A spotlight from El Presidio Historic District · Downtown
El Charro Café
Carlotta Flores and one hundred years of Sonoran cooking — still air-drying beef on the Court Avenue roof
El Charro holds so many memories, celebrations, family gatherings, first dates, first jobs. Being able to play such an important part of not only feeding the stomach but, at times, the soul, is something we don't take for granted.
— Carlotta Flores, Chef, Owner, and Family Matriarch
Tia Monica's 1922 café
In 1922 a French stonemason's daughter named Monica Flin opened a small café on the edge of Tucson's Presidio neighborhood — cooking the Sonoran food she had grown up with in a house her father Jules had built by hand in 1896.
Over the next fifty years Tia Monica did two things that made her legend. She kept the café open, unbroken, through Prohibition, the Depression, and two wars. And, the family swears, she invented the chimichanga — by accident, when a burrito slipped from her hand into a pan of hot oil.
Carlotta, since 1972
In 1972 Monica handed the restaurant to her great-grandniece Carlotta Flores, who had come home from California with her husband and small children. Carlotta has run it ever since — making El Charro the oldest Mexican restaurant in the United States still owned by the same family.
The kitchen is built around one obsession: carne seca, beef air-dried in the intense Sonoran sun in a wire cage on the restaurant's roof, then shredded and slow-cooked with tomato, green chile, and onion. Carlotta has never let it leave the roof for a dehydrator.
Court Avenue, where the district orients
Court Avenue runs through El Presidio, the oldest continuously inhabited neighborhood in Tucson — where thick adobe walls still throw shade at four in the afternoon and jacarandas bloom purple in May.
The original 1896 house Jules Flin built for his family — stone below, adobe above — is still the dining room. Guests eat under vigas and pressed-tin ceilings, a block from the Tucson Museum of Art and a short stroll from Barrio Viejo. In a downtown that has changed enormously in a century, El Charro is the fixed point the rest of Tucson orients around.
Order this
The dishes that made El Charro Café
Carne Seca
Beef sun-dried on the restaurant roof, then shredded and cooked with green chile and tomato. The reason to come.
Chimichanga
The dish the family invented in 1922 — a deep-fried burrito, still on the menu every day.
Mole Enchiladas
Corn tortillas layered with Monica's mole recipe — one of the oldest continuously served dishes in American Mexican cooking.
Good to know
El Charro Café, answered
What should I order first?
The carne seca. Argue with yourself later; order it first.
Which dining room should I ask for?
The historic dining room in the 1896 Flin house is the one to ask for. The family's other Tucson concepts are worth their own visit but this is the mother ship.
What about weekend brunch?
It's a real event; go before noon or after two. The margaritas are made with fresh lime and Sonoran citrus — they are strong.