Guacamole is important to me. So important, it seems, that when someone saw the Best Guacamole section on their Best of Tucson® ballot, he put my name down*. 

But, I'm not going to make guacamole for you, dear Tucson Weekly/The Range reader. That would be weird. Know what else is weird? That there doesn't seem to be a frontrunner in this Best of Tucson® category. I mean, I get it. We're lucky to have a lot of guacamole options. So many options! But where is it best? Where do you take your sad, midwestern relatives to show Tucson off? We need to know.

So, go vote! If you feel strongly, take all of your friends to your guacamole holy place, buy them a few bowls and convince them to second your vote.

Just in case my many, many links to the survey didn't clue you in: commenting on this post doesn't count as a vote, you have to fill out (at least!) 30 sections on our ballot to officially have a say. You can, however, make a case for your favorite guacaloving institution below and help shape impressionable minds.

* I'd like to thank my Nana for teaching me how to cook and my boyfriend for voting for me when he didn't know what else to put. I shall celebrate this honor in the traditional manner: by eating 12 avocados by myself in under 3 minutes.

On Wednesday, April 22, the Dine Out for Safety event will allow Tucson diners the opportunity to have a great local meal and contribute to a nonprofit that provides education and support for victims of sexual abuse. 

Now in its 19th year, the event features about 20 different local joints that will be donating a portion of their sales to the Southern Arizona Center Against Sexual Assault. SACASA provides a safe space for survivors of sexual assault to get resources to cope and learn past 

According to SACASA, the event helps bring awareness to both the organization's mission and the sexual violence epidemic in a broader context. SACASA says that someone is affected by sexual violence every 2.5 minutes and one in five women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. The Dine Out for Safety event will keep all proceeds in the event in the local community to help victims recover and gain strength.

All you have to do is dine out on Wednesday at one of the following places:


For more information on the event and SACASA, visit the Dine Out for Safety website.

North is providing some escape as we leer into summer with a dinner series that hopes to provide a taste tour of Italy. This Wednesday, Aprill 22, chef Carlos Calderon will head the event with a four course meal inspired by Piedmont. 

Since the region is known for its wine first and foremost, but also among food lovers as a hub of avant garde technique melded with hearty traditions, chef Calderon will have plenty to work with as he explores Piedmont. Each of the four courses in the meal will be paired with a beverage.

Here's the menu:

Antipasto
Antipasto Piemontese
Olive Oil Poached Tuna, Roasted Peppers, Anchovie Gremolata, Sea Salt

Primo
Agnolotti Piemontesi
Gorganzola Dolce & Potato, Crispy Radicchio, Barbera Wine Reduction

Secondo
Vitello Brasato al Barolo
Barolo Braised Veal, Roasted Mushrooms, Polenta, Barolo Jus

Dolce
Bonet
Chocolate and Nutella Budino, Caramel, Amaretti Cookie

The dinner is $55 and will begin at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday at 2995 E. Skyline Dr. You can make your reservation in person or by calling 299-1600.

Local food lovers swarmed to Rillito Park Race Track on Saturday, April 18 for Viva La Local's spring event. The event, which was so successful in previous years that it's become bi-annual, fuses a farmers market with a tasting event—at least that's what I expected before going.

The first thing I realized about the event was that the tasting sizes were actually massive. Each sample ran $5, which seemed pricey until you saw the dishes. While the price matched the portion, it did make it a bit difficult to try out more than two or three of the spots before getting uncomfortably full. That's why the first lesson learned is bring a friend or two or three—that way you can all get different things and swap bites for maximum coverage.

The next bump in the road was actually a little rougher to overcome once planted at the festival. There was one water fountain that I could find and water was being sold for $1 at the Hydration Tent, though it was cash only. So, when the fest returns on October 31, be sure to bring either cash or your own water bottle or you'll find yourself mighty thirsty with only beer and wine to comfort you. (The token booth took credit cards so you're able to swipe for food and booze.)

Other than that, be sure to bring a big floppy hat or a hefty dose of sunscreen because shade at Viva La Local is like the spice in "Dune"—hard to come by and even harder to give up once you've had a taste.

Friday night marked the release of Tough Luck Club's new cocktail menu. Like the last, it's a four page zine-style booklet complete with cocktail recipes. However, according to bartender Niklas Morris, what sets this new menu apart is the bar coming into its own.

