The Best Restaurants in Tucson

Bobo's Restaurant has anchored East Grant Road since 1975, weathering decades of change in Tucson's dining scene with a simple formula: hearty, affordable home cooking and fast, friendly service. The tiny yellow building draws weekend lines for its biscuits and gravy, oversized pancakes and scratch-made hash browns.

For generations of Tucsonans, it remains the definition of a classic greasy spoon.

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.

Amanuel Gebremariam arrived in Tucson as a refugee and, after studying at the University of Arizona, opened Zemam's in 1993 in a small house on Broadway with just five tables. It was the city's first Ethiopian restaurant, serving communal platters eaten with injera.

Three decades later, with his sons now involved, Zemam's anchors the Z Street Market, a community gathering place built around the food he first learned in his mother's kitchen.

Daniel Contreras opened El Güero Canelo in 1993 as a single hot dog cart in South Tucson, building it into three restaurants and a bakery that supplies its signature bolillo bread. In 2018 the James Beard Foundation named it an America's Classics recipient, recognizing the Sonoran hot dog, a bacon-wrapped frank piled with beans and fresh toppings, as a true regional classic.

The original location on South 12th Avenue still serves it from a walk-up window.