2025 Centurion Award winner
El Charro Café
Best Mexican Restaurant · Tucson, AZ
Best Mexican Restaurant · Tucson, AZ
El Charro Cafe opened in 1922, when Monica Flin began cooking out of her family’s downtown home, the stone house her father built in 1896. More than a century later the Flores family still runs it, making El Charro the oldest Mexican restaurant in the country operated continuously by one family.
Famous for sun-dried carne seca and the chimichanga said to have originated here, El Charro remains a cornerstone of Tucson’s Sonoran food tradition and has been named among America’s most iconic restaurants. Thousands of public reviews stretch across Tripadvisor and Yelp. In 2025 that century-long record cleared our bar: the Centurion Award for Best Mexican Restaurant in Tucson.
The original still serves downtown at 311 N Court Ave, a century on.
Downtown at 311 N Court Ave · elcharrocafe.com
A Centurion Award doesn’t replace the public record — it verifies it. Read it for yourself, on the platforms where it lives.
Review counts as verified June 21, 2026. Live ratings are always current on each platform.
Selection is by the published criteria, evaluated on public evidence. El Charro Café cleared every one.
The full verification report — the specific data behind this award — is held by the business. The exact thresholds stay internal so the bar can’t be gamed. Read the methodology.
Award record
Visit El Charro Café
Clean, checkable facts about El Charro Café — for readers, search engines, and answer tools alike.
This is a dated award record, published by The Centurion Awards after El Charro Café cleared the 2025 evaluation for its market and category. It was not bought, voted on, or sponsored — the criteria are public, only winners are published, and an award that stops holding up is revoked, not quietly removed. Awards run one calendar year and renew only if the business clears the bar again. For everything else — hours, bookings, live reviews — go straight to the business itself.
El Charro Cafe is a Sonoran Mexican restaurant in downtown Tucson, Arizona, founded in 1922 by Monica Flin in the stone house her father built in 1896. Still run by the same family, it is the oldest Mexican restaurant in the United States operated continuously by one family.
Yes. El Charro Cafe is the 2025 Centurion Award winner for Best Mexican Restaurant in Tucson, AZ, a verified, criteria-based award. It has also been named among America's most iconic restaurants and is famous as the home of carne seca and the original chimichanga story.
The original El Charro Cafe serves at 311 N Court Ave in downtown Tucson, where it has operated for more than a century.
If you’ve put in the years, you may already clear the bar. Evaluation is free, private, and never for sale.