In search of a shared story, Fresno lookts to its tacos

Greater Fresno, with 1.1 million people, is growing into California’s next big metropolitan area.

Taquerías — brick-and-mortar shops, trucks, pop-up stands — are as ubiquitous as gas stations in L.A..

The competition and the proximity of farms keep the quality of the food high, and the diversity of taco styles reflects how agriculture attracted people from all over California and Mexico.

In 2011, Oz and Hansen, after a still-ongoing search for taquerías across Fresno County, launched an annual Taco Truck Throwdown at the Grizzlies ballpark.

Last year’s throw down became a citywide sensation, with a crowd of nearly 17,000 fitting into a stadium with 12,500 reserved seats and eating 38,000 tacos from 24 trucks.

During each Taco Tuesday, the Grizzlies will use the stadium entertainment system to tell the story of a different Fresno-area taco truck and its owners..

On recent trips, I’ve heard everyone from hotel maids to elected officials to entrepreneurs rhapsodize about local tacos.

(The death received significant local media coverage, a sign of how taquería owners have become Fresno celebrities.) Oz then took me south of Fresno to the city of Selma (pop. 24,000) and its Highway 43 Taco Corridor, with several trucks parked in open fields.

The third we visited — Taquería Los Toritos, wedged between Highway 99 and a truck scale — offered the freshest-tasting carne asada taco I can ever remember eating.

The high-speed rail station in Fresno will be two blocks away, and the rail authority’s ridership projections might be realized once Californians elsewhere get a taste.