accordingly. Health inspections are the county's and the city's, and the ones we list have a permit; the new-openings page catches new food-truck permits as they're filed with the state, which is how we find the next one before the line does.

The trailers. The other kind — the fifth wheels and travel trailers in the five RV parks — are the turnaround crews' homes for six weeks at a time, and the food trucks at the gates are their kitchens. The two halves of this page are the same economy: when the plants are in turnaround, the trucks multiply, the RV parks fill, and the Cuban Cafe is full at four. When the units come back up, half the trucks move to Port Arthur with the crews.

En español. Los food trucks de Baytown: en las puertas de las plantas al cambio de turno (los mejores tacos de desayuno de la ciudad, si trabaja adentro), en los estacionamientos de Garth Road, en las esquinas de Decker y North Main, en Town Square los días de mercado y de Grito Fest, y en los parques de RV cuando hay turnaround. Efectivo siempre. La fila es la reseña. El directorio tiene cada camión verificado con su esquina y sus días; si falta el suyo, el formulario acepta camiones — una foto del menú basta.