"The bar is finding its identity," he says. "First menus are usually about equal parts status quo and shock and awe, with the second you can begin shaping the bar."

Morris compares this process to a comedian workshopping jokes, and, like the first menu, this new one is not short in humor. The This Is Heartbreak, for instance, is a drink named to reference the fact that the bar has a no Morrissey/The Smiths rule. While the name might be a little silly, the drink itself is a seriously tasty blend of genever, sweet vermouth, Bonal and Creme de Noyaux. 

However, the menu isn't all that's new at TLC. Morris says the bar plans to roll out two new programs: the Acid Cat Spirit Guide and the Culinary Experience. 

The Acid Cat Spirit Guide will launch next Friday, April 24 and will be "like an inverse bartenders choice." The bartenders will each have their own special secret drink. You don't get to know what's in it, it will "actively change" in terms of flavor as you drink it and it will look nothing like what it tastes like.

"Buy the ticket, take the ride," Morris says.

On the other end of the spectrum, the Culinary Experience is poking fun at the cocktail world's penchant for embracing "convoluted trendy culinary technique behind the bar." To take all of that one step further, you can expect classic cocktails with a snack food twist. Using techniques like immersion circulation, vacuum chambers or rotovap essential oils, the TLC team will mix up pizza daiquiris, ranch dressing gin sours, chips and salsa margaritas and whiskey and pho sodas in bottles.

Overall, even asking what the menu is conceptually yields a somewhat cheeky response:

"Spring obviously, but we try to match the greater Midwestern seventies basement feel. A dash of Italian influence, like a father who is half Italian, but insists on talking about the old country he's not from. I did notice when I was compiling our menu that we really only make tiki drinks anymore. Not tropical per se, but fun and really conceptual," Morris explains.

You can try out all 24 of the new drinks (hopefully not in one sitting) while the spring menu runs for the next few months. Morris says TLC's menu will change quarterly.

For Ryan Clark, chef at Agustin Kitchen, being a board member at Slow Food Southern Arizona gives him the opportunity to give back to a community he both believes in and is a part of. His annual F & B Tasting event works as a way for him to bring all of the factions of that community together for a single day of dining and imbibing locally.

This year, like the year before, he will use his restaurant and the Mercado San Agustin courtyard outdoors as the event's setting when it returns on Sunday, June 7. 

From 5:30 until 7:30 p.m., attendees can sample bites from Blu A Wine & Cheese Stop, Proper, Prep and Pastry, Agustin Kitchen, Acacia Real Food & Cocktails, Zona 78, Seis Kitchen & Catering and Caridad Community Kitchen. The focus is to use fresh, local and seasonal ingredients, which is what really makes the event exciting to Clark each year, even though the vendor list is largely the same.

It's been just three years, but Dragoon Brewing Co. quickly solidified its spot in the hearts of beer enthusiasts as a favorite for creative brews in Tucson. Whether you're the type who gets the Dragoon IPA every time or you like to venture out and try new things, you should head to the brewery, located at 1859 W. Grant Road Suite 111, on Saturday for their third anniversary celebration.

Chelsea Blue of Dragoon said the event caps off the brewery's growth.

"We are so, so thrilled to be celebrating our third anniversary," Blue said. "With our new expansion, we're really feeling the growth Dragoon has had over the last three years and can't wait for the coming years ahead of us."

For the event, Ricuras de Venezuela, Black Top Grill, Lucky Girl and Zany Beaver will serve a variety of eats for imbibing party goers. The brewery will also be releasing the fourth iteration of their Russian Imperial stout—aptly named The Quatro. Compared to the last three, Blue said The Quatro has a bit of a drier finish with the "same bold, black, deliciousness as all the others."

Mezcal lovers crowded Pasco Kitchen & Lounge's dining room and patio last night for a special four-course dinner. Each dish in the prix-fixe meal was paired with a different Del Maguey mezcal, showcasing its region of origin and displaying the range of flavors in the agave distillate. 

Starting off, Phoenix-area bartender Jason Asher served up a mezcal punch aptly named Stigibeu—the traditional toast for mezcal coming from the Zapotec expression of gratitude for a life connected to ancestry and the life forces around you. The cocktail was a fruity introduction to the sometimes intense spirit, mellowