Carlos Figueroa is focusing intently on what he says was once just an avocation—freshly made, small-batch tortillas using heirloom corn varieties that are centuries, perhaps even thousands of years old.
“I just wanted good corn tortillas, man,” said Figueroa, owner of Maiz Tucson, who began making tortillas by hand seven years ago. His day job was at a health research lab in this southern Arizona city, which is the home of the University of Arizona. Tucson is also America’s first City of Gastronomy, a UNESCO distinction that signifies the area’s devotion to its food heritage.
“These heritage foods are representative of many living traditions that thrive today and are a source of identity and cultural vitality for the people who live here,” the City of Gastronomy citation reads.
A mural outside Zio Peppe celebrates Tucson's UNESCO designation. (Courtesy of Zio Peppe)
“We call it the Tucson terroir,” said Devon Sanner, a local chef, advocate for the 2016 UNESCO designation, and cofounder of Zio Peppe, a superb new restaurant that offers a distinctive Italian-meets-Sonoran cuisine. Most memorably, mesquite flour lends a nutty depth to the Figgy Stardust Pizza, with its topping being honeyed cheese embellished with dried figs and pomegranate concentrate. For ingredients, Sanner calls on a regional refugee gleaning network, Iskashitaa, with members that gather and grind mesquite pods and, when they can, harvest figs and other fruit.
Locally harvested and ground mesquite flour lends a nutty depth to Figgy Stardust Pizza at Zio Peppe. The pie is topped with honeyed cheese embellished with dried figs and pomegranate concentrate. (Courtesy of Zio Peppe)
Friends and fellow chefs Mat Cable (left) and Devon Sanner opened Zio Peppe in April 2021. (Courtesy of Zio Peppe)
As with Iskashitaa, Carlos Figueroa’s avocation-turned-business illustrates what cultural heritage vitality looks like in daily life. He carefully acquires heirloom grain; nixtamalizes (an alkaline softening treatment to remove the corn seed shell) it himself; grinds it using volcanic stones to achieve a fine, velvet consistency; and turns that fresh masa into tortillas the very next day.
Local Flavor
Aside from heirloom corn tortillas, in Tucson, you may order a latte flavored with mesquite flour, chiltepin chile peppers, or prickly pear juice. You can top off a white-linen dinner of bison tenderloin with local-pecan gelato. Hotel guests can browse on-site citrus groves with oranges, grapefruits, limes, lemons, tangerines, kumquats, and more. Local confectioners include prickly pear and chiltepin chiles in their chocolates and candies.
Chefs, growers, food artisans—all embrace what’s known as “borderlands” food, combining the indigenous, Hispanic, and American heritage of the area. Having grown up in Tepic, Nayarit, in northern Mexico, Figueroa epitomizes the cultural blend.
After a lengthy sojourn in Mexico studying the art of tortillas in 2020 and 2021, he was back in Tucson, running a new batch of masa through a small machine that forms the tortillas one by one and spills them out onto a comal automático. This slowly rotating three-level griddle roasts the tortillas and shuffles them down to a collector where they stack up.
Although Figueroa favors Arizona-grown grain when he can get it—a kind called Pima corn available in the fall—he sometimes uses heirloom corn from Mexico, a variety called chalqueño paloma from Tlaxcala. The Winter morning sun beaming through a side window cast an ivory glow on the tortillas. The yeasty, sweet smell of the charred tortillas belied their simple composition—ground corn and water, nada más.
Carlos Figueroa of Maiz Tucson handmakes his tortillas with heirloom corn. (Eric Lucas)
Deep Roots
Heirloom corn is one of almost 100 different foodstuffs that are traditional in what cultural anthropologists call the Tucson Basin, the area south of the Santa Catalina Mountains, drained by the Santa Cruz River. In flat ground along the Santa Cruz, indigenous peoples were using irrigation to raise corn, beans, and squash—the famous “three sisters” of Meso-American agriculture—more than 4,000 years ago, one of the world’s oldest such areas. This history is celebrated today at the Mission Garden project, a recreation of the orchards and farmsteads that have fed Tucsonans for millennia.
(Courtesy of Visit Tucson)
While Carlos Figueroa said he just wanted good corn tortillas—the fine grind he applies to his heirloom masa yields silky tortillas—he acknowledged that it may have a deeper meaning than that.
“My girlfriend Laura says I can’t not do this,” he said, cradling a stack of fresh tortillas to be sacked up after they cool enough.
Figueroa sells them through community subscription farms, a small local tienda, and farmer’s markets.
“I am expressing my unsaid self,” he said.
So is Tucson, embracing a distinctive character that dates back four millennia and has been spiced and colored and broadened every century since. Although the City of Gastronomy designation isn’t as conspicuous or embedded in the Tucson lifestyle as, say, Napa Valley appellation is for wine, it underlies southern Arizona like the backing on a pioneer quilt—essential to the entire fabric of Sonoran life.
Desert Delicacies
Sonoran foods range from cactus to mesquite to corn and citrus. Here are the ones most easily found by visiting connoisseurs of regional delicacies.
Prickly Pears
Prickly pear cactus. (fischers/Shutterstock)
Anyone who’s ever visited the Southwest has seen these iconic cacti, their ping-pong paddle arms branching like candelabras and sporting, in fall and winter, conical fruits that are a fierce fuchsia color, as vivid as a desert sunset. The juice of these fruits—called tunas in Spanish—is widely used in jellies, bar drinks, candies, marinades, gelato, sorbets, and more.
Prickly pears can also be eaten fresh. They’re highly flavored, full of seeds, and must be handled with care, as tiny hair-like spines cover the fruit. I’ve picked them from west Texas to southern California, but one must use gloves and then brush off the spines with a towel. This difficulty and their easily-bruised nature are the reasons the fresh fruit is rarely seen for sale.
The green arms are also used for food, spines removed and the paddles cut into strips or bits and called nopales, which serve a similar function in soups and stews that okra does in southern cuisine.
Mesquite
Mesquite seed pods. (Kirk Dillard/Shutterstock)
Ground from the seed pods of the quintessential desert hardwood, mesquite flour lends a nut-like, mellow depth to foods. It’s largely an additive. You can find it in everything from pizza dough and bread to lattes to cookies.
Mesquite wood is also highly sought for fine, dark, durable furniture—and it’s the fuel of choice for barbecue and grilling from West Texas to Arizona.
One Tucson company, Whiskey del Bac, uses mesquite fire to smoke the barley for its Dorado and Old Pueblo (Tucson’s nickname) products—genuine smoky single-malts. The company’s whiskey is ubiquitous as a flavoring in Tucson fine dining menus.
Local distiller Whiskey del Bac uses mesquite fire to smoke the barley for its Dorado and Old Pueblo products—genuine smoky single-malts. (Courtesy of Visit Tucson)
Chiltepins and Other Chiles
Chiltepin peppers. (LMPark Photos/Shutterstock)
Tiny, round, peppercorn-like, and the color of an autumn moon, chiltepins peppers are ferocious chiles native to southern Arizona. Foragers pick them in the wild, although they’re also commercially grown. Aside from being quite hot (25 times hotter than a jalapeño), they have a distinctive smoky flavor that creates their surprising suitability to blend with coffee and chocolate.
Other chiles, such as poblanos (which make the best relleños), chiles de arból (hot and nutty), and serranos (like jalapeños but twice as hot) are common on Tucson menus.
Figs, Citrus, and More
Tangerines. (Vered sh/Shutterstock)
Cactus fruits were the mainstay of indigenous life here until Spanish missionaries brought their many other arid-land fruits from the old world—chiefly citrus, which has been a major industry in Tucson for decades. Orchards and trees dot the Tucson landscape, most memorably at a number of resort hotels where guests are welcome to pick the fruit during the winter and early spring.
Corn and Other Grains
Aside from heirloom corn, southern Arizona is the home of white Sonora wheat, a variety brought there 300 years ago by famed Jesuit missionary Eusebio Kino. Drought-hardy and adapted to desert alkaline soils, it enabled the popularity of the large wheat tortillas used for burritos in northernmost Mexico and across the United States. Almost eradicated from commercial cultivation a few decades ago, the heritage variety is now making a comeback and is widely used in Southern Arizona bakeries. Blended with corn at Barrio Bread, it makes a robust sandwich loaf named “Azteca.”
At Barrio Bread, baker Don Guerra crafts artisan loaves with locally grown heritage grains, including white Sonora wheat. (Courtesy of Visit Tucson)
If You Go
Barrio Charro
This lunch cafe uses Barrio Bread’s wheat-and-corn Azteca loaf for its “Tucsonified” sandwiches, as well as prickly pear barbecue sauce. BarrioCharro.com
PY Steakhouse
The fine dining room at Casino del Sol, a Pascua Yaqui tribe enterprise, offers a seasonal menu that includes Arizona polenta, Green Valley pecans, and local citrus and chiles. CasinoDelSol.com/dining/py-steakhouse
Maiz Tucson
Look for Carlos Figueroa’s heirloom corn tortillas at Five Points Market and Time Market. MaizTucson.com
Zio Peppe
Perhaps the premier advocate of Tucson terroir, look for mesquite and local figs in the pizza, elote arancini with lime crema, red chile lasagna, and ancho chile braised short ribs and gnocchi. ZioPeppeAZ.com
Zio Peppe's Lasagne Sonorense, made with chorizo, red chile sauce, chile con queso, ricotta, and spinach. (Courtesy of Zio Peppe)
Cheri’s Desert Harvest
This local confectioner’s candies, preserves, and syrups include prickly pear, red lime, red chile, pomegranate, and jalapeño. CherisDesertHarvest.com
La Chaiteria
This Latin bistro has prickly pear, chiltepin, and mesquite lattes, as well as a wide assortment of Southwestern brunch plates featuring many different chiles. LaChaiteria.com
The latte menu at La Chaiteria features some surprising local ingredients. (Eric Lucas)
Eric Lucas is a retired associate editor at Alaska Beyond Magazine and lives on a small farm on a remote island north of Seattle, where he grows organic hay, beans, apples, and squash.
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