Mike Hultquist y El Torero

Our food guide, Howe Gelb, points you in the right direction for digestion.That is, if you ever find yourself in the location of Tucson, Arizona, and hunger takes a notion.

Tucson. Tuxon. Tuscon.

Lemme spell it out for ya.

A town rich with Mexican Irish lineage.

Why is that? Lucky, I guess.

Gastronomically speaking… Mexican cuisine is simply a flavour that never tires of us, nor us of it.

It’s a daily thing.

It’s what gets ya back on the plane when you’ve been wined and dined in the rich confines of European delights.

The wine. The bread. The beer. The cheese. And italy.

Europe figured it out a long time ago. But man… When it’s time to go… just the thought of Poca Cosa salsa gets me to the plane on time.

And it’s everywhere here.

Every which way.

Ya ever hear that expression when things go wrong they say, ‘it all went south’.

And, all this while, you thought south was ubiquitous with where it goes wrong.

No sir.

South is where ya go WHEN it’s all going wrong, because the south knows how to fix ya. South Tucson. Ever-closer to the border. Every salsa is its own family tradition.You can go into the worst of places here, and it’ll still be uncannily way better than anything you’ve ever sat down to anywhere beyond the Sonoran landscape we tend to be addicted to.

One such local is El Torero, hidden away on 26th street, just west off South 4th.

The chef there is a young feller named Mikey. The kind of artist ya don’t wanna tell what he should cook. Just tell him what you can’t have, and he’ll do the rest. It’s a cut above the standard issue around here, which is already way above the standards beyond. Mikey amazes.

His pop is Mike, usually riding shotgun there over the evening’s proceedings. He runs the place. Helped his brother, Brad, there out of a jam. The Hultquist fam.

They’ve been here forever and a day. A familia blend of Scandinavian and Mexican.

The familia split along amicable lines, his ex, my neighbor, and Mikey’s mom, have the infamous La Roca just across the border line in Nogales, Mexico.

It’s a restaurant built into the rocky cliffs of the hills there.

You walk in and walk out of time and space.

It’s way too easy to never leave.

Fortunately, the border is literally a hundred steps to stumble back through. Otherwise… Why?

But, here now in El Torero, with Mike, while waiting on the kind of fish tacos fish that actually dream about one day being subjected to him, he dispenses with a few nuggeted memories that blend seamlessly with the double salsa tray they serve up when you set down.

“Yeah. McCartney would come in here. Ya know… Because Linda went to the university here way back, and so they had that ranch up against the Rincons.”

You thought Jo Jo wasn’t real?

Jo Jo actually was a man who thought he was a woman.

Tasha’s dad, Ted, told me so.

He knew him. Her. They.

Tasha Bundy’s dad was named Ted.

No relation to the madman.

But, Ted did feel bad that time he gave Harvey Moltz, who would eventually sell me most of my guitars from his shop, a ride on his motorcycle and wiped out.

Ted felt bad for the kid then.

All scuffed up and all… did the honorable thing… gave him a few sheets of blotter in lieu of damages. Blotter?

Didn’t you follow my previous (p)article about the Legend of Rainer?

Blotter is acid in sheet form. Ya just tear off a tab and go to town. And by going to town I mean get outta town.

Or, it all might go south.

Anyhow. Tasha ended up legendary herself in town. A beautiful and illustrious DJ at the dance nights in the ghost town that was dow town Tucson.

She ended marrying John Convertino when I managed to lure him back to my home town from Cali.

And once we got our bassist, Joe Burns, to come along and leave his Palisades digs as well. They would eventually become something more known once they splintered off from Giant Sand, and asked me if they should be named Mexicali or Calexico.

Well… ‘Mexicali Blues’ is a Grateful Dead song. So, definitely not that.

Anyhow… Mike finished the story about how the eldest matron waitress asked Paul if he was really in a band, and could he handle playing a quinceañera.

He didn’t get the gig.

Then Mike gets misty eyed, and remembers back when his pal, Linda Ronstadt, came in to his family’s La Rues restaurant when he was 24, and bugged him after he said he’d seen her first album cover that she hadn’t even seen yet… The one with the Stone Ponies that had her first hit, ‘Different Drum’. Because she had been arguing with the record company about what photo she preferred for the album cover and not the one they wanted. She hadn’t yet known what the end result was, until she visited Mike at work, and he said he saw it at Discount Records.

And Linda said. What?

Let’s go check it out.

And they did.

And the rest is probably history.

Or his story.

And my salsa thanks them, all while going south on me.