Most food festivals around Tucson last for an afternoon. At most, the festival might roll over into a long weekend. The largest food festivals in the city generally span three days. However, there is one festival that takes place over the course of an entire month. In fact, we’re already an entire week into the festival. Thankfully, it lasts the entire month of October, so there’s still plenty of time to check out the festivities and, most importantly, the tastes of the one-of-a-kind event.
The Chinese Chorizo Festival officially kicked things off for the first time back in 2022. It was a way to move past the culinary issues of the previous two years and instead offer something new and exciting. This year is already the third rendition of the Chinese Chorizo festival, and you have the opportunity to sample unique flavors and styles around Tucson.
The idea of the festival was to bring more attention to the Chinese chorizo, which is different from the traditional Mexican chorizos you can find around town. That is because a hundred years ago local Chinese immigrants and grocery stores made unique forms of sausage with whatever table scraps were leftover from other dishes. It was a means of creating additional meals out of nothing. In general, the meats often included not only Chinese grocery store ingredients, but Mexican spices, and even red wine. Eventually, it became a heavily sought-after product, and yet as the Chinese grocery stores disappeared over the decades, so too did the Chinese chorizo.