Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [200]
Start with a wafer-thin tortilla crisp of cheese and green chile strips, presented on a silvery pedestal so all at the table can pull away slices. This crisp is among the thinnest and tastiest in a neighborhood full of excellent crisps. The main menu is a broad one, featuring all the familiar tacos, burros, enchiladas, and chimichangas, plus a few items that are truly special. These include off-the-bone turkey topped with a spectacular spicy-rich dark mole sauce or, on occasion, the similar sauce known as pipian, which includes pumpkin seeds. Our Tucson friends the Sparks, who directed us to this out-of-the-way gem, are hooked on the shrimp or flounder Vera Cruz and they also insisted on ordering a topopo salad—an amazing sight. Topopo means “volcano,” and El Torero’s topopos are great conical mounds of lettuce and other vegetables packed with your choice of chicken, shrimp, chili, guacamole, or carne seca, the sides of the mound columned by logs of hard cheese.
Feig’s
5071 E. 5th St.
520–325–2255
Tucson, AZ
L | $
Feig’s is a kosher grocery store, and while people come here to shop, they also come to eat. At the back of the store is a counter where you stand to order lunch. The short menu includes baked chicken quarters, stuffed cabbage rolls, gefilte fish and chopped liver, matzoh ball soup and knishes. There are smoked-fish salads and baked-here bagels and bialys.
We came for the corned beef sandwich because food authority David Rosengarten had proclaimed it America’s best (and a large sign hanging above the grocery shelves reiterates his claim). We tried a jumbo, regular fat (you have the option of getting it cut lean). It arrived surrounded by excellent dill pickles. We had not specified what kind of bread—the menu lists rye, marble rye, and pumpernickel, all made here—and this one arrived on marble rye that was fresh and attractive, but fairly flaccid. The corned beef itself was sliced medium-thin. It was warm, tender, and juicy, mildly spiced. It is good corned beef, probably the best in Tucson and for miles around…but in our opinion, it is not in the same league as what you’ll get at Katz’s in New York, Manny’s Coffee Shop in Chicago, or Shapiro’s Deli in Indianapolis.
Other sandwich ingredients available include tongue, brisket, pastrami, corned beef, and salami, and all-beef hot dogs are served in made-here rolls.
Gus Balon’s
6027 E. 22nd St.
520–747–7788
Tucson, AZ
BL | $
According to Tucson tipster Ron Spark, customers arrive in discrete groups throughout the day at Gus Balon’s. First come the police and fire-fighters, after them other municipal employees, then office workers, and, by lunchtime, teachers. We haven’t hung around this excellent breakfast-and-lunch café long enough to have seen the procession ourselves, but we’ve had enough breakfasts to recommend it as one of Tucson’s bests.
There is nothing exotic or odd on the menu, unless you count the size of the huge signature sweet roll that is served warm with a big glob of butter on the plate. And we don’t know any other place that can elevate an ordinary breakfast sandwich into the stratosphere the way Gus does. It’s sausage, egg, cheese, and bacon, all of which are fine, but the homemade bun makes all the difference. Eggs come with American fries that include some crunchy bits from the griddle.
Gus Balon’s is also known as a source of first-rate pie. One day’s list included banana, chocolate banana, chocolate peanut butter banana, chocolate peanut butter, chocolate, coconut, lemon, butterscotch, blueberry, peach, raspberry, peanut butter, pineapple, apple, cherry, raspberry, peach, and raisin. Plus the crumb-topped ones: apple-cranberry,