The Food Is Fine but It Isn’t the Place You’d Pick for a Picnic

The food is hot, home-cooked and passably good (I road-tested a cheese-and-bean burrito).

The service is friendly and fast, and the prices reasonable. (A chorizo plate is but $4.)

As for the ambience, well, that’s another matter. This is not the Marine Room in La Jolla.

Diners here must be content to sit back and gaze upon acres and acres of wasteland scrub and fly-away gravel and dirt. Depending on the wind, the smell is either mildly noxious or downright pungent.

This is the Miramar Landfill, the city dump to you.

The dining establishment is called Tacos Mexico, which provides breakfast and lunch to hundreds of garbage truck drivers (municipal and private) and an occasional trash-hauling homeowner.

It may be San Diego’s most exclusive open-air dining experience. Certainly it is the most aromatic.

It begins with a catering truck, like hundreds that ply San Diego work sites. Yes, but this is no ordinary roach coach, ptomaine wagon or gedunk truck.

“With most of these trucks, you just get something to fill your stomach up,” said Henry Brown, a driver for the city’s Refuse Collection Division. “With this truck, they take time in preparing the food. We appreciate that.”

Owned by caterer Rafael Bahena and operated by his 22-year-old son, Freddie, the battered truck arrives weekdays by 7 a.m. and stays until 3 p.m.

An assortment of discarded chairs, couches and benches have been provided. Mosquito netting keeps away the sun, dust and bugs. A watering truck helps.

“This is our place,” Freddie Bahena said. “Our customers deserve something good.”

Reservations are not needed. But only people authorized to be at the dump are allowed to partake.

Charles Hood, a landfill supervisor, demanded to know if I was “authorized.” I said I was.

“In that case, I suggest the chicken teriyaki,” he said.

The drivers prefer Tacos Mexico to outside fast-food spots. It’s time-consuming to leave their routes and tough to park a 20-ton garbage truck.

There’s also the matter of those sniffs and stony stares from outsiders.

“This beats going out to the drag (Convoy Street),” driver Ken Jarvis said. “You meet better people here.”

Almost Caught With Byline Down

News on the run.

It is every City Hall reporter’s nightmare (trust me, I’ve been there) to be out of position when the Big Story hits the City Council.

San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Ruth McKinnie was talking on a pressroom phone to her editor Monday afternoon when she hears uncivil sounds coming from a speaker box that pipes in the council debate.

Hostile, angry sounds. Threats. And then somebody screaming, “Look out, he’s got a gun!”

McKinnie stops talking to her editor: “I was having heart failure. I thought, ‘My God, somebody is going to gun them all down.’ ”

She races into an adjoining room overlooking the council chamber, tape recorder in hand, out of breath, news instincts fully aroused.

She demands of reporters who’ve been there all along: “Who’s got a gun? What’s happening?”

They explain calmly: The dialogue was from an anti-drug, anti-gang skit being performed for the council by the Christ Cadets of the First Christian Fellowship Church in East San Diego.

“Oh,” says McKinnie, in her best I-knew-that-all-the-time tone. She retreats.

There was laughter all around the room about the story that wasn’t.

All the OTL Names Fit to Print

The 39th annual Over the Line (world championship) tournament begins Saturday at Fiesta Island.

As always, most of the team names are not printable. Here are some that are (I think).

Men: Beer Me! I’m Barking Dirt Clods Over Here . . . Clueless Joe McIlvaine and Mike Tyson’s Nervous Cellmates . . . Congressional National Credit Union: If You’ve Got Checks, You’ve Got Money . . . I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Reach My Beer . . . Never Been There, Never Done That . . . Regis and Kathy Lee Presidential Campaign Committee . . . Two Studs and a Dud . . . We Think We’re HIV Negative . . . Paul Tsongas Personality Coach.

Women: The Robbers Stole Everything But Our Breast Implants . . . Bill Clinton’s Illegitimate Daughters . . . Waiting for the Beer to Take Effect.