New downtown Tucson restaurant takes desert cuisine to the next level
Preservice.
It’s a nightly ritual at Aaron Lopez’s just-opened downtown restaurant Ursa.
Right after family meal, 30 to 40 minutes before doors open, they meet in the small space off the dining room to talk about the night before and the night ahead.
On this quiet late October Thursday, it was a small group led by GM Emma Thomason, a veteran of Tucson’s downtown dining scene, including at the recently shuttered Maynard’s Kitchen, and Lopez, chef-owner of what just may be one of Tucson’s most intriguing new restaurants.
You’ve heard of farm to table, the concept of locally sourcing from regional growers or producers.
Lopez and his wife/partner, June, practice desert to table, creating dishes from foraged or heritage Sonoran Desert ingredients.
Seeds harvested from ironwood pods become the basis for hummus; and squash, tepary beans, corn and amaranth are usual suspects in an array of dishes on the restaurant’s 10-course chef’s tasting menu ($175) and five-course prix fix ($75).
Cholla fruit and palo verde buds and “many, many things that are bitter and astringent and fibrous” are core ingredients, said Lopez, who moved to Tucson’s stretch of Sonoran Desert from the Sonoran Desert of his native El Centro, California, in July.
“We’re looking at these ingredients and seeing how far we could push them,” said Lopez, who trained in French technique at La Cordon Bleu in Pasadena before spending 20 years cooking in fine dining restaurants, mostly in California and Hawaii.
Ursa Tucson is the second iteration of the restaurant. The Lopezes opened the original in June 2024 in his hometown of El Centro, about an hour’s drive from his wife’s native Yuma.
Ursa Tucson’s menu mirrors a lot of what Lopez did in El Centro, from the Asian-inspired sauces created from wilted succulents and the outer shells of ironwood beans to a hummus-like dip created from the beans themselves after they have soaked for hours in salt.
You won’t find a steak or roasted chicken on Ursa’s menu; they only serve game — quail, deer and wild boar sourced from Texas-based Broken Arrow Ranch.
Related
Aaron Lopez, far right, chef and owner, uses a blowtorch to bring out the fragrance of the c…
Faculty concerned about changes to U of A admissions policy
