IT is a Friday morning in March and Bill Civish is examining the menu at El Coronado, a lunch counter in downtown Safford, Arizona.
“Do you have menudo today?” he asks our waitress.
This is a reasonable question — menudo isn’t the easiest thing to prepare, possibly because it takes a lot of time and effort to make animal offal — a chief ingredient of the traditional Mexican stew — look good, let alone taste great. As a result, many restaurants serve it on weekends only.
Not here, it turns out. At El Coronado, they’ve got menudo every day. Lucky me — I’ve never had intestine soup for breakfast, even though that is when you’re supposed to eat it.
I’m at El Coronado with Civish and his associate, Marie Freestone to talk about tourism.
Civish, now retired after a career with the Bureau of Land Management, now volunteers as the head of
the local visitors bureau. Freestone is the Membership Coordinator for the Graham County Chamber of Commerce. (Unlike your average Arizona Anglo, Freestone’s family has been here for five generations. Her great grandfather, she says, was a Mormon polygamist that originally settled in one of the colonies just over the Mexican border.)
You’ll find Graham County over in the eastern part of Arizona, hours away from places that you have heard of. This is not Scottsdale, this is not The Grand Canyon, though it is, to be fair, not the ugliest place: The Gila River runs through this pleasant agricultural valley; the 10,000 foot-plus high Mount Graham is constantly in view.
There are reasons for people to visit, don’t get the wrong idea. It’s just that none of them are terribly thrilling to a mass audience.
If, for example, you’re into things such as quail hunting, like Civish, you might be in heaven. There’s birding, hiking and also stargazing. By now, many of you are probably half way back to the interstate in your head. (That would be I-10, a half-hour to the south.)
Yes, the West is full of places like Safford; there’s a quiet downtown just off of a busy highway with all the modern accoutrements: mid-priced hotel chains, fast food outlets, a Walmart. There are dusty back roads running past well-watered fields (in this case, cotton). The architecture is for the most part spare and utilitarian. There are also a lot of Mormons.
It was with this knowledge that Civish — himself a self-described lapsed, or Jack Mormon — came to the Gila River Valley in the early 1990s after a career which took him everywhere from Alaska to inside the Beltway. The valley he found during the course of his career, which isn’t surprising when you consider that 80 percent of Graham County, where you’ll find fingers of both the Sonoran and Chihuahuan desert, falls under the jurisdiction of the BLM.
Tall, slightly gruff but still rather personable, Civish doesn’t seem like the type to stay retired, which is possibly why how he came to be heading up the local tourism bureau, which doesn’t have the money to pay anyone to do the job. It’s a big task to be performing pro bono — how to make this county, settled in the late 1800s, sexy? How to make a place known for, as Civish says, “copper, cotton and cattle,” appealing to travelers?
The solution turned out to be pretty simple. In fact, it turned out to be staring him right in the face.
A BIG IDEA
On its own, Safford’s El Coronado restaurant is just another small town coffee shop, a place to meet and greet over eggs for the local who’s-who, which around here could be anything from ranchers to farmers to downtown shop owners to people attached to the local mining trade — now, incidentally, in a downturn, what, with copper off about 50 percent from its 2008 high.
Mary Coronado owns the restaurant; after a serious health scare, her two grown children, Marco (a sous chef in Tucson) and Della (a physical therapist in Phoenix) are home and manning the kitchen. It’s a well-worn, comfortable place. Coronado has been at it for 28 years.
“My kids want me to retire,” she says. “But I’m not ready.”
Besides exciting offal stew, which comes out fragrant and almost as fluorescent as the lighting overhead, there are the huevos rancheros, covered in tasty, homemade salsa. There is also a cinnamon roll, and half a fresh pumpkin empanada. The food, while good, isn’t going to change your life, but the experience is the stuff memories are made of.
Civish woke up to this fact a few years back while at a statewide conference of tourism, where a speaker was talking about food as one of the hot new trends in travel.
Food, the speaker said in so many words, is sexy.
Tackling a breakfast quesadilla the size of a manhole cover (a newfangled creation that Marco has added to the menu recently, Mary says) Civish talks about how at that moment, he knew what to do.
“We’ve got some of the best Sonoran-style Mexican food around, ” he remembers thinking. “Why not us?”
