As the Star’s new digital food writer, I’ve eaten a whole lot of delicious dishes over the past year. To narrow it down, I focused on Tucson’s newest dining destinations. So without further ado, here are my Top 10 meals from places that opened their doors in 2015:
Bagel and lox at The Bagel Joint
East-coast native Michael Rudner filled a hole in Tucson’s empty bagel scene when he opened The Bagel Joint over the summer. From his little shop on Oracle and Ina roads, he sells several varieties of fresh-baked bagels, bagged up 14-strong in a “Boston dozen” and has some solid breakfast sandwiches with egg and sausage. Since I’ve got my bagel routine perfectly boiled down, this is what I suggest: an everything bagel with sliced tomatoes and a fistful of fatty lox, plus veggie cream cheese on both sides so you can take it apart and eat it piece by piece. The bagels are classic New York: rough around the edges, but soft and doughy on the inside. Just like momma used to buy! 7315 N. Oracle Road, 520-329-8630
Banh mi sandwich at Nhu Lan food truck
You won’t find any ramen burgers or Vietnamese burritos at this campus-area food truck. But there is one culinary mashup that Nghia Tran does do, and boy does he do it well. Tran is from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and he makes a banh mi sandwich like nobody’s business. Since he opened his Nhu Lan Vietnamese Food Truck in February, he’s drawn a devoted following for his legendary Banh Mi Dac Biet, a soft baguette from La Baguette Parisienne bakery stuffed with three types of pork plus the quintessential Vietnamese garnish of cucumber, cilantro and jalapeño. Unfussy, yet incredibly fresh — did we mention it’s $3.50? Check Facebook for truck’s location, 520-342-8611
Carnitas taco at Street Taco & Beer Co.
The downtown business crowd gained a fast-casual lunch spot when Street Taco & Beer Co. opened its doors in January. I gained a new vice: glistening plumps of juicy pork scooped straight from the tub and onto your taco. After four hours of roasting, these aren’t exactly your crispy carnitas. They are so soft and fatty that you need a drip of zesty tomatillo to cut through it all. And while you’re at it, get some of those neon pink pickled onions from the salsa bar, which is full of fresh and vibrant treats. 58 W. Congress St., 520-269-6266
Green tomatoes at Commoner & Co.
Up north near Ventana Canyon, a hip new restaurant is pumping out plates of reimagined Southern specialties. The masterminds behind Prep & Pastry opened Commoner & Co. in the former Abbey building in June, bringing gourmet grits and obscurities like bone marrow bread pudding to Foothills diners. But I’m partial to chef Virginia Wooters’ Mediterranean take on fried green tomatoes. (They’ll be back on the menu this summer.) Instead of cornmeal, she batters the thick rounds in semolina flour, which flakes off the sides exposing patches of golden tomato skin. The disks are topped with house-made Ricotta cheese and heavy raindrops of prosciutto ham, then drizzled with a sweet white balsamic vinegar. 6960 E. Sunrise Drive, 520-257-1177
Choco Taco at Hub Ice Cream Factory
Two words: Choco Taco. But not the packaged kind you bought off the ice cream man. This one is fresh from the back of Hub Ice Cream Factory, where the employees dutifully make their own waffle cones and pipe in a thick vanilla bean ice cream, covering the top with Callebaut dark chocolate and salted roasted peanuts. The shop, which opened downtown in May, specializes in gourmet versions of childhood favorites. But there’s something about this dessert that rockets it to the top of the list, above the soda float and ice cream cookie. Is it the addicting contrast between the smooth ice cream and crunchy chocolate? The fact that you don’t need a spoon? Oh, I don’t know, maybe I just like tacos! 245 E. Congress St., 520-622-0255
Whole tilapia at Alafia West-African Cuisine
Ismael Lawani may speak French, but his cuisine is a far cry from foie gras or beef bourguignon. A native of Benin, the Tucson resident opened Alafia West-African Cuisine last March in a small room off of Speedway and Swan Road. Most days you can find him behind the counter cooking up couscous with cassava root and pots of velvety peanut soup. But I opt for the “Afri-cue.” He marinates a whole tilapia fish in mustard and African spices and then grills up the entire thing on a charcoal grill behind the restaurant. The belly is the butteriest part, but Lawani insists you have to eat the head, which is obscured by a sliced cucumber sitting delicately over the oily black eyeball. Avoid the bones, and you’re in for a swimming great time! 1070 N. Swan Road, 520-331-7161
Obon ramen at Obon Sushi + Bar + Ramen
Yes, you can slurp it! But if you eat this ramen too fast, you’ll miss the finer details, like the delicate pork broth, the thin strings of dried red chiles and the spiral-swiped narutomaki cut into pinwheels of fishy flavor. Obon’s chef Paulo Im is painstakingly precise in his contemporary Japanese and Korean dishes, but the signature Obon ramen takes the cake. Maybe it’s just cold outside, but I’m super pumped you can get a bowl this good downtown. 350 E. Congress St., 520-485-3590
BONUS: The Jalapeño Albacore tuna crudo pictured on the cover gets my vote for the best spicy sushi dish in town.
Vegetarian combo plate at Za’atar
In June, former Aladdin owner Ari Baban opened up a full-scale Mediterranean bakery inside a taco shop, fashioning the windows into temple silhouettes and building a traditional hajari stone oven in the back. Out of the oven comes all manner of breads: round pitas, doughy “middle Eastern donuts” packed with date paste and football-shaped samoons popular in Iraq. The best way to utilize all these yeasts is to get the vegetarian platter, which comes with several dips including a tahini-rich hummus and a caroway spiced mashui dip that tastes like tomatoes and fresh earth. 2825 N. Country Club Road, 520-323-4074
Duck mole at Reforma
OK, this upscale Mexican restaurant at St. Philip’s Plaza technically opened in December of 2014. But it felt wrong to leave this black beauty off any list of best dishes in Tucson. Reforma’s mole de pato is a tour de force of meats, potatoes and plantains steeped in a nutty mole sprinkled with white sesame seeds and lush green onions. Spear the whole duck leg with your fork and rip off its moist meat, stuffing the chunks into one of Reforma’s house-made flour tortillas. The chorizo, you want to eat by itself. When you puncture the taut skin, little crumbles of spiced pork fall away into the molten brew below. Scandalous. 4310 N. Campbell Ave., 520-867-4134
Bourbon smash at The Independent Distillery
You’re bound to have a smashing good time at The Independent Distillery, which opened on Congress Street this September. The bar has a turn-of-the-century feel and is tucked in an alley behind the new Johnny Gibson’s Market. Independent is almost ready to begin distilling its own spirits, which it’ll begin serving over the next few months. But for now, you can make your own Smash cocktails, choosing from a list of liquors and fresh fruits. I like mine with Evan Williams White Label Bourbon and fresh peaches and strawberries, poured into a big ol’ mason jar at the small cost of $8. 30 S. Arizona Ave., 520-284-7334
