Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [203]
We were strangers when we first stepped in the door of Old Smoky’s several years ago, but were soon drawn into conversations among the staff and pancake eaters about everything from the current price of cranberries to major detours on the road ahead. Before we knew it, we had put away about a dozen cups of coffee and the morning was mostly gone. It was just the sort of genial café experience that makes Route 66 through Arizona a necessary course for any Roadfood scholar.
Pico de Gallo
2618 S. 6th Ave.
520–623–8775
South Tucson, AZ
LD | $
People are always asking us to name our favorite restaurant. It’s an impossible challenge, akin to asking Hugh Hefner to single out his favorite Playmate. It is hardly any easier to name number one in any one category of eatery (barbecue, fried chicken, meat-and-three), but we have little difficulty choosing the single Mexican restaurant we like most in all the USA. It is Pico de Gallo in South Tucson.
This informal, stand-in-line-and-place-your-order tacqueria started as a street-corner taco stand and has grown into several small dining rooms. Nothing about the increase in size has impacted the magnificent food. Tacos, constructed in rugged made-here corn tortillas, are magnificent, available with carne asada and birria (meat stew) or more exotic ingredients such as tongue, manta ray, and beef cheeks. We love the coctel de elote (corn cocktail), which is not quite the beverage its name suggests. It does come in a large Styrofoam cup, the cup filled with an extraordinary stew of warm corn kernels, drifts of soft melted cheese, hot chili, and lime. Spoon it up like soup; it is corn-sweet and lime-zesty. The menu also lists burros, quesadillas, and tamales by the dozen.
Marshaled in a refrigerated case at the counter are plastic red cups filled with the restaurant’s namesake, pico de gallo. In this case, the “beak of the rooster” is a salty chile powder mix that is sprinkled on top of a gorgeous bouquet of giant chunks of watermelon, coconut, pineapple, mango, and jicama, the whole shebang stuck with four or five long wooden picks for fetching the pieces you want. The red-hot spice elicits the fruit’s sweetness and packs its own lip-tingling punch. It is a heady culinary collusion like nothing else we’ve ever eaten.
In addition to house-made lemonade and horchata (rice milk), the beverage selection includes Coca-Cola imported from Mexico. It’s very different from the U.S. kind: spicier and more syrupy, a good companion for hot food.
Next door to Pico de Gallo is a place that we have a hard time defining because no one there speaks a bit of English, but we highly recommend it for dessert. We believe it is called Paleteria Diana. It is two separate rooms, one of which serves some hot food and big cups of ice topped with sweet-syrup fruits and fillings, the other serving homemade ice cream bars and Mexican ice cream in countless flavors.
Sugar Bowl
4005 N. Scottsdale Rd.
602–946–0051
Scottsdale, AZ
LD | $
A while back, Roadfood.com user Charlene Kingston wrote to tell us, “The Sugar Bowl is the name of the ice cream counter that [cartoon character] Dennis the Menace visits, named after this restaurant. Hank Ketcham [Dennis’s creator] used to come and visit Bill Keane (creator of the syndicated cartoon Family Circus), who lived in Scottsdale near this famous local landmark, and he used the name in his strip as an inside joke with Keane.” So not only is it a good place to eat ice cream: it is a cultural landmark, too!
The Sugar Bowl has been Old Town’s go-to source for soda fountain treats since