Eating America’s best Mexican food in Tucson

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By Jennifer Bain

The most unexpectedly delicious thing I ate in Tucson, a UNESCO City of Gastronomy, was a crossover hot dog from Mexico that cost just four bucks and once won a James Beard award.

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At El Güero Canelo, Sonoran hot dogs are wrapped in bacon, grilled, nestled into soft split-top bolillo buns and covered with pinto beans, raw and grilled onions and tomatoes before being finished with mayonnaise, mustard and jalapeño sauce.

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All you have to do is devour your elaborately dressed dog – and the charred chile güero on the side – and think about how it found its way here from Hermosillo in the Mexican state of Sonora. 

Tucson chef Daniel Contreras opened El Güero Canelo as a hot dog stand in 1993 and now oversees three local restaurants and one meat market as well as a Sonora bakery/tortilla factory to ensure perfect bolillos.

“The Sonoran hot dog evinces the flow of culinary and cultural influences from the U.S. to Mexico and back,” the James Beard Foundation said when announcing the 2018 America’s Classics awards to honour cherished regional establishments. “Today, Tucson is the American epicentre, and Daniel Contreras is the leading hotdoguero.”

Tucson may not be as polished as Scottsdale but it boasts lauded hotdogueros and America’s best Mexican food. In 2015, it became America’s first UNESCO City of Gastronomy for telling a “culturally layered” food story that dates back 4,000 years and embraces Indigenous and immigrant influences. 

The southern Arizona city also has a 300-year tradition of vineyards, orchards and livestock ranching. 

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So that explains why beef is the taco filling of choice at my other favourite stop on a Mexican food crawl – Taqueria Pico de Gallo. First, I inhaled a carne asada taco with charcoal-broiled beef, and then I sampled a birria taco with shredded, mildly spiced beef.

Tacos come on flour or corn tortillas, both made in-house and grilled to order and lightly garnished with things like finely chopped cabbage, cilantro and onion.

Speaking of beef, Charro Steak is the Sonoran-inspired downtown steakhouse operated by the folks who founded El Charro Café here in 1922 and are lovingly referred to as “America’s first family of Mexican food.

Only grass-fed, house-butchered beef is used for mesquite-fired steaks. My carne asada came with tortillas, frijoles charros, a grilled green onion and half a grilled lemon. Mexico’s beloved street corn — esquites con crema — found charred corn with crema, cotija cheese and Tajín spice blend in a bowl instead of on a cob

Tucson likes to celebrate its “gastronomy and astronomy,” so now seems like a good time to say that in between meals I exercised by playing pickleball for the first time at Loews Ventana Canyon Resort with tennis and pickleball professional Stacy Vogwell.

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“Those that have come over to the pickleball dark side from tennis have learned that it’s actually a really fun game to play,” Vogwell shared.

It was a blast to finally try America’s fastest-growing sport, but the best outdoor thing Tucson has going for it is Saguaro National Park. Since the park has just been certified by DarkSky International as an Urban Night Sky Place, I joined a guided night hike and then a star party led by an amateur astronomist.

The park protects more than two million saguaro cacti and 94,000 acres of Sonoran Desert habitat in two separate units that flank Tucson – the Rincon Mountain District in the east and the Tucson Mountain District in the west.

I drove the scenic driving loop in each district, hiked the Cactus Forest Trail and climbed the Javelina Rocks at sunset. I explored the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which is near the west district visitor centre and is equal parts zoo, natural history museum and botanical garden.

In between criss-crossing the city and snacking on Mexican conchas at La Estrella Bakery, I visited the San Xavier del Bac Mission. The historic white stucco church, a.k.a. the “white dove of the desert,” is part of the Tohono O’odham nation.

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Then it was on to the DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun. It was built by the late artist Ted DeGrazia who’s buried on the grounds of what’s now a national historic district and has a studio, gallery, house, chapel and gardens.

The gallery is also near the Mini Time Machine Museum of Miniatures, where I was struck by the unusual work of Russian micro-sculptor Salavat Fidai, who uses a small craft knife and microscope to create minuscule sculptures on the tips of pencils.

In an eternal search for quirk, I naturally road-tripped to Bowlin’s “The Thing” Travel Center, about an hour east of Tucson. For five bucks, you’ll read a wild story about aliens and dinosaurs and see the “Mystery of the Desert” in a darkened corner of the 12,000-square-foot museum that opened six years ago to properly honour something that has been Arizona’s weirdest roadside attraction since the 1950s.

Since fact is often stranger than fiction, I stopped in at Tuscon’s Hotel Congress, where a 1934 fire led to the capture of “Public Enemy Number One” John Dillinger and three of his gang members. The bank robbers had begged firefighters to retrieve their suitcases (which were stuffed with $23,816 in cash) and then tipped them so generously it aroused suspicion.

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I reminisced about that true crime tale at the hotel’s Cup Café while eating a vegan breakfast tamale with poblano cashew crema, and drinking a golden milk latte made with oat milk.  

That’s right – Tucson’s vegan-friendly food scene is firmly on trend.

My Poblano Verde Beni at Prep & Pastry came with stunning potatoes (steamed, flash-fried, smashed and spiced) and a prickly pear hibiscus drink called Cactus Annie. Over tacos at Seis Kitchen, I learned the menu of the “complete scratch kitchen” was inspired by Mexico’s six (seis) culinary regions.

I spent half my nights at the swish Loews Ventana Canyon Resort and the other half at the Downtown Clifton, a vintage motel turned boutique hotel near Carly Quinn Designs (a ceramic tile studio) and 5 Points, a restaurant/bakery that pays a living wage and prioritizes local and sustainable agriculture.

I thought about those admirable ethics over a breakfast salad before visiting El Tiradito – America’s only Catholic shrine to the soul of a sinner. In the 1870s, a ranch hand was caught in bed with his mother-in-law, murdered by his father-in-law and buried on unconsecrated ground in what’s now Barrio Viejo. The wishing shrine, whose name means “the Castaway,” is now a historical landmark that has helped keep development at bay.

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Families are celebrated more predictably at Rollies Mexican Patio, where Nana’s Tacos revolve around ground beef patties, peas and shredded lettuce. “People hate it or love it, but if you’re from Tucson, you know it,” chef-owner Mateo Otero confided. He grew up here eating those and the rolled tacos he has popularized as rollies.

One final meal worth noting was at Zio Peppe where Modern Aquarian artist Ashley White covered an outside wall with a “World City of Gastronomy” mural that celebrates the UNESCO nod, thousands of years of agricultural history, heritage ingredients like tepary beans, maize and chiltepíns (the genetic mother of all chiles), and dishes from some of the folks who are making the food scene happen here.

“Tucson has been a mecca for outdoor activities, hiking and whatnot,” co-owner Devon Sanner told me over a fun fusion meal of Elote Arancini and Ravioli Sonorense. “It’s now getting that same sort of attention for our gastronomy.”

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