When Feng-Feng Yeh said to me that food is public art, she meant that literally.
All throughout October and November, Tucson and Phoenix chefs, bakers, mixologists, and more are making and blending, kneading and stir-frying, clarifying and zesting creations that show us the temporary wonder of food’s special art form. It won’t last forever and it all depends on our own participation.
To make sure I keep up, the Chinese Chorizo Festival’s pocket flyer (I keep a very-wrinkled one on me), is my constant companion, though, as I have been told, it might be easier to just follow the project on social media. I do like an old-school piece of paper to hold in my hand — it reminds me of a map or a gallery guide. And so in fact, is the Festival.
This year, it tells me to revisit Anello, whose pizza this time around featured the pork chorizo on a red-sauce pie, with pecan mole, cotija, cilantro, and lime. I also discovered Rosebud Bakery for the first time, snagging their last vegan chorizo bun with my coffee (I asked for a pump of their housemade cinnamon syrup).
I also made my way to Phoenix and sipped cocktails with Chinese chorizo-washed spirits as part of a competition hosted at AZ Wilderness DTPHX in collaboration with Ray Ray’s Sonoran Spirit Tea, Whiskey Del Bac, and IZO spirits). The tiny sample cups of a reinvented Old Fashioned (fat-washed rye, five-spice syrup, and Ray Ray’s tea) or the Michelada riff (milk punch clarified bloody mary, lime mezcal, forced carbonated Ray Ray’s tea, chorizo rim) were just enough to set a flavor profile in place, to chase down later.
In Phoenix, I also got the last order of Chinese chorizo pad kra pao at the celebrated restaurant known for regional Thai cuisine, Lom Wong.
Probably one of my favorite dishes in the line-up I’ve tried this year, this dish is their take on the classic street food rice plate featuring the chorizo stir-fried with a shower of kra pao (Thai holy basil that chefs shared they found at a local market that morning, purchasing all they had!), and of course, a crispy-edged fried egg with trembly yolk. The fish sauce in the accompanying prik nam pla that I drizzled over it all connected me instantly to my childhood in Southeast Asia.
Now in its third year, the festival is known for reviving the historic food of the Chinese chorizo — a symbol of the more than a hundred Chinese grocery stores that operated in Tucson from the late 1800s to the 1970s. The chorizo was the signature product these places sold to their multicultural clientele.
Yeh has devised a new crafting recipe, then donated thirty pounds of it, including a vegan mushroom version and a paste for cocktails, to over 25 participating restaurants to use in a dish (or a drink!) for the public to enjoy.
In fact, if you’re in Tucson next week, this year’s new-found interest in beverages will culminate in a cocktail competition where multiple bars pour out their own “Drink for Solidarity” at Zerai’s on Tuesday, October 29 from 7 – 10 p.m.
That said, on the menu this year also is art, as in art, art.
Yeh, for example, is planning to install a Chinese grocery store pop-up at the Tucson Museum of Art’s Block Party in November. Then, looking ahead, she is in the thick of collaborating on a public art sculpture for Eastlake Park in Phoenix, as part of ¡SOMBRA!, a project addressing heat resiliency in redlined districts of the city.
Apart from making us all hungry, the Festival is one of those brilliant, born-in-Tucson, cultural-culinary extravaganzas that leads you out into the streets and public spaces of the city regardless of the temperature. At the Chinese Chorizo Festival, you can taste inventive creations that make you pause to reflect on immigrant resilience. Or you can do so as you walk about installations at public museums, or read shadows-stories under inverted umbrellas at public parks, after which you plot the next stop on your Chinese Chorizo itinerary.
I recently read a poem by Chinese-Mexican poet Brandon Som — this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner in poetry — and coincidentally, a visitor just this past week at the University of Arizona’s Poetry Center, where I learned that the word “chop-suey” means “mixed-pieces.”
It reminds me that each year, the Festival’s most ambitious recipe is the public itself. The project remixes us all into an ever-changing dish, or multiform art project, like the 15-foot mosaic Chinese chorizo that had always been a part of the ambitions of the Festival since its very first year. Each year, we’re getting closer to seeing this manifest, Yeh tells me.
Meanwhile, the Festival keeps showing us how food can be a key ingredient in everything from tile art to architecture, from historic preservation to photography. For example, check out the Center for Creative Photography sponsored sobremesa inspired by the work of the father of Chicano photography, Louis Carlos Bernal, now on view at the center.
A casual chat that happens after a meal with family and friends, this particular sobremesa will take place Saturday, October 26, from 5 – 6:30 p.m. at Hotel McCoy. There will be stuffed Chinese chorizo potato mochi balls courtesy of Jackie Tran and Tran’s Fats Food Truck to accompany our evening with Yeh and Chinese Mexican playwright, Virginia Grise, to savor the many ways we hold on to memories and each other.
The list of collaborations Yeh spearheads keeps expanding, some of which I hope to be able to dive into in future pieces of this series.
Food is special as an art form because all our senses are awakened to help us remember and connect. For example, at the opening of the Festival, I hold a handmade flour tortilla in my hand from the legacy business, Anita Street Market under the Culture Kitchen tent at this year’s Tucson Meet Yourself.
I listen to panelists from the Market, Trejo’s Tucson, and Los Descendientes who take me back to the story of Tucson’s urban renewal. They share details of the historic displacement of Mexican and other communities of color with us while we gather so close to where it all happened. To read more about this, please check out Dr. Lydia Otero’s La Calle!
As I listen, however, the tale is told in another way, in mixed pieces of the past settling on tongues. We are in fact becoming a living sculpture ourselves, connected by the dusty flour of the tortillas stained by pork, black vinegar, hot mustard, Mexican oregano, fermented bean curd, and the warmth of Szechuan peppercorns and chiltepin. The Festival, and all its collaborators, include all those who came before us, those who labored to care for us through food.
Check out the remaining events and collaborations this upcoming weekend, and ongoing through November at chinesechorizoproject.com or by following the project on Instagram for the most recent announcements. Stay tuned for additional features on the Festival right here at Tucson Foodie.
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