January 2008: The Salsa Trail
By Jackie Dishner When tackling a culinary tour that features Mexican food – and a lot of it – here’s some good advice: Don’t start eating before the real adventure begins …unless you’re sure you have enough Tums to tackle the whole enchilada and then some. It’s not advice my team and I followed on our way to one of the newest tourist attractions in southeastern Arizona – the Salsa Trail. The Salsa Trail is a marketing idea Graham County Chamber of Commerce director Sheldon Miller cooked up two years ago. This year a brochure finally made its way into print and visitors can now take part in the fruits – make that the seeds – of Miller’s labor. He’s managed to build a partnership of 13 restaurants – all serving Mexican food and their own unique homemade salsas – plus a tortilla factory and chile farm into an overall delightfully delicious reason to travel this region of the state. The trail takes you through parts of Arizona often left off of the typical tourist scene, but there’s more than super hot chiles under a canopy to welcome you. Charting the course, my team, one of the first group of visitors to make it all the way through the trail, made the mistake of skipping lunch, leaving Phoenix around noon. I thought we’d drive all the way to Safford, about three hours southeast of Phoenix, check into our bed & breakfast, and then officially start the tour. But by the time we reached Globe, about an hour outside of Phoenix, my crew’s stomachs were growling – We hadn’t trained for this – and since Mexican food was on the brain, we pulled into Irene’s, where we ordered more than enough food to satisfy our hunger pangs. We hadn’t even reached the first stop on the trail, yet we’d already eaten an ample amount of salsa and chips for one day. I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty, which my team helped me to overcome by rationalizing that with just a hint of cinnamon, Irene’s salsa had an applesauce-texture that actually whet our appetites instead of curbing them. Stomachs still full but the guilt gone, we left Irene’s to taste even more. Driving from venue to venue through Pima, Thatcher, Safford, Solomon, Clifton, York, Duncan and Willcox – along state highways that once carried wagon trains and a stage coach or two – past rural areas where mining, farming and ranching still play a large part in the daily lifestyle, we saw mountain views and desert vegetation stretching for miles. The saguaros, chollas, ocotillos prickly pear, scrub brush – even an abandoned mine in Clifton –all remind you that Arizona’s still part of the Old West. The layer cake sky, with its colors stacked on top of each other in hues of green, brown, blue and white, forms a visually stimulating drive that makes it hard to keep your eyes on the road. But please do. There’s quite a number of those symbolic white crosses caped in floral wreaths on State Route 70 from Globe to the first Salsa Trail marker in Pima. In Thatcher, La Casita, where the signs say the restaurant has been selling the finest Mexican food since 1947, seemed like a good place to start the tour. The young gals behind the bar were happy to bring us our first salsa samples. But we had to request the restaurant’s hottest – they don’t serve that concoction unless you ask for it and as fiery as it was, it wasn’t the hottest along the trail— at least for me. That salsa showed up in Safford at El Charro, one of the few places in this region where you can get a margarita to chase the heat. If you enjoy mariachi music, try Chalo’s before 8 p.m. on Fridays. This mix of quiet farming communities dates back to the late 1880s when mostly Mormon pioneers settled here. With no nightlife to speak of, we discovered it’s a haven for outdoor enthusiasts who gather here to hunt, fish, boat, bird, camp, and visit the nearby hot springs. While none of that fit our salsa mission, we did manage to drive all the way up Mount Graham, which houses several powerful telescopes that offer all-day tours. Caught in a thunderstorm on the way up, we took time to photograph the resulting waterfall and then headed back down for a quick bite at the only fast-food joint on the map – Taco Taste in Safford During our tour, we learned the only sit-down restaurant in Pima is Bush & Shurtz. A former hardware store, Bush & Shurtz has long attracted the local farmers who come in every afternoon at 2 o’clock (except on Sundays) to chat. We were too late to greet them so we sampled the salsa instead, promptly dubbing this one the “tenderfoot’s special” for its very mild flavor. The next couple of days we heatedly discussed where we should burn our tongues next. And then it was time for our last stop along the trail: Willcox. We took a detour to visit the Rex Allen Museum while we were there. Then we wrestled over which salsa had the most taste without the most heat at the only Willcox salsa bar on the trail map. Salsa Fiesta, conveniently located off of I-10, turned out to be the perfect place to end our tour and snap a photo. And there we were, the four of us, wearing the new white t-shirts we’d stuffed ourselves like chiles rellenos to earn. In the end, we covered three counties and several hundred miles of driving just to sample a part of Arizona – homemade salsa – something you wouldn’t think to experience without the Salsa Trail map. After trying out more than 20 different salsa tastes and popping more than my fair share of Tums, I’m happy to say I really did do as the t-shirt says: “I survived the Salsa Trail.” And not once did I ever think of turning back. Warning! If you do attempt to visit all 15 spicy spots, my team learned several things you might like to know ahead of time: 1) Think ahead and pack a large bottle of antacid pills. 2) Use dessert, not water, to squelch the burn in your mouth. 3) Don’t worry if you find it hard to say no to yet another basket of tortilla chips. You’ll need them to savor more salsa. 4) Decorated in basic lunch counter tables and chairs, these restaurants are known for the food, not the décor. And the bathrooms? Well, let’s just say you can’t be too picky. 5) You can hit five venues per day if you stay three nights, which still gives you some wiggle room the day you leave town. Don’t be afraid to ask for directions; the Salsa Trail guide doesn’t include them. For directions, lodging information and to get a copy of the Salsa Trail brochure/map, contact: Graham County Chamber of Commerce, 888-837-1841; visitgrahamcounty.com or salsatrail.com. |
