Pacheco, Pacheco, CA

Pacheco is a small unincorporated pocket of Contra Costa County that sits between Martinez, Concord and Pleasant Hill, and nearly everything here is arranged along Pacheco Boulevard. It was a grain-shipping port in the 1850s. What you see today is a postwar suburb wrapped around a working commercial strip. Homes are mostly modest tract houses from the 1950s and 1960s, with a large mobile home park and a few multiunit developments mixed in. Not much has changed in the housing since then. East of Highway 680, small planes from Buchanan Field in Concord are part of the background sound. Green space is small and local. Pacheco Creekside Park and Hayden Park sit inside the neighborhood, good for a dog walk or a few minutes outside. For longer outings, the Iron Horse Trail runs through Concord just to the north. A few miles up in Martinez, the Pacheco Marsh path leads to a dock where paddlers launch into restored tidal channels, and egrets and herons work the sloughs. The food is the surprise. Pacheco's Mexican Grill at 5830 on the boulevard is known for carne asada plates and crispy tacos, and Taqueria El Grullense at 5224 does breakfast burritos and carnitas. Mama's Lumpia took over a storefront at 5868 and turns out crispy lumpia and chicken adobo wings, while Keunjib Restaurant at 5921 is the place for bibimbap and LA galbi. Across the line, the bakery Tous Les Jours and Moa Korean BBQ add to the stretch. For coffee, the nearest options are Starbucks stores just outside the neighborhood. Errands are mostly by car, though the restaurant row is easy to cover on foot. Highways 4 and 680 meet right here, so Walnut Creek, Martinez and the Bay Bridge corridor are all simple to reach, and the Concord and Pleasant Hill BART stations are a few miles away. The freeway interchange that makes the location so convenient also hems the neighborhood in. Ramps and traffic noise reach the edges, and there is little room left for anything new. Few places this small line up a Mexican grill, a Filipino counter and a Korean kitchen within about a hundred street numbers of each other.