The Dining Experience

Tucson is an eclectic City and its food is as varied and exciting as the City itself. It is a culinary delight, a foodie’s dream. There are plenty of places to eat and buy food and plenty of different cuisines to choose from. There are also a variety of types of places to dine out – breakfast/lunch diners (open 6am-2pm); restaurants for dinner; cafes; places for food ‘to go’; and ‘all you can eat’ buffets.

Every week in the free City guide, the ‘Tucson Weekly’ www.tucsonweekly.com there’s a Chow Scan, which is a guide to eating out in the City and contains ads with special offers for diners to save money with a coupon, offering 10% off or promoting a lunch or evening when something is a special price. The Chow Scan is also broken down into categories of cuisine – Chinese, Asian, Middle Eastern, Americana, Mexican, Italian, Greek, Thai, vegetarian friendly, and more. Different places are listed each week with name, address, a description of the place and typical menu with a price guide: one $ symbol for the cheapest places to 4 $ symbols to the most expensive. We tend to get to the $ or $$ symbol places. Its good fun to read these pages and plan to get to a particular place that we don’t know is reachable by bicycle or bus and offers what we want to eat.

Eating out in the US generally is a regular, daily event for the whole family and is certainly not a once a week privileged affair at the end of a busy Friday like it is on the UK. Americans eat out all the time and can be seen clutching a coffee cup and drinking from it wherever they go. There are some good value meals which have plentiful portions - Yes some Americans eat it all, and some, and then get fat, but not everyone does and leftovers can easily be taken home in a ‘to go’ box which makes tomorrow’s lunch all taken care of.

Service is very good, as your waiter/waitress’s income relies on it. They call themselves ‘servers’, often give you their names and are at your beck and call throughout your meal. Drink orders are dealt with immediately as you are seated, coffee is continually topped up and hot water is added to tea, iced water is always made available. We’re sometimes amazed at how much our server remembers without writing anything down. The customer is always right and everything is done with a smile. Your part of this very enjoyable ritual is to tip 15-20% on top of the check. This tip is often the only wage they earn and they accept it gratefully and wish you a nice day.

It wasn’t until 1912 that Arizona became the 48th State in the Union AND Tucson became American rather than Mexican. Many Mexican/Americans have a family line here going way back before this date, and because of it’s 60mile closeness to the Mexican border today, Tucson is particularly good for Mexican food. The area of South Tucson is an Hispanic one with a large Mexican population. This is the best place to go for Sonoran Mexican food in restaurants, which will always be frequented by Mexicans and will inevitably lead to a wait for a table unless you go early or late – everyone eats at 7pm in the US. You can, however, find good Mexican food all over the City. La Indita in downtown on 4th Avenue is a treasure, also serving Michoacan Tarascan Indian food. We have also been to Frank’s at night where it becomes Francisco’s and morphs from an all American breakfast diner to a Michoacan Mexican cantina – it’s a very meaty menu but does good hot shrimp and free help yourself black beans and salsas ranging from very hot to hot, with one cooler one that’s green and looks avocado based. Last night we went with our friends Dan and Barb to El Sambroso just West of downtown. Here we tried ceviche for the first time – a cold appetizer with salsa, chopped up avocado, shrimp (prawns) and cilantro, or coriander. We had a great meal with me having grilled fish with salsa and peppers served with refried beans and seasoned rice. Dave had fish tacos – 3 folded corn tortillas containing small pieces of fish with salad and salsa on top, with beans and rice also. When you sit down at the table, you get a basket of tortilla chips and salsa to dip into whilst you are waiting for the rest of the food to arrive. When the basket’s empty you can get more! The leftover ceviche and some chips came home with us in a ‘to go’ bag.

Most bars serve Mexican influenced appetizers such as guacamole, chips (tortilla chips, not as in fish and) and salsa and Quesadilla - 2 flour tortillas sandwiched together with cheese, onions, tomatoes, hot peppers and salsa. A lot of the bars also do really excellent happy hours, typically from 4-7pm where these appetizers are ‘half off’ making them around $3 or $4 with 1$ off beer to match. Old Pueblo Grille is one of our most frequented places for happy hour – they serve ‘Raptor’ ale on tap, a good deal at $3.50 a pint and 8% alcohol. We like to go there with our friend Sally, it started as a Friday thing but has become any day is happy hour day (but not everyday!).

The all-you-can-eat buffets are a great American invention – pay one price and once you are in you can keep eating ‘til you can’t eat any more. Maybe just one more wafer thin mint! A lot of places are run this way in Tucson and indeed all over the States. If buffets ever came to Bideford or further afield, the place would probably not last long as everyone would go there all the time and eat them out of house and business. Yes, we have sat in our favourite Chinese ‘Super A buffet’, where we go for late lunch ($7) as they serve tofu at this time but not in the evening for dinner. We have watched people there, who are very fat, go up and fill their plate time and again but not all customers eat so much. There’s also a soup, salad, pizza, pasta place called ‘Sweet Tomatoes’ which is best for salads – a long line of different cold things (olives, beetroot, raw veg chopped up, red onion, kidney beans, bacon bits, sunflower seeds, to name a few) to load on your plate with about 6 different dressings, blue cheese being easily the best and a firm favourite with the Greens. In fact there always seems to be a salad option as if it’s subsidised as a way of keeping people healthy.
What about the pie? – apple, blueberry, cherry, razzleberry, Lemon Meringue, Chocolate, Pecan, need I go on. Always served ‘a la mode’, with ice cream, rather than with cream. There’s no real dairy cream here in Tucson and probably in the whole State, but that’s another blog! To return to an earlier blog mention, we did make it to Marie Callender’s February pie sale and we did get around to purchasing 2 pies, each were $5.99 plus 60c for the pie dish plus tax (usual price anything between $9 and $12). The blueberry is in the freezer – we did leave it a little late in the month - and the Lemon Meringue is about finished, most excellent. Pie is made on site at some of the breakfast places, and where this happens, they also tend to make their own bread as well to serve up with eggs and potatoes in the morning.
We still have a few places to try or re-visit before we come home to Devon: Govinda’s Natural Foods Buffet ‘come enjoy our courtyard with waterfalls, peacocks and parrots’; India Oven for curry – this we voted the best Indian food in Tucson when we lived here and we haven’t eaten enough curry on this trip (but still no match for Imrans in Northampton); Garland, where we have only been once (now twice!), who serve up wonderful omelettes for breakfast with fillings such as broccoli, sundried tomatoes and asiago cheese or feta, spinach, artichoke and eggplant (aubergine).

Chow down Tucson!