As the weather turned cooler, seven participating mixologists displayed an array of techniques to infuse a historic story into oils, honey, vapors, and foams for a one-of-a-kind cocktail competition. It all went down last Wednesday on the eve of Halloween, featuring Chinese chorizo (now in paste form) along with partner spirits — Ray Ray’s Sonoran Spirit Tea, Whiskey Del Bac, and IZO spirits.
There is something quite decadent, even fairy-tale-like, to be among coupes and tumblers blooming with marigolds, glistening dark red cherries, and charred pineapple, all speared and balancing on rims, as if miniature beings were making offerings on goblets and chalices to us all, reminding us of a season where we are in fact recalling the spirits.
Nothing was more fascinating than hearing about various machinations cocktail makers resort to altering compounds of flavor, aroma, and mouthfeel. Teas are distilled into cordials, fats are gently heated in warm sous vide baths, and tender herbs are atomized into the air to lightly fall on our wrists.
So many words for the alchemy of mixing things of separate origins: steeping, infusing, washing.
This is very appropriate for the Chinese Chorizo Project, a festival dedicated to the history and contemporary work of cultural intermixture. This contest showed us what solidarity might taste like— sweet with memory, salty with understanding — and with the right attention and care, even bitterness has its place.
Imaginative riffs of classic drinks came from seven bars and their representatives including:
All were welcomed under the auspices of Zerai’s International Bar, a wonderfully inviting establishment with a variety of spaces (outdoor patio, indoor bar bedecked with soccer jerseys) right next to the reopened Zemam’s as part of the expanded Z-Street Market Place concept on Sunshine Mile.
The Bar itself features a global beer and cocktail selection, and offers incredibly flaky hand pies (the favored pastry uniting soccer fans worldwide) with meat, vegan and sweet varieties, on rotation. On offer the night of the festivities, was a Chinese chorizo one, of course. (I biked back a few days later for a second one). It is fast becoming a hub for converging communities of world sports fans, yoga practitioners, dance-party regulars, and now, denizens of the craft cocktail world.
Some of the best drinks that evening were those that taught us our histories — personal and urban.
Take the people’s choice winner, Sidecar’s Raymond Hammond’s The Cutting Board. The drink was an “homage to everything smelling like cilantro, onions and chile,” said Hammond. A drink built with the memory of Hammond’s being “in charge of a lot of food, onion cilantro tomatillo chile — cutting all the vegetables,” the drink turned the whiskey sour into a nostalgic trip “for all these scents, how my tools smelled.”
With the rye as a base, Hammond wove in an unexpected culinary itinerary with the Chinese chorizo-infused masa-turned-simple-syrup, a tomato water and cotija saline solution, and Chinese chorizo-infused angostura bitters. The spritz of cilantro mist on the wrists of our drinking hands might bring one back to the surfaces of your kitchen after a bout of making pico de gallo for friends.
It was also a joyful discovery to discover that one of our city’s claims to fame is being home to the world’s first skate park, Surf City, where Patti McGee, the first female professional skateboarder and world champion welcomed patrons on its opening day in September 1965.
In an homage to the phenomenon of this landlocked desert ocean of 138-foot rolling concrete waves, Penelope Pizza’s Toby Chivers’s Surf City brought together Sonoran and Japanese flavor profiles, garnering the judge’s champ award. Chivers built an old-fashioned with a Chinese chorizo-washed rye whiskey, heirloom tomato infused sweet vermouth, salted plum and green onion angostura bitters, sesame oil garnish, and memorably, charred pineapple and Chinese black vinegar infused demerara syrup. Like the incongruous skatepark that was its namesake, the drink was a mix of worlds, inspiring reminiscences of Pacific tides amid mesquite trees, skating memories, and Tiki bars.
It made me in particular remember how important the ocean is for the Tohono O’odham (to learn more, do read Ofelia Zepeda’s amazing poems, Ocean Power, Poems From the Desert) and how in the middle of my first monsoon here in Tucson, I was instantly transported back home to the Philippine islands.
Perhaps one of the most appropriate Tucson places to pay tribute to in a cocktail competition commemorating Tucson’s Chinese-owned grocery stores is Alan’s Market, owned by the Lee family from 1942 to 1992. We learned a bit about this now-shuttered space in Barrio Hollywood from Brick Box’s owner and brewer, Nixon. He shared his finding that the unique location of the market was due to “many new grocers [who worked] for others initially [went looking] for their own stores in areas that were then ‘outlying’ to avoid the intense competition in the older areas of the city.”
Nixon also shared a memory from David Lee, son of the owners and now a University of Arizona pharmacist:
“I have many fond memories working with my parents at Alan’s Market. In fact, I whitewashed the building and the imperfect black lettering is my doing. The building had only an evaporative cooler that was ineffective during the humid monsoon season. We had a large walk-in refrigerator for beer, milk products, sodas, and meats. I would plan special times to load the beer and sodas into the walk-in just to get cooled down.”
Now closed, the building however is a landmark within the map of Nixon’s own personal comings and goings:
“Every day I walk by it, I drive by it, I ride my bike by it…. And I think, wouldn’t it be great if it was open? To be able to go in, and maybe grab a Topo Chico,” mused, painting the picture of an iconic building, now empty, but still valued. The Market, like the Chinese Chorizo Project, reminds us of the important ways such places as one’s corner store, or neighborhood pub for that matter, create those local, street-level interactions so crucial in cultivating our sense of belonging (read for example Jane Jacob’s famous 1961 book on this, The Death and Life of Great American Cities.)
This sense of being a proprietor of spaces that welcome community pervades Nixon’s creation of this drinkable ode to Alan’s Market. It is a boulevardier (which I learn is a negroni made with whiskey) with an “aperitivo” Nixon made with syrup from Ray Ray’s Sonoran Spirit Tea. The concoction was infused with herbs all procured at the Tucson Herb Store, and amid the bitter scent of gentian and angelica root, I must say the most evocative note for me was ginseng, which took me back to those iconic Chinatown apothecaries in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York.
A Chinese chorizo-infused vermouth and a housemade orange liqueur rounded out the flavors of the drink, which one imbibes in between light brushes on one’s lips of the lemon sugar salt rim (bringing out the umami notes of the Chinese chorizo).
What is truly heartfelt about the drink is to learn that “every element of the drink had a friend,” as Nixon puts it, recalling who they are and their ties to the space of Brick Box — Amanda and Stephen Pauls (owners of Whiskey Del Bac), Rachel D’acquisto (owner and creator of Ray Ray’s Sonoran Spirit Tea), and Feng-Feng Yeh herself (founder of the Chinese Chorizo Project).
Alan’s Market’s Boulevardier is a drink about the many ways we can come home in our city.
For those of us who enjoy a bit of Marcel Proust with our drinks, I want to share a chaser of literature. There’s a famous observation about the ways memories are like souls (spirits!) suspended in the sensory material of our world — in leaves of cilantro, skins of oranges, the flesh of pineapple, or in sips of spirits or tea (as in the case of the narrator of In Search of Lost Time:
“But when from a long distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”
Check out the remaining events and collaborations as the festival closes this upcoming weekend at chinesechorizoproject.com or by following the project on Instagram for the most recent announcements.
Especially visit the finale event: Yeh’s recreation of a Chinese grocery store in a pop-up entitled “Vivamos Siempre Como Hermanos” as part of the Tucson Museum of Art Second Sundayze Centennial Block Party on Sunday, November 12 from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. Also, Lumbre Pizza A La Leña, Ensenada Street Food and Carbs & Coffee Co will be offering chorizo dishes, the last tastes of the festival before we welcome it back again next year.
Stay tuned for a wrap-up feature on the Festival right here at Tucson Foodie.
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