Tucson Launches Sonoran Dog Trail With all the Toppings

Many of America’s great food cities have a signature hot dog that embodies the flavor and character of the region. Detroit has its Coney Dogs. The Windy City has its eponymous Chicago-style hot dogs. And New York’s street cart beef franks are a defining symbol of the Big Apple. Tucson takes its signature hot dog to another level. 

Arizona’s second most populated city is known for its deep-rooted culinary traditions that date back more than 4,000 years and take influences from Spanish, Mexican, and Indigenous cultures. Tucson has a widely renowned food scene in the Sonoran Desert, 60 miles from the Mexican border. The first UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy in the U.S., one of its most beloved and iconic dishes fuses Mexican and American flavors: the Sonoran hot dog. 

More than a frankfurter topped with local ingredients, the Sonoran dog is a gastronomic experience — a savory, over-the-top street food with Southwest flavors. A bacon-wrapped beef hot dog is grilled to crispy perfection. It’s then nestled on a bed of pinto beans and topped with diced tomatoes, grilled and raw onions, mustard, mayonnaise, and jalapeño sauce. And it’s all enveloped by a soft bolillo-style bun (referring to the Mexican bread roll). A roasted, blistered güero chile (a sweet, hot yellow caribe pepper) is served on the side.

“The beauty of a Sonoran hot dog is that it is about traditions. It’s about what we do with everything in this territory,” says Benjamin “Bennie” Galaz, owner of BK Carne Asada & Hot Dogs. “We try to bring all the flavors into one item. We use chiles on everything. We use grilled onions on everything. So with your first bite, you can taste the bun, you can taste the crunch of the hot dog, you can feel the flavor of the pinto bean. It’s a process, a journey.”

The origin of the Sonoran dog isn’t documented. Some say that the dish was first served at baseball games in Sonora, Mexico, in the 1940s. By the 1980s, the dogs had become a popular late-night meal for students in Hermosillo, and vendors, known as dogueros, began selling them out of carts at the University of Sonora. 

In Tucson, the Sonoran dog’s ground zero is easier to pinpoint: the city’s South Side, along 12th Avenue south of Irvington Road. Galaz learned how to make the dish from a doguero in his hometown of Nacozari de Garcia in northern Sonora and opened his food cart in 1994. “The first day here, we sold 20 hot dogs. The second day, we sold 40 hot dogs. Four months later, I was selling 1,000 hot dogs a night.”

Galaz’s neighbor and friend, Daniel Contreras, started his own hot dog cart in 1993, resulting in a rivalry between the two entrepreneurs that has lasted for more than 30 years. In 2007, Contreras expanded El Güero Canelo with a brick-and-mortar restaurant across the street from Galaz’s BK on 12th Avenue in 2007. In 2010, BK bested El Güero in an anonymous taste test on the Travel Channel’s Food Wars. In 2018, El Güero was awarded the James Beard Award for America’s Classics. Each maintains a loyal following. 

“Right now we are serving the third generation of customers,” Galaz says. Tucson resident Daniela Vizcarra has been coming to BK for as long as she remembers. “My dad was eating here when Bennie had his hot dog cart,” she says. “He used to bring me here all the time when I was little, and I’ve always gotten my Sonoran dogs from this location.”

Food photographer and recipe developer Jackie Alpers has sampled just about every Sonoran dog available in Tucson. Her favorite is from El Sinaloense Hot Dog Cart. Owners Norberto “Beto” Maciel and his wife, Egla Gutierrez, have been hawking hot dogs from a corner gravel lot in the Garden District since 2008. Theirs are known as Sinaloa dogs. Like its Sonoran cousin, it starts with a bacon-wrapped beef frank and is topped with similar ingredients, but a Sinaloa dog, named after the northwestern Mexican state that borders Sonora to the south, features a bun slathered in butter and grilled for extra flavor. 

“The bun really is important to the success of a Sonoran dog,” Alpers explains. “It needs to be soft, but it has to stand up to all of the toppings.” 

Developed by Tucson-based Alejandro’s Tortilla Factory, the Sonoran dog bun is a slightly sweet, pillowy, six-inch, football-shaped loaf made from local white Sonoran wheat. The top is sliced open to hold all the ingredients, while the ends remain closed so that each bite encapsulates all of the flavors.  

“Our signature is that the bun is toasted,” Gutierrez explains. “We also use bigger franks, and they’re fully wrapped in bacon. Beto is very strict about everything being fresh, so we start from scratch every morning.” El Sinaloense is one of the few to offer a vegetarian version of the hot dog. 

“The Sonoran dog is a really good example of the different things that make Tucson’s cuisine, Sonoran cuisine, what it is,” says Alpers, whose cookbook Taste of Tucson: Sonoran-Style Recipes Inspired by the Rich Culture of Southern Arizona includes recipes from both BK and El Güero. “It’s hard to explain why our food is special to somebody who hasn’t been here. You could say, ‘Oh, our hot dogs have fresh vegetables and fresh chiles and whole beans,’ but it’s how these components come together that’s truly unique.”

Today, about 200 dogueros in Tucson sell Sonoran-style hot dogs. Visitors can get a taste of this borderland staple by following Tucson’s Sonoran Dog Trail, which officially debuted in early February, featuring 15 mom-and-pop eateries across the city, ranging from full-service restaurants to tiny food carts. Some, like El Güero and BK, make Sonoran dogs the traditional way, while others have placed their own spin on the classic. Ruiz Hot Dogs los Chipilones in the Barrio Santa Rosa uses buttered, toasted Sinaloan-style buns. El Kora Hot Dogs, just minutes south of BK and El Güero, serves a version with a chile torito, a cheese-stuffed jalapeño wrapped with bacon. And at La Carreta del Rorro, on the city’s northern edge near Marana, diners can add chorizo to their franks. 

Participants can earn points eligible for prizes by checking in at each restaurant they visit.