Charro Steak

About Charro Steak

Charro Steak is the downtown Tucson steakhouse the Flores family opened on East Broadway in April 2016, an offshoot of El Charro Café — the oldest continuously family-operated Mexican restaurant in the United States, run since 1922. The hook is mesquite: steaks grilled over open Sonoran mesquite wood and finished with the border-country seasonings the family is known for. Cuts are local, grass-fed and never given hormones or antibiotics, and a dinner lands around $25 to $50 a head, with a 14oz boneless ribeye near $35.

The Kitchen

The kitchen runs an open mesquite grill, and the smoke is the whole point: a grass-fed Arizona New York strip and that 14oz boneless ribeye come off the fire with a char you cannot fake on gas. Around the steaks the menu pulls in Sonoran touches the Flores family has cooked for a century — an ancho-rubbed prime-rib torta, osso buco estilo Sonorense, and the carne seca that made El Charro famous, sun-dried on the rooftop and shredded.

Start with a seafood tower and oysters at happy hour, add the queso fundido, and finish with a margarita from a bar that takes tequila seriously. It is a steakhouse with a border accent rather than a white-tablecloth chophouse. For the wider city read the Tucson dining guide, the best steakhouses worldwide, and the best Mexican restaurants, or compare the family's original El Charro Café.

The Room

The downtown room is high-ceilinged and lively, brick and dark wood with a long bar that fills for happy hour and a buzz that suits a group. It is comfortable rather than formal — no jackets required, no hush — which is exactly why it works for a table of colleagues or a birthday party. There is a second location in Oro Valley on Oracle Road if downtown is booked. Service is friendly and quick, and the bar program is a draw in its own right.