The details: Tres Ninos Taqueria: 20 Marshall St., North Adams. 413-346-4000, facebook.com/tresninosNA.
Recipe for success: The brainchild of Grazie chef Matt Tatro, Tres Ninos Taqueria boasts some of the fastest and highest quality tacos, burritos and nachos — all for no more than $10. While Tres Ninos is new in its current location, the restaurant spent last summer as a food truck, tweaking its menu items to get ready to be a physical restaurant. The key to Tres Ninos's success is its fast assembly line take on Mexican food and dedication to making ingredients in house. (The quality of its Queso cheese sauce, in particular, makes it stand out from similar restaurants in the county). Tres Ninos gives you fast food speed with the quality of a traditional dine-in restaurant.
What we can't get enough of: Tan's Tacos, which go for $3 a piece, is probably one of the quickest and well put-together items on the menu, and encourages restaurant goers to dine-in for a second while on the go. If you're a messy taco eater like myself, Tres Ninos wraps their tacos in double tortillas and will provide you with a small plastic taco rack, which might seem minuscule, but goes a long way considering even the messiest of eaters won't see half their taco collapse onto the plate. Everything else is not a wide departure from what you can expect from a Hot Harry's-type place, but the quality is, making each bite fresh and full of cheesy, meaty flavor.