Tucson is so cool. Old hippies on bikes, large bars filled with art and feather boa-wearing bartenders, a cool, hippie, bohemian food co-op oasis in the endless stretches of chain restaurants like Denny's outside and around Arizona cities. Arizona towns I visited (not counting Tucson and Flagstaff) are for sure an arid desert where fresh, local, inexpensive cuisine is concerned. Tucson is community minded, cool, and annoying with the dim traffic lights, construction all over the city, but eccentric wonderful touchpoints with names like Toxic Ranch Records, Ugly But Honest, Mr. Head, Che's Lounge, etc.
Enter Caruso's. For me, a cartoonish, history-steeped take on the traditional Italian American red sauce restaurant. Its neon sign, it's blue interior with Canaletto knock off paintings, its checkered picnic tablecloth, and the Sinatra pumping in the speakers. A Hollywood studio set Western's take on the restaurant where large mafia vigilantes sop up meat sauce with garlic bread in a... saloon. The 1890s mythical Western version of Goodfellas Dinner in Prison scene. Where Roadrunner runs through with a string of spaghetti hanging from his mouth, Wiley Coyote lobbing meatball bombs at him. I'm extrapolating, but this, too, is an oasis. A stereotype of Little Italy Americana, a Lower East Side immigrant's kitchen cut and pasted into the scenery of the desert. Yet Caruso's history is real, founded by an Italian immigrant, part of Tucson, with its pictures of long tables of GI's enjoying a spaghetti dinner during World War II.
I ordered the Caruso Special, spaghetti and meatballs in meat sauce with two meat ravioli (it's going to be impossible for me to become a vegetarian) and Coke (but they only have RC Cola. RC Cola!) As it was set in front of me on a hot oval plate on the picnic apron cover, I felt like Lady and the Tramp.
My family ordered one Clams Marinara and one Fetuccini fra Diavolo (disconcertingly spicy). Things we can recognize. Things Lana del Rey would put in a Nyquil fueled Hollywood revisionist montage. They gave us sides of garlic bread. Of course they did and thank you.
The meat sauce for the spaghetti was vaguely sweet and required a lot of Parmesan cheese to add some salt flavor, but the meatballs were heavy, well ground, and delicious as they must be. I typically hate ravioli, but this meat ravioli was fairly good. I remembered that the mafia-controlled pizza sauce of New York before Giuliani had a cloying sweet undertone. The garlic bread was decent and comforting. Like French toast, it is sometimes better to have a version that adheres to the letter of the Americanized ethnic food law, rather than some over-crunchy miche dipped in egg and powdered sugar, or in garlic bread's case, nothing at all because garlic bread is an Italian American invention.
I ought to mention that this is a restaurant geared towards tourists. All the tourists are sat in the same alcove and given the same routine, which is something I usually hate. It is recommended to impress parents of University of Arizona students and various people that loathe to choose fare with less fancy pretensions like the ethnic food on Fourth Ave and the endless chain restaurants all around Arizona. Jack in the Box: that's where the locals eat.
The touristy, iconic overtone overwhelmed and nourished me almost more than the food itself. The American myth and lie both of the "Wild West" that Arizona's majestic powerhouse of a natural environment provided the frame for and the colorful way Southern Italian became the Italian American image and criminal hooligans became the Puzo-influenced image of the mafia. It quieted the nagging complaint that we were being treated like tourists. I would rather explore all the cool places Tucson locals go to as long as they don't do what Phoenix residents do and head to the nearest Denny's. read more