Tamales for Heroes

BY MELISSA ROBBINS

6| MAY 2020

If there’s a family in Tucson known for comfort food, it’s the Flores family. After nearly 100 years of providing Southern Arizona with quality homestyle Mexican cuisine, the El Charro! owners and the employees at Carlotta’s Kitchen are working to help keep those on the COVID-19 front lines fed, through Tamales for Heroes.

Starting at $4 a tamale, online sponsorships go toward filling 25-count baskets of tamales. Once a basket is “filled” online, a variety of handmade tamales are packaged and delivered to hospitals around Tucson. Site visitors can choose between pre-priced packages anywhere from five tamales to a full basket, or they can choose to give however much money they want.

Ray Flores, president of Flores Concepts, says he and his fellow restauranteurs noticed their guests wanted comfort food. That, he said, is a sign of the times.

“I think that’s a huge word right now, when we’re dealing with what we’re dealing with as a society,” Flores says. “If we give people a little bit of comfort, a little taste of our own community, I think that identifies with what we’re doing; it’s something to rally around, even.”

Flores says the restaurant closures following Gov. Doug Ducey’s executive order gave his family time to focus on its Tamale of the Month concept, a website where subscribers are sent unique tamales each month. At the same time, he had people reaching out left and right about helping the many others affected by the outbreak.

The family was already working with a vendor to deliver meals to area firefighters, a project he said will continue into early May, but it didn’t have the resources to crowdfund Tamales for Heroes on its own.

Luckily, he says, they were already working on an online concept they felt was strong enough to support a relief effort.

Of course, it helps when your family has been a staple of the community since 1922.

“We went through the Great Depression, the Korean War and World War II, and we have stories about what it was like when our great, great aunt was trying to stay in business in the Great Depression,” he says. “This may be more impactful than all that combined, but we have some history on our side, and we understand one thing’s for sure: You have to help people right now.”

As a previous El Rio Health board member, Flores says he understood the demands of a health care profession.

He noted that even normally, the long hours and high demands of the job often meant foregoing nutritious meals—or even complete meals, sometimes.

“We need these people to be healthy, feeling good, comfortable,” he says. “There’s nothing like a warm tamale to kind of give them a sense of home and remind them that they’re in Tucson and that people love and care for what they’re doing.”

While the tamales are being provided in response to COVID-19, Flores says Tamales for Heroes will exist under Tamale of the Month, making it a permanent addition to the Si Charro! group.

The tamales are prepared in the family’s USDA kitchen, Carlotta’s Kitchen; named for Chef Carlotta, the family matriarch.

Because the tamales are prepared in a USDA kitchen, and therefore USDA approved to be shipped around the country, this opens up the possibility of expanding beyond Arizona. Flores says that may take some time, though, as they work to figure out interstate shipping.

Flores says the family chose tamales for the effort because they’re essentially the ultimate no-fuss quality meal.

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“They’ve got protein, they’ve got carbs, they’ve got fats—we use healthy fats in them—they’re portable, they can be shipped frozen, so they’re pretty food safe and they can be easily microwaved, they’re gluten free for anybody that has issues with that, we have vegan varieties,” he says. “It was pretty bulletproof.”

The baskets will feature meat-filled, vegetarian and vegan options and come with Si Charro! salsas.

The site already has over 100 baskets paid for. Flores says these efforts are reciprocal; it’s because of local support that El Charro! can in turn support the community.

“It’s (local) businesses that establish the fabric of the community,” he says. “Don’t just go down the street for convenience to the guy that’s on the corner; drive a little further and visit your local operator—because they’re the ones who will donate to your Little League. They’re the ones that’ll be there in a time like this.”

For more information on this effort, visit tamalesforheroes.com or contact Ray Flores at 907- 1329.