Los Olivos, Salinas, CA

Los Olivos is a shopping and dining pocket on South Main Street at the southern end of Salinas, and it reads more like a commercial corner than a street of houses. Nob Hill Foods anchors it, with coffee counters and restaurants gathered around the supermarket. Homes sit in the blocks nearby. Monterey Park and Maple Park are known for Tudor revivals, Craftsman bungalows and mid-century ranches, and anyone house-hunting on this side of town can compare all three. For a morning start, Jack's Coffee at 1348 South Main pours espresso and drip for daily regulars, and a Peet's sits in the same stretch. Stonies Taphouse & Bistro at 1366 South Main smokes meat over firewood and keeps a patio and a long craft beer list, with breakfast, lunch and dinner on the menu. Portobello's handles sit-down dinners, and Hartnell College's campus and downtown's bigger restaurant row are a few minutes north. Outdoors is where the pocket is thin. Woodside Park, in Mission Park, is the closest green space, and Hartnell Park has playgrounds and sport courts farther toward downtown. Valley Center Bowl, with lanes, a bar and an arcade, is the local indoor option, an Anytime Fitness gym serves the same part of South Salinas, and Northridge Mall is about two miles north. Groceries, coffee and dinner sit close together, which makes errands easy by car. Monterey-Salinas Transit buses serve South Main, and Highway 101 is a few minutes away for trips toward Monterey or San Jose, and Salinas Valley Health Medical Center on Romie Lane is close by. Los Olivos has little residential feel of its own, so people who want a front yard end up in the older blocks around it. As a place to run an ordinary Saturday of errands and finish with a barbecue lunch, it does the job.