Track food: Savor the flavor at Loretta Lynn's

I may not be the Duke of Dining or the Sultan of Supper, but I can be a little picky about what I stuff in my mouth while covering the AMA Air Nautiques Amateur National Motocross Championships. Fortunately, there's a lot of, um, cuisine to choose from.

I start my search for the best quick eats at ground zero -- a shaded area with picnic tables surrounded by food vendors. Looking at the signs at the various makeshift kitchens, I find a lot to choose from: Philly cheese steak, sausage, and fried bologna sandwiches;  Italian subs; foot-long corn dogs; various sausages; and homemade chicken salad.

I wonder about the homemade chicken salad. After all, how can it be homemade if it's being whipped up in a food trailer at the race track?  I pass.

The Boss Hogg beef jerky catches my eye. It seems to be very popular with the guys at the track, with some even going back for seconds and thirds. I guess women don't like beef jerky, though.  No women are walking up asking for a taste of the jerky from the young ladies feeding people samples.

Again I pass because I don't think it would be filling enough.

Hmmm, that vendor offers shrimp on a stick and pizza slices.  Or is it shrimp slices and pizza on a stick? And that vendor over there sells deep-fried Oreos, deep-fried Snickers, and deep-fried Twinkies. How can I pass that up?

Lori Motsinger of Illinois serves me up a deep-fried Twinkie for $3. It tastes great, if you like deep-fried Twinkies, but isn't very filling so I continue my search.

It's more difficult to find the best food than I thought it would be. I need help.

"Whatcha got?" I ask John DiBartolo of Big Lake, Minnesota, as he sits down at a picnic table with a big plate of, well, something.

"Ribbon fries," he says. "It's the first time I've had them. They taste like potato chips. They're pretty good."

Nope, potato chips aren't going to win my vote for best track food. I move on.

Brayton Edlin, 13, of Paris, Tennessee, is munching on a foot-long corn dog. Actually, it's about a five-inch corn dog at this point. Edlin says it tastes good, but, again, I don't think it will be filling enough.

By the way, here's a tip about deep-fried Twinkies: They make you very thirsty. So if you plan to serve them up at home have plenty of something to drink. I opt for a milkshake.

Time is running out because I have to get back to the infield to cover the races, and I still haven't found lunch, let alone the best track food. So I ask myself, "What would Julia Child go for?"

She'd probably go for some international cuisine. And then Linda DiBartolo, John's wife, gives me a hot tip: the Cuban sandwich for sale over there.

"It's the only reason I come here," she laughs. "I eat two a day."

In fact, she says that each year at Loretta's after the races she buys up the special bread used by the vendor to make the sandwiches. But she says that no matter how hard she tries, the Cuban sandwiches she makes at home don't compare to the ones she eats at the track.

Intrigued, I wander over to the food trailer where the Cuban sandwiches are served up and buy one for $5. OK, what have we got here? Ham, roast pork, cheese, salami, mayo, pickles, spicy mustard and maybe some other stuff, I can't really tell. It's all stuffed in flat bread and heated.

I take a bite, and then another, and then another.

We have a winner.