Sonoran-style Mexican food defines Tucson
Thanks to food television, Tucson, Ariz., has gained a reputation as a foodie city where visitors can savor Sonoran hot dogs, cowboy steaks and barbecue, spirits from hip new distilleries and bread from trendy craft bakeries.
But that is not the Tucson dining scene I hold dear and that locals of a certain age revere. Having spent the early ’80s as a student at the University of Arizona, I hold food memories forever stamped by the simple pleasures of green corn tamales, panaderias stocked with colorful concha sweet breads, chile Colorado burritos fashioned from Sonoran-style flour tortillas ( gossamer thin and bigger than a hubcap) and combination plates from iconic Mexican restaurants that have marked Tucson for generations.
Ringed by mountain ranges in all directions, this city of nearly 1 million in the Sonoran Desert sits at an elevation of about 2,600 feet, more than 1,000 feet higher than Arizona’s most populated city, Phoenix, resulting in slightly cooler year-round temperatures. Nicknamed the “Old Pueblo,” Tucson boasts more than 350 days of sunshine and enjoys a rich history deeply rooted in Native American and Mexican cultures.
I consider Tucson the American city with the best Mexican food. I have lived in Los Angeles and know Cal-Mex; I currently make Houston home, where I’ve come to enjoy the pleasures of TexMex. I also praise the considerable enchantments of New Mexican food for its ways with red and green chile sauces.
But Tucson’s Mexican cuisine, often called Sonoran because of its roots in the Mexican state of Sonora on Arizona’s southern border, is superlative. Its wealth of Mexican food, colored by the foodways of indigenous people, made Tucson the first city in the United States to earn UNESCO’s distinction as a City of Gastronomy.
Tucson’s landmark Mexican restaurants, no doubt instrumental in the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization citation, remain the ultimate standardbearers for a unique style of comida Mexicana that can be found only in this region, which is one of the oldest continually inhabited places in North America.
Three iconic Tucson Mexican restaurants remain my favorite places to eat.
El Charro Café
Billed as America’s oldest family-operated Mexican restaurant, El Charro was established in 1922 by Monica Flin, whose great-grandniece, chefowner Carlotta Flores, continues its tradition as Tucson’s premier Mexican restaurant. Housed in a rambling stone building in downtown’s El Presidio Historic District, El Charro is often referred to as the birthplace of the chimichanga, a deep-fried burrito. Legend has it that Flin accidentally dropped a burrito into hot grease while she was making tacos. Though the chimichanga is justifiably famous, locals know El Charro as one of the few places for carne seca, an air-dried beef that is shredded and cooked back to tenderness. Also called machaca, the strips of lean beef can be seen drying in special cages on the restaurant’s roof. That carne seca can be found in enchiladas, tacos, chile rellenos, oversize burros and, yes, in chimichangas. If you go the chimi route, ask for it enchilada style, where it will be drenched in true red enchilada sauce and topped with plenty of melted cheese. There are three locations, but the charming downtown building offers the true El Charro experience. 311 N. Court, 520-622-1922; elcharrocafe.com
Mi Nidito
Open since 1952, Mi Nidito sits in South Tucson, a city within a city that is only 1.2 square miles but home to many of Tucson’s most popular Mexican restaurants. Mi Nidito is the best practitioner of Sonoran-style Mexican. A visit from President Bill Clinton in 1999 cemented its status. Mi Nidito is famous for a number of signature dishes, including a giant cheese crisp (toasted flour tortilla melted with cheese), menudo, exemplary cheese enchiladas and ground-beef-patty crispy tacos served with the house salsa that is a Tucson benchmark. But it is the signature birria — spiced, stewed shredded beef — that makes locals swoon. Try the meat in a birria plate served with rice beans and a flour tortilla or in a burrito or chimichanga. Mi Nidito is also one of the few places serving Sonoran-style flat enchiladas, which are fried masa cakes topped with red chile enchilada sauce and cheese. 1813 S. 4th Ave., 520-622-5081; miniditorestaurant.com
El Minuto Cafe
This modest, low-slung restaurant in downtown’s Barrio Viejo neighborhood is a Tucson treasure. Founded in 1936, the restaurant’s recipes are all original — exemplary versions of rolled and stacked enchiladas, cheese crisps, carne seca burros and tacos, and magnificent soups, such as menudo, caldo de res and albondigas (the latter, sadly, a rarity in Mexican restaurants). Old-guard Tucson reveres El Minuto for its unpretentious attitude and adherence to foodways that have not lost an ounce of tradition in more than 80 years. Next to the restaurant’s parking lot is a shrine called El Tiradito (“the castaway”), the only one of its kind in the United States dedicated to the soul of a sinner buried in unconsecrated ground. 354 S. Main Ave., 520-882-4145; elminutotucson.com