Visiting Italian chefs will get a taste of Tucson

The Tucson City of Gastronomy is hosting the city’s first-ever international chefs exchange.

Two chefs from Parma, Italy — Mario Marini, chef-owner of Il cielo di Strela and president of the Food Museums of Parma, and Nicole Zerbini, chef-owner of her family’s 25-year-old Trattoria La Porta a Viarolo — will spend five days in Tucson from Thursday, Jan. 18, to Monday, Jan. 22, learning about our culinary and cultural heritage and sharing theirs.

The visit, sponsored by Pima County Attractions & Tourism and Visit Tucson, is part of the City of Gastronomy’s Chef Ambassadors Program, which has so far sent about a dozen Tucson chefs to other cities of gastronomy worldwide to exchange ideas and showcase Tucson’s culinary heritage and scene. This is the first time the Tucson City of Gastronomy has invited international chefs to Tucson.

This is not, however, the first time we have had international chefs participate in City of Gastronomy-related events. Last May, chefs from Mérida, Mexico, joined Tucson and San Antonio, Texas, chefs for Tucson’s weekend in the monthlong Pueblos del Maíz (cities of corn) celebration, which included events in the City of Gastronomy cities of San Antonio and Puebla, Mexico.

During their Tucson visit, Marini and Zerbini will get a true taste of Tucson, from what’s served on our plates to what’s grown in our gardens. The pair will eat at downtown’s Charro Steak & Del Rey on their first night Thursday, have breakfast Friday, Jan. 19, at Hotel Congress’s Cup Café and participate in a culinary tour of South Tucson later that day, led by 10 to 12 Gastronomic Union of Tucson chefs.

On Saturday, Jan. 20, the visiting chefs will be lunch guests of Chef Janos Wilder at his months-old Studio Janos downtown before Chef Zerbini leads a cooking demonstration at 3 p.m. at Pima Community College’s Center of Excellence in Hospitality Leadership at the Desert Vista Campus, 5901 S. Calle Santa Cruz, on the southwest side. The event is open to the public.

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The chefs also will get to experience dinner at Tito & Pep, chef-owner John Martinez’s cross-cultural bistro that captures the spirit of Tucson and the Southwest. Martinez, a James Beard Award finalist in 2022, represents what Wilder, president of the TCoG, calls the “Next Gen” of Tucson chefs. The tour of South Tucson restaurants, several of which have been in business for 60 or 70 years, showcases the foundation and history of Tucson’s culinary scene; Tito & Pep represents the generation building on that foundation, added Devon Sanner, the founder and president of the Gastronomic Union of Tucson.

“South Tucson represents the old core of the food scene here, but they also will see new school interpretations,” said Sanner, who launched GUT in 2016 as a way to support chefs on the heals of Tucson’s UNESCO City of Gastronomy designation in 2015. “We want to leave them with an impression of … where we started and where we are going, showing the layers of history from the Indigenous to Mexican to Spanish and European and Chinese to the Iskashitaa Refugee Network.”

“Part of what’s unique about our (culinary) scene is us. We celebrate each other,” Sanner said. “Part of what makes us special is we really are embracing one another and being the force for one another, the tide lifting all ships.”

One of the highlights of the Parma chefs visit will be the “Parma Meets Tucson” collaborative dinner on Sunday, Jan. 21, where the Italian chefs will team up with a trio of Tucson chefs to create a dinner using the visitors’ recipes and Tucson ingredients. Tickets for that event, which will benefit the Chef Ambassadors program, are sold out.

In addition to sampling our food, Marini and Zerbini also will get a feel for our culture. The pair’s itinerary includes tours of Mission Garden, San Xavier del Bac Mission and San Xavier Co-operative Farm, and a visit to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. The pair also will have a chance to check out the HSL Properties Tucson Jazz Festival on Friday for performances at the Century Room at Hotel Congress.

But Wilder, who is president of the City of Gastronomy board, said one of the most valuable parts of the Tucson visit will be when Chef Marini, who worked with tourism development for the city of Parma before becoming a chef, meets Friday with local tourism, restaurant, business and economic development officials about ways to leverage the City of Gastronomy designations of Parma and Tucson to boost tourism.