In just a few days, I’ve met several of the city’s food and beverage entrepreneurs, all with Tucson roots, who are collaboratively building into a budding gastronomy destination distinguished by local flavors from prickly pear and mesquite to red and green chilis.
Read More
Tucson’s designation as a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy last year seems to be paying the dividends the city had hoped for.
Tucson is the only city in the United States with the distinction. Eight other cities have the designation worldwide.
While the estimates on how much the designation has helped the tourism economy and the economy in general are not yet known, early indications are it could be substantial.
The desert surrounding Tucson, Arizona, is filled with soaring Saguaro cactus, their bright red fruits long a delicacy here. The abundance of this native food is one reason why, last December, Tucson became America’s first Unesco city of gastronomy, joining just 18 others worldwide, despite having fewer fancy restaurants than many US cities, and being one of its poorest.
“It’s a city whose food heritage is a big part of its identity,” says Gary Nabhan, director of the University of Arizona’s Center for Regional Food Studies. “Yes we have award-winning chefs, but the vitality of our farm-to-table food system is a key reason why we were recognised.”
Read MoreWhen Tucson became the first city in the United States to be designated as a City of Gastronomy last December, one of the few obligations it consented to was to participate in international exchanges through the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.
But just what would we find of tangible use to our community from the different food systems, educational strategies, and native cuisines of cities in Iran, South Korea, Brazil, Norway, Turkey, Spain, Japan, Sweden, Thailand, and Italy?
Read More
Tucson’s title as a UNESCO World City of Gastronomy — the first in this country to receive the label — isn’t just about food.
It’s about our food system, and the honor came because Tucson has a local, interconnected and ancient one.
Read More
In December 2015, Tucson, Arizona, was named a City of Gastronomy in the Creative Cities Network by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). It is the first city in the U.S. to receive the designation.
Gary Nabhan, W.K. Kellogg Chair in Southwest Borderlands Food and Water Security at The University of Arizona, explains what that means for the city.
Read More
Tucson has been in the international spotlight since December, when it became the first and only city in the United States to be designated a City of Gastronomy by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Tucson got the nod not only for its thriving culinary scene, but also for its rich agricultural history and its potential to incubate sustainable food-related businesses.
Read More
You probably heard the news. After a two-year application process, on Dec. 11, 2015, Tucson joined the international Creative Cities Network of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as a World City of Gastronomy, the first such designation in the United States.
Read More
The designation puts Tucson in a global spotlight — we’re one of just 18 such cities worldwide and the fist in North America — and drives home a point that travelers have been making for decades.
“Tucson is a destination city for people who love great food,” said Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild.
Read More
Every day, tens of thousands of cars barrel down Interstate 10, a highway that hugs the western edge of Tucson, Arizona. Many of these drivers may not realize that they are driving past a region with one of the longest food heritages on the continent. Often considered the birthplace of Tucson itself, this swath of Sonoran Desert nestled at the base of the Tucson Mountains is where the O’odham people settled, planting crops of maize, tepary beans and other produce amid a landscape punctuated by prickly pear cacti and sagebrush
Read More
We’ve known it—those of us who eat here have tasted it. We’ve felt it in the soil under our fingernails. We’ve seen it in the magenta stain of prickly pear. We’ve heard it in the hammer mill grinding sweet speckled mesquite; smelled it in the exhale of steam from a crowded pot of tamales.
Tucson has always been a city of gastronomy. Today, it was designated a World City of Gastronomy by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), becoming the first city in the United States to receive such a designation.
Read More
Tucson prides itself on being the metropolis in North America with the oldest continuous history of agriculture within its city limits: 4,100 year old corn remains and 3,500 year old irrigation ditches can be found just a few miles from its downtown. While such an extraordinary cultural heritage of cultivating and processing native foods certainly matters to UNESCO, the City of Gastronomy honor came on the basis the city’s capacity for entrepreneurial innovations grounded in social and ecological values unique to this place.
Read More
When Tucson was selected as the first U.S. Creative City of gastronomy by UNESCO last week, its long history of cultivated crops was cited as part of the reason for its designation.
Road builders, sewer plant operators and backhoe operators can share some of the glory, along with the archaeologists who uncovered evidence of early agriculture in the Tucson Basin, said archaeologist James Vint.
Read More
Tucson was recognized last week by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, as one of 47 cities honored for their cultural accomplishments. In the case of the Southern Arizona city, the recognition was for food.
It became the first U.S. city recognized for food by UNESCO. Ensenada, Mexico also was recognized for food along with seven other cities. Recognitions also were handed out to cities for their work in cultural and folk arts, film, design, literature, media arts and music.
Read More
It’s official: Tucson is indeed a world capital of gastronomy. UNESCO announced their 2015 additions to the Creative Cities Network, and after the second year applying, Tucson’s application to be recognized as a gastronomic site was approved.
As hashed out in last week’s Tucson Weekly cover story, Tucson’s application for the honor hinged largely on the region’s 4,000 years of continuous agriculture, progressive native seed line preservation programs and the huge impact food-related jobs and businesses have on the local economy. Those reasons, among many others, were enough for the global organization to add Tucson to the network.
Read More