Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [199]
Add to that the other AZ-Mex fare on this merry menu and you have a restaurant that is hard to resist. It’s not much for looks: décor is piñatas and beer signs. But who needs mood-making ambience when you can choose from among chiles relleños, enchiladas, burritos, and a fragile-crusted Navajo red beef popover that are all dishes to remember? On the side come super-savory refried beans. We are especially fond of the machaca, aka dried beef, that is available in tacos, burritos, and flautas. For dessert? How about a chocolate chimichanga?
Service is homey, meaning sometimes slow and sometimes brisk. The grandma in residence is friendly, but not cloyingly so.
El Charro
311 North Ct.
520–622–5465
Tucson, AZ
LD | $$
El Charro opened in 1922 and created many of the dishes that are now taken for granted as classic Mexican-American fare. The tostada grande, first made here by founder Monica Flinn, is a broad cheese crisp known on local menus as a Mexican pizza. Most people get it with a veneer of creamy melted cheese on top; other options include green chiles, guacamole, air-dried beef, and refried beans. El Charro’s round-the-world version is a majestic appetizer, served on a pedestal, garnished with fresh basil leaves.
El Charro’s carne seca (dried beef) is cured high above the patio in back of the restaurant, where strips of thin-sliced tenderloin hang in an open metal cage. Suspended on ropes and pulleys, the cage sways in the breeze over the heads of customers, wafting a perfume of lemon and garlic marinade into the Arizona air. Sautéed after it is air-dried, carne seca is customarily served in concert with sweet onions, hot chiles, and tomatoes, making an explosion of flavor like no other food. El Charro has a full menu of tacos, enchiladas, and chiles relleños, plus such rarer regional specialties as enchilada Sonorese (a patty of fried cornmeal garnished with chili) and chalupas (small cornmeal canoes filled with chili, meat, or chicken and whole beans). Beyond the indisputable goodness of these meals, the kitchen offers a full repertoire of nutritionally enlightened fare—lo-cal, lo-fat, good for you, and good tasting!
El Charro is noisy and sociable, almost always packed with tourists, Tucsonians, health nuts, and burrito hounds who spoon up fiery salsa picante with corn chips and drink Tecate beer served in the can with a wedge of lime on top. Mariachi music sets the mood as the sturdy wood floors virtually shake with the crowds and the air fills with the inviting aromas of hot tostadas grandes. Wall décor is a kaleidoscope of vintage south-of-the-border advertisements, straw sombreros and rawhide bullwhips, and many years’ worth of El Charro calendars, many of which feature melodramatic scenes of Mexican horsemen (known as charros), proud steeds, and pretty maidens all making flirty eyes at each other amidst stormy landscapes. The calendars are a house trademark, and a good memento of the high spirits of an El Charro meal.
El Torero
231 E. 26th St.
520–622–9534
South Tucson, AZ
LD (closed Tues) | $$
South Tucson is surrounded by the City of Tucson but legally and culturally separate. In this part of town, buildings are festooned with brilliant painted tiles, streets hum with low riders cruising in their chopped-roof custom caruchas, and at least a dozen different restaurants serve Mexican food that most of us gringos have never encountered.
One of the best is El Torero, a place that is all too easy to drive right past. Despite a sign on 4th Avenue, a set-back location off 26th Street makes it seem nearly hidden. If you do realize that it exists, chances are good that you will assume it isn’t open for business. The front door of the pink-painted building, far at the back of the parking lot, is inconspicuous to say the least. From the outside, it looks like a tiny place, perhaps abandoned a while back.
Once you push that door open, you instantly realize you have entered a very inviting