Hi all We are spending a week in Tucson and would appreciate recommendations for mom and pop mexican restaurants, food trucks and southwestern cuisine as well. Thanks for your help
Where in Tucson are you staying? Will you have a car? How far do you want to travel?
mom and pop describes just about every Mexican restaurant in town, which is a lot, so any narrowing down of tastes would be helpful.
This may be useful to whet your appetite, and it's recent. https://tucsonfoodie.com/2017/01/26/v...
Thanks for your reply. Yes we have a car. Just wondering what people's favorites are. We love just about everything as long as its real
A few of my current favorites.
Food trucks
Aqui con El Nene at Wetmore and Flowing Wells
What a Burro at Irvington and 12th Ave for tacos percheron and bacon wrapped burros
Cocteleria La Palma at 22nd and 6th Ave, I love their shrimp taco quesadilla
Anita Street Market for takeout (has a couple of tables outside). Their basic red chile is superb. If you are self catering both their green and red salsas are really good (and pretty spicy)
Basic restaurants
Birrieria Guadalajara at 22nd and 4th Ave (for the Birria)
Tacqueria Pico de Gallo on S 6th Ave
The Quesadillas at Grant and Craycroft (convenient if you are heading up Mount Lemmon). There is extra parking behind.
Seis at Mercado San Augustin is more refined and a wonderful location for eating outdoors. Food is excellent and The Mercado also includes some of the best coffee in town at Presta and Mexican pastries at La Estrella.
Another more upmarket restaurant, with a lovely patio is Poco and Moms on Tanque Verde. The only New Mexican restaurant in town, also on the way to Mount Lemmon.
For an unusual experience go to the Tohono O'Odham swap meet on Drexel and Westover Ave. Open every Saturday and Sunday. Lots of food stalls, most seem to start closing down by noon. If you are adventurous try the buche, tripas and cabeza tacos from Taco Rustica. As good as any I've had.
My husband & I spent a week in Tucson last May (first time visitors) and "yelped" for a closeby Mexican restaurant for breakfast on our way to golf one morning. It turned up Taqueria Juanitos. It was quite wonderful! We still say that we would seek it out again if we find ourselves back in Tucson!
+1 for Seis, Anita St. Market, and Poco and Mom's (I prefer the original dive on Kolb-their waitresses are unbeatable). I also like Cafe Poco Cosa and Elvira's (although I like the one in Tubac more than the one in Tucson). The $2 carne asada taco at El Guero Canelo can't be beat (but don't bother w/ their chicken taco or the Sonoran hot dog, which is vastly over-rated, IMHO).
Baja Cafe is not Mexican, but has really unusual, good breakfast bennies and taco- and burrito-ish dishes. Reforma is not very Mexican, but you can't beat their Taco Tuesdays. I haven't been to Boca Taco, but have heard good things about it. Believe it or not, my favorite fish tacos are at B-Line Cafe (and I've tried them everywhere!).
I'll second the choice of Poco and Mom's for NM style food. We prefer the old location on Kolb, and you might want to keep a cooler and some ice packs in your vehicle for the leftovers -- their serving portions are gigantic.
Another interesting place for breakfast/brunch is Oink. Yeah, eight different flavors of bacon -- health food at its finest!
For pizza & beer we like Fresco on Speedway Blvd near the University.
Sorry that I'm late on this reply but I thought the Tucson part of this website was inactive. I'm happy to see some of you are still out there.
Anyway, all the suggestions sound great and we're ready to try some new places. A clarification on Café Poca Cosa; it's white tablecloth Mexican and not what I'd call Mom & Pop. What used to be called Little Poca Cosa fits the description: It's loud music, no phone, mandatory hugs and cash only. Open from 7AM to 2PM, Monday thru Friday. It's run by the two sisters of the lady that runs the other CPC. And they've changed the name to The Little One. Probably our favorite for the 5 months that we spend in Tucson.
I also second Pico de Gallo and the Kolb location of Poco & Moms. I won't go to the Tanque Verde location.
Thank you to all who took the time to respond to my query! You all definitely led us in the right direction. We were not able to hit all these places but made it to many. Poco and Mom's was our favorite! and we agree about Kolb being the better location. We ate there twice for breakfast and it was so delicious and flavorful. I will miss the tamale and eggs. We went to the Tanque Verde location for dinner and were less thrilled for sure.
Sorry to say but we felt El Charro must be living on its laurels. It seemed poorly run (we were both in the restaurant business for years) and lackluster. On the bright side, we listened to a wonderful guitarist while we were waiting for our table, downloaded his music, and he was the soundtrack to the rest of our trip.
El Canelo Guerro changed my mind about hotdogs with toppings. What a great place.
Loved Birriera Guadalajara altho they looked at me like I had three heads when I asked for goat. No matter, the pozole, menudo and chicken soup did us just fine!
We got a kick out of Oink.
Loved La Cocina and went there twice because it was very near where we were staying. Fun place to hang out and we met nice people there.
In addition, we enjoyed having a drink at Hotel Congress and people watching, the margarita at Elvira, the oatmeal at Food Conspiracy, and Tucson in general. We will be moving there eventually!!
Side note: took a trip to Sedona. Of course it was all about the landscape but the town is such a tourist trap. We did have a nice dinner of mesquite grilled elk chops at the Cowboy Club, but next time would stay in Cottonwood and just eat BBQ at Hog Wild. That was really good.
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