Keeping things spicy: Chinese Chorizo Festival kicks off it's fifth edition with a little heat

Tucson residents have another chance to taste the city’s history this fall as the Chinese Chorizo Festival returns for its fifth year. Beginning October 9, participating restaurants are serving their own creations made with Chinese chorizo, an ingredient that reflects the long relationship between Tucson’s Chinese and Mexican communities. The festival continues on rotating weekends through November 22, giving diners a chance to visit different restaurants and sample the ingredient in a range of culinary styles.

The project was created by Tucson chef and multidisciplinary artist Feng-Feng Yeh, who began exploring Chinese chorizo during the pandemic after finding an older recipe on the Tucson Chinese Cultural Center’s website. Yeh worked with chefs Maria Mazon and Jackie Tran to bring the recipe back into wider circulation. What started as a personal effort to reconnect with her heritage has developed into a citywide food project involving more than 85 restaurants and food vendors. The participating businesses receive donated chorizo and are invited to interpret it however they choose.

The exact amount produced over the life of the project has been reported differently, with figures of more than 2,500 pounds and about 3,000 pounds. This year alone, more than 1,000 pounds is being distributed to participating restaurants and vendors. The chorizo is produced with Carniceria Wild West, located at 4825 North First Avenue, which also sells it to people who want to cook with the ingredient at home. Yeh’s project has reached beyond Tucson as well, with participating businesses reported in Arizona, Los Angeles and New York City.

Chinese chorizo grew out of the neighborhood grocery stores once operated by Chinese immigrants throughout Tucson. Historical records from the Pima County Public Library and the Arizona Historical Society identify 582 Chinese owned grocery stores operating in the city between 1881 and 1991. By 1950, at least 114 were operating at the same time. Many of these stores served neighborhoods near historic barrios and became gathering places for Mexican American residents and other Tucsonans, even as Chinese and Mexican immigrants faced discrimination from the 1880s through the 1960s.

The sausage itself represents that cultural exchange. Grocery store workers used meat trimmings and other end cuts that might otherwise have been discarded, then seasoned them with Mexican spices, chiles and red wine. The result combined Chinese food traditions with Mexican flavors and ingredients. For Yeh, the dish is not simply a novelty or a seasonal menu item. It is a way to preserve a part of Tucson’s food history and recognize the relationships that helped shape the city’s neighborhoods and culinary identity.

The festival also gives local chefs room to experiment. Anthony “Rocco” DiGrazia of Rocco’s Little Chicago Pizzeria described the ingredient as an opportunity to bring something unfamiliar into a kitchen and combine it with other flavors. Donovan Bamba of Bamba Filipino Street Diner sees the project through a family lens, using the festival to share the foods and traditions he hopes his children will grow up eating. Other Tucson food professionals have embraced the effort too, including Barrio Bread owner Don Guerra, who has publicly praised Yeh for using food to bring people together.

Opening weekend runs October 9 through 11, with Chinese chorizo dishes available at Anello, Bamba, Bata, Barrio Bread, Boca, Ceres, Muncheez, Rocco’s, Rosebud Bakery, Sawmill Run and Zerai’s International Bar. The menus show how widely the ingredient can travel. Rosebud Bakery, for example, has featured a baked Chinese chorizo pork bao, while another Rosebud offering is a vegan blue corn mushroom empanada with tomatillo salsa. Los Poblanitos has prepared a mole poblano enchilada filled with Chinese chorizo and topped with sesame seeds, onions and pomegranate.

Additional restaurants will join on later weekends, creating what organizers describe as a food scavenger hunt across Tucson. Because the chefs design their own dishes, the festival does not follow one fixed menu or flavor profile. Diners can find the sausage in preparations influenced by Mexican, Filipino, Chinese, Italian and other traditions, depending on the participating kitchen. Residents should check the Chinese Chorizo Project’s website or social media accounts for the latest weekend schedule, restaurant list and menu details before making plans.

Tucson’s status as the first UNESCO City of Gastronomy in the United States, a designation awarded in 2015, provides a broader setting for the festival’s focus on food, agriculture and cultural exchange. Yeh has said the annual event has changed her own role in the community, including earning her the affectionate nickname “the chorizo lady” from younger Tucsonans. She has also described the festival as a continuing lesson in how to participate in community life. For local diners, the event offers more than a new dish to try. It is an invitation to explore the history of the city through restaurants, recipes and the connections preserved in a distinctive Tucson specialty.