Quote:
Originally Posted by xzmattzx
You ate at three Gastronomy places and didn't mention what they were?!?
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Oh, sorry!
We ate at Boca Tacos Y Tequila, Seis Kitchen, and Reforma.
You can Google the complete list of certified Tuscon UNESCO Restaurants of Gastronomy. There's like 20-something of them, all meeting some kind of criteria.
And just an FYI, the UNESCO City of Gastronomy designation doesn't mean that Tucson is full of fine dining restaurants or "Michelin-rated" places (which I think is subjective crap, BTW); it's about the whole food culture of a place, how a city values its food, the authenticity, the originality and creativity of its cuisine. When Tucson applied for the designation, they mentioned how people in the Tucson area have been continuously doing agriculture there for about 4,000 years, or something; Tucson claims to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited areas in the US, or maybe even North America. The fact that they've been doing agriculture there for thousands of years helped it get the UNESCO City of Gastronomy designation, I think.
Looking it up on Wikipedia, this is the criteria:
-Well-developed gastronomy that is characteristic of the urban centre and/or region
-Vibrant gastronomy community with numerous traditional restaurants and/or chefs
-Endogenous ingredients used in traditional cooking
-Local know-how, traditional culinary practices and methods of cooking that have survived industrial/technological advancement
-Traditional food markets and traditional food industry
-Tradition of hosting gastronomic festivals, awards, contests and other broadly-targeted means of recognition
-Respect for the environment and promotion of sustainable local products
-Nurturing of public appreciation, promotion of nutrition in educational institutions and inclusion of biodiversity conservation programmes in cooking schools curricula