Celebrating the foods, stories, and traditions that make Tucson’s culinary heritage unique

What makes a dish distinctly Tucson?

Tucson Heritage Dishes is a community-driven initiative of our Resilience Kitchen program created to document, celebrate, and safeguard the foods that tell the story of Tucson and the Arizona Sonora borderlands.

Built with community input

As part of the project, Tucson City of Gastronomy hosted a community workshop inviting Tucsonans to review the proposed heritage dishes and ingredients, share their knowledge, challenge assumptions, and help us draft a series of recipes.

That community input helped shape the booklet you see today.

From Tucson to the Slow Food Ark of Taste

The project also has a larger goal: identifying Tucson and Santa Cruz Valley heritage foods that may be nominated to the Slow Food Ark of Taste, an international catalog that recognizes distinctive foods with deep connections to place, culture, history, and traditional knowledge.

The booklet brings together foods and recipes proposed new candidates. From heritage ingredients such as prickly pear, chiltepín, mesquite, and heritage grains to prepared foods including Sonoran flat enchiladas, cheese crisps, capirotada, pan de cemita, guacavaqui, and more. The final page also identifies several foods whose nomination would depend on approval from our neighboring tribes.

Explore the Tucson Heritage Dishes

Read the booklet below to discover the ingredients, dishes, histories, and traditions being explored for recognition. Published August 30th.

This project is part of Tucson City of Gastronomy’s Resilience Kitchen and is funded in part by the Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area