Ord Grove, Seaside, CA

Ord Grove lies in the northern half of Seaside along Fremont Boulevard, and the name points back to Fort Ord, the army post that shaped the whole city. It holds about 1,700 homes, with Seaside High School toward its north end. Streets like Ord Grove Avenue are lined with single-story houses from the mid-1950s, generally between 1,200 and 2,000 square feet. The blocks are plain and orderly, and they run straight to the commercial strip. A walk down any side street shows how consistent the neighborhood is, with the same rooflines and driveways repeating from one corner to the next. Fremont Boulevard is the food corridor, and three places share one stretch of it. Gusto, at 1901 Fremont, is family owned and cooks from the recipes of chef Michele Cremonese, with homemade pasta, a lasagna that reviewers keep mentioning and wood-fired pizza, all opening at 4 in the afternoon. Noodle Bar, at 1944, is a Vietnamese kitchen in a narrow strip mall with limited parking, known for pho and its five-spice chicken bowl. Tricycle Pizza, at 1950, bakes a very crisp crust, and Panda Express and Wingstop cover the quick bites on the same strip. For open space, Fort Ord Dunes State Park is just up the coast in Marina. It opened in 2009 on nearly a thousand acres of former base land, and four miles of Monterey Bay beach make up its western edge, with old military bunkers still standing among the dunes. Bigger grocery runs go toward Sand City, and Highway 1 is close enough that Monterey and Marina are both a few minutes away by car. The history of the place swings between seaside resort and army town, and Ord Grove is firmly the army side, a grid of straight streets. Fremont carries a lot of traffic, but behind the commercial strip the residential blocks are calmer than the boulevard suggests.