The plates that define Scottsdale: what they are, and where to eat the canonical version.
The plates that define Scottsdale: what they are, where they came from, and where to eat the canonical version.
A bacon-wrapped hot dog grilled and tucked into a soft bolillo-style roll, then piled with pinto beans, tomato, onion, mayonnaise, mustard and jalapeno salsa. It is the street food of southern Arizona.
Where to try it: Chispa's Fast & Fresh
Price: $7
The Sonoran hot dog is a style that began in Hermosillo, capital of the Mexican state of Sonora, in the late 1980s by Wikipedia's account, though some theorize it existed as early as the 1940s. Street vendors called dogueros sell it from carts, and it crossed into Arizona, where a 2009 estimate counted over 200 places serving it in Tucson and more in Phoenix. In 2018 El Guero Canelo won a James Beard America's Classics award for its Sonoran dogs.
Watch out for: Gluten, Eggs, Mustard
A burro filled with shredded meat, beans and cheese, folded into a package and deep-fried until the flour tortilla shatters. Arizona claims it, and Tucson and Phoenix still argue about who fried the first one.
Where to try it: Los Olivos Mexican Patio, Ajo Al's Agua Caliente Plaza, Jalapeno Inferno
Price: $15-22
Nobody can prove who first fried a burro. Tucson's El Charro Cafe, opened by Monica Flin in 1922, tells of a burro dropped into the fryer, an accident Wikipedia places in the early 1950s. Macayo's founder Woody Johnson said he fried burritos as an experiment in Phoenix in 1946. Folklorist Jim Griffith recalls chimichangas at Tucson's Old Pascua Village in the mid-1950s, and a Mexican diplomat in Tucson told a Zocalo writer the first likely came from northern Mexico.
Watch out for: Gluten, Milk
A big flour tortilla brushed with butter, covered in melted cheese and baked until the edges blister and crackle. Arizona Mexican restaurants serve it as the first plate on the table, cut like a pizza.
Where to try it: Los Olivos Mexican Patio, Ajo Al's Agua Caliente Plaza, Habaneros Mexican Grill & Cantina
Price: $10-16
A cheese crisp is an open-faced flour tortilla covered in shredded cheese and broiled until crisp. Wikipedia notes that most Phoenix-area and Tucson-area Mexican restaurants serve it as an appetizer, yet it is rarely found outside Arizona. No inventor is recorded. Visit Arizona says the Reynoso family has served cheese crisps from their grandmother's recipes since the late 1930s, first in Globe-Miami and now in Tempe, and the Houston Chronicle credits Tucson's El Minuto, founded in 1936, with exemplary cheese crisps among its original recipes.
Watch out for: Gluten, Milk
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Thin steak grilled hard over a hot mesquite fire, then chopped small and rolled into flour tortillas or served as a plate. It is the main beef dish of Sonora and of the Arizona taquerias that grew from it.
Where to try it: Los Olivos Mexican Patio, Ajo Al's Agua Caliente Plaza, Habaneros Mexican Grill & Cantina, Jalapeno Inferno
Price: $18-28
Sonora is cattle country, and beef is its main meat. Visit Arizona describes carne asada as thin sails of steak grilled hard over a hot mesquite fire, then chopped small. The cooking crossed the border with Sonoran families, and Tucson and Phoenix now sell it from taquerias, trucks and sit-down rooms as tacos, burros and plates. A Tucson food guide notes that everyone claims their grandparent's version is the best, so no single origin story exists.
Watch out for: Gluten
Shredded, dry-style beef warmed through and rolled into a flour tortilla the size of a dinner plate. In Sonoran-style Arizona restaurants a burro holds little else, sometimes only beef and a few pinto beans.
Where to try it: Jalapeno Inferno, Los Olivos Mexican Patio
Price: $13-15
Machaca was originally dried, spiced beef rehydrated and pounded tender, a preserving method of northern Mexico's ranchers and cowboys, and Wikipedia says it is known mainly in northern Mexico and southern Arizona, California and New Mexico. In Tucson and south, it is almost always prepared dry, and carne seca is another name for it in Sonora. Roving Decanter reports that machaca burros are ubiquitous in Sonoran-style Arizona restaurants. Visit Arizona calls sun-dried machaca a nearly lost art kept alive at a few rooms.
Watch out for: Gluten, Eggs
A wheat tortilla rolled paper thin and griddled until it blisters, soft enough to wrap a burro and wide enough to cover a plate. Sonora is wheat country, so flour is the default at Arizona's Sonoran-style tables.
Where to try it: Los Olivos Mexican Patio, Ajo Al's Agua Caliente Plaza
Price: $13-18
Slow Food USA's Ark of Taste entry says White Sonora wheat arrived in Arizona with Spanish missionaries and made a stretchy dough that was instrumental in the development of the flour tortilla. Pima farmers began growing it, and in the 1800s they became Arizona's first food exporters. Visit Arizona says flour tortillas are king in Sonora, often enriched with lard, and Roving Decanter reports that Arizona's Sonoran-style restaurants assume you want flour.
Watch out for: Gluten
A tamale made from fresh white corn rather than dried masa, folded around cheese and green chile and steamed in the husk. It is sweet, soft and almost custardy, and a Sonoran summer tradition.
Where to try it: Los Olivos Mexican Patio, Jalapeno Inferno
Price: $8-12
A column on tucson.com's Big Jim blog explains that southern Arizona has two main kinds of tamal: red ones stuffed with meat and made especially at Christmas, and green corn tamales, or tamales de elote, which are traditionally summer fare, made from fresh white corn. Many restaurants now serve them all year. VisitPhoenix describes Phoenix's El Bravo, in business over 40 years, as serving authentic Sonoran tamales with green corn among them, and Carolina's, a Phoenix institution since 1968, as making Sonoran-style tamales.
Watch out for: Milk
A margarita colored fuchsia by prickly pear syrup, the juice of the cactus fruit that ripens across the Sonoran Desert. The syrup adds sweetness and a berry-melon note to lime and tequila.
Where to try it: Rusty Spur Saloon
Prickly pear fruit, called tunas, is foraged in the Sonoran Desert and boiled into jams, jellies and syrups, and Visit Arizona says the syrup is mixed with tequila for a twist on the margarita. The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community's O'odham Action News says the O'odham and Piipaash have gathered the fruit, I:ibhai, for generations, with the common hard fruits ripe in July and August. Sources do not name an inventor of the drink.
Beef cooked over live mesquite fire, the way Sonoran ranch kitchens and Arizona parrillas do it, with a sweet, resinous smoke and a hard char. Sliced to order and eaten with tortillas, salsa and lime.
Where to try it: Pistoleros Parrilla, Mesquite Fresh Street Mex
Price: $42-72
Visit Arizona counts mesquite-fired grills among the trademarks of Sonoran cooking and says grilling over mesquite wood or charcoal is common for meat, fish and vegetables in restaurants, taquerias, trucks and backyards. The tree is far older as food: Archaeology Southwest records that people ground its pods into flour and that the Tohono O'odham calendar names a month for the mesquite bean harvest. Old Town's Pistoleros Parrilla, founded by brothers drawing on the traditions of Nogales, grills its steaks the same way.
A round of dough fried until it puffs, chewy inside and crisp at the edge, then covered with beans, meat, lettuce and cheese as a Navajo taco or sprinkled with sugar and honey as a dessert.
Visit Arizona traces fry bread to the Long Walk, when the United States government forced thousands of Navajo to walk 300 miles to the New Mexico Territory and issued rations of flour, water, salt and lard, the makings of the bread. Many Navajo regard it as a symbol of perseverance, pain, adaptability and survival. In 2012 the Fry Bread House, opened in Phoenix in 1992 by Cecilia Miller of the Tohono O'odham Nation, won a James Beard America's Classics award.
Watch out for: Gluten
A thick milkshake blended from Medjool dates and ice cream, caramel sweet with a fruit finish. The drink comes from California's Coachella Valley, but Arizona's own date groves supply the fruit at Scottsdale's Sphinx.
Where to try it: Sphinx Date Co. Palm & Pantry
Wikipedia says the date shake originated in, and is particularly associated with, California's Coachella Valley, where roadside stands and Shields Date Garden, opened in 1924, sold dates and shakes. Arizona grows dates too: Visit Arizona counts nearly 15 million pounds of dates from Yuma's Medjool groves. Sphinx Date Ranch opened its shop and luncheon patio in Phoenix's Arcadia district in the early 1950s, and its Scottsdale shop still sells hand-sorted Arizona Medjools and a Date Milkshake on its patio.
Watch out for: Milk
Shrimp or fish cured in lime juice with cucumber, tomato, onion and chile, served on a tostada or in a glass. The Sonoran version is cut small, cured longer and spicier than Peruvian or Caribbean ceviche.
Where to try it: Jalapeno Inferno, Chispa's Fast & Fresh
Price: $11-16
Seafood is a Sonoran staple even though Tucson sits about six hours inland, and a Tucson food guide says Guaymas is known for its shrimp. It describes Sonoran ceviche as cured longer than Central and South American versions, cut smaller and spicier, served on a tostada as often as in a dish. This Is Tucson's mariscos guide says JPS Seafood sources most of its product along the Sonoran coastline. Visit Arizona says raw seafood dishes like ceviche towers and aguachiles are popular in Arizona's heat.
Watch out for: Shellfish
Scottsdale's signature dishes include Sonoran hot dog, Chimichanga, Cheese crisp, Carne asada, Machaca burro. See our signature dishes chapter for where to eat each.