This is how El Coronado went from being a locals breakfast joint to a star on the region’s “Salsa Trail.”
HITTING THE TRAIL
The trail, which features 15 restaurants in both Graham and adjacent Greenlee Counties, has been up and running for a handful of years now. There’s an annual Salsa Fest. El Coronado has taken home the top prize in a judging that rates salsas from around the state.
Suddenly, places like the rustic Bush & Shurtz café in nearby Pima, where farmers gather most afternoons to shoot the breeze, or the humble Mi Casa Tortilla Factory, housed in a cinder block building off of Safford’s Main Street across from a storefront church, are now tourist attractions.
Now, people from Phoenix looking for the authentic Southwest are driving up to the middle-of-nowhere town of York for lunch at Gi’mees, where, over excellent chile rellenos, co-owner Ed Scott, pronounces the Trail idea to be “best thing since pockets on a shirt” because it exposes them to a new audience — nothing to take for granted at a time when the local economy is on the skids.
Still, these are small towns, and change of any kind is going to hit its share of road blocks.
Some restaurateurs, Civish admits, were far from keen on the trail idea. Some, Freestone says, accused the Chamber of trying to steal their treasured family recipes. Skepticism abounded.
Then the project launched and received significant regional notice. Last year, it won a Governor’s Tourism Award, an award handed out for the most innovative marketing ideas. Now, says Civish, even some of the biggest skeptics want in. Too late — they’ve capped the trail at 15 members for now, an act which created still more controversy.
This controversy rears its head in Duncan, the next town over. It’s a funky little town, with room for a Mormon church, a biker bar known for its burgers and a smart little bed and breakfast run by a Buddhist with Boston roots. Sandra Day O’Connor went to school here as a girl.
We stop in at Hilda’s Meat Market — a trail member — to find them busy taking care of the lunch crowd. Duncan, it turns out, isn’t the sort of place where you can run around taking a lot of pictures without getting noticed, and it is revealed that a reporter from New York is indeed here to write about lunch at Hilda’s.
“Well,” says one interested bystander, “you must be headed to Ol’ Jo’s next.”
Ol’ Jo’s is a favorite around here, known for their Monday taco nights, which apparently are quite the shindig, with karaoke and everything.
We won’t be going. Not this time. Ol’ Jo’s, Civish tells me later, declined to join up. Apparently, one can never guard one’s taco recipes too closely.
THE LOWDOWN
Get there: Safford is an easy, two-hour drive drive from Tucson; Phoenix and Las Cruces, NM, are both 3 hours away by car.
Stay: The valley has a glut of mid-priced hotel rooms thanks to the latest mining boom and bust, but for character, your best bet is the Simpson Hotel in Duncan, a pleasant B&B with an almost boutique charm in a very surprising location (From $80, http://www.simpsonhotel.com). If Duncan is too remote for your tastes, choose Safford’s Olney House. Resolutely Victorian and a wee bit dusty, but the house, which dates back to the 1890s, has atmosphere in spades and the owners are anything but stuffy (From $70 with shared bath, www.olneyhouse.com).
More info:
www.salsatrail.com; www.visitgrahamcounty.com
5 ESSENTIAL STOPS ON THE SALSA TRAIL
1) El Coronado, Safford
Family-owned and operated gem of a Downtown gathering place. Don’t miss: Huevos rancheros, menudo (served daily). Info: 409 W. Main, Safford; (928) 428-7755
2) Gi’mees, York
You’ve seen restaurants like this one in dusty towns like this one everywhere in the West. This time, stop. Don’t miss: Chile rellenos. Info: Highway 75, York; (928) 687-1517
3) El Charro, Safford
Bustling and friendly, diner-type place that’s a must for lunch. Don’t miss: Sonora-style enchiladas. Info: 601 W. Main, Safford; (928) 428-4134
4) Chalo’s, Safford
Long-running family joint with years of history behind the name Don’t miss: Carne adobada Info: 611 S. 6th Ave., Safford; (928) 348-9889
5) Manor House, Safford
A family from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan bought and rebuilt this out-of-character but very likeable family-style restaurant. Don’t miss: Margarita cake, jalapeno poppers. Info: 415 East Highway 70, Safford; (928) 428-7148