For many years Tucson’s alone, the Sonoran hot dog has become familiar beyond the Southwest desert thanks to the proliferation of food trucks everywhere and to television food shows, where its flamboyance is a telegenic virtue. While a novitiate might mistake it for a novelty food from some state fair midway or a gimmick to attract the cameras, it is in fact an inspired recipe, and its roots go back to the mid-twentieth century. It is unclear whether it was invented by vendors on Tucson’s south side or originally came from Hermosillo, the capital of the Mexican state of Sonora; either way, Tucson now is its home.
The guero pepper that accompanies Sonoran hot dogs can be mighty hot. Some places temper the heat by stuffing it with cheese and wrapping it with bacon.
It begins simply, as a slim, all-beef frankfurter. The frank gets wrapped in bacon and grilled in a trough alongside other bacon-sheathed hot dogs, whose shed grease makes the process very much like deep-frying. This causes bacon flavor to melt into the dog, leaving the outside patched with streaks of lean that provide marvelous chewy contrast to the frank they embrace. The condiment lineup is presupposed: a scattering of pinto beans underneath the hot dog and on top, chopped tomatoes, grilled or raw onions, a line of yellow mustard, a green ribbon of hot jalapeño sauce, and an artistic squiggle of mayonnaise. On the side of every Sonoran hot dog comes a roasted guero pepper, which looks like a pale jalapeño (guero = “blond”) and can be every bit as hot. When you bite through the thick wall of this fruity pod and hit the capsicum-charged membrane within, the mercy of the bun can be welcome tongue relief.
Unlike the wan bun used for ordinary hot dogs, the roll in which a “hot-dog estilo Sonora” is planted is a supple, yeasty loaf fresh from one of the local Mexican bakeries. Known as a bolillo roll, it is cut to form a capacious pocket with closed ends that will hold all the ingredients—even a pair of dressed hot dogs, which is a common variation—and it is substantial enough not to disintegrate under its heavy load.
Other than at happy hour in the J-Bar grill of the Westin La Paloma resort, when the city’s star chef, Janos Wilder, offers his J-Dawg (a high-end gloss on the concept using Chicago hot dogs topped with poblano crema in lieu of mayonnaise as well as chopped cactus pads), all Sonoran hot dogs are eaten outdoors and served from carts or trucks. Tucson abounds in vendors who park at street corners and in empty lots, arrange a few tables and chairs and a canopy for protection from the sun, and dish out hot dogs from late morning to late night.