Desert Dogs and Tropical Butterflies

What do hot dogs and butterflies have in common? Well, both fill the places we often visit in Tucson. Especially the hot dogs several times a week. I spend one morning each week at the Tucson Botanical Garden in the Butterfly Magic Exhibit, billed as an indoor exhibit of live tropical butterflies. Yea, I know, it’s a tough job but somebody’s got to do it. Hundreds of these critters are fluttering about a greenhouse filled with orchids, lantana, pitcher plants, hibiscus and more plants that butterflies love. My tasks are limited to monitoring the coming and going of visitors and picking up leaf litter and expired critters.
Hot dogs, known here as Sonoran hot dogs, sell from lunch wagons in parking lots and vacant lots throughout the city. Sonora is the Mexican state directly south of Tucson and thus the name. Panel trucks are parked next to portable barbeque wagons roasting hot dogs wrapped in bacon before being snuggled into a soft bun and covered with beans, grilled onions,chopped tomatoes, green sauce and crema…kind of like crème freche. One of the stands is now morphed into enclosed spaces that are loud and lively and each is named El Guero Canelo…the redheaded guy. The GC is very popular and a wonderful spot in which to eat and watch families and packs of single men line up to buy their famous sandwiches. The newest one has a video monitor playing clips of previous travel channel shows featuring these hot dog extravaganzas. One is the Man vs. Food guy and you can see how a professional gorger could like this place. And laminated newspaper articles from the New York Times are found at the order window. Mark has developed such a liking for the double dog name “The Sammy” that we have returned several times. All carts feature a condiments bar where the customers can add as much salsa, green tomatillo salsa, onion, mushrooms, radishes as they desire. The biggest condiment bars include roasted green onions and blackened fat chiles. My google search this morning for the Times article alerts me to a Travel Channel filming at El Guero Canelo and its rival BK Tacos. The latter serves beer I discover after another quick Google search. That bit of information may make BK the next new dinner option. Travel Channel, New York Times. Watch out. We could be seeing the birth of a food fad to equal the frozen yogurt explosion of the nineties. If Andrew Zimmer and Anthony Bourdain show up we’ll know.
http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/north-america/united-states/arizona/tucson/66589/el-guero-canelo/restaurant-detail.html
http://tucsoncitizen.com/tucsontales/tag/el-guero-canelo/