Why Doesn’t Tucson’s Mexican Food Scene Get More National Attention?

Gustavo Arellano

March 6, 2018

In the fall of 2012, I discovered the best hot sauce in the United States in, of all places, Tucson.

I had just finished a lecture at the University of Arizona on my then-new book, Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. My host was Maribel Alvarez, a professor of anthropology at the school who is the executive program director for the Southwest Folklife Alliance. She documents food traditions of the Arizona-Sonora borderlands, and she sent me back home with a goody bag of regional delights: carne seca (sundried beef), tepary beans (a small, meaty legume grown by natives since time immemorial) and flour tortillas called sobaqueras that are the size of a basketball hoop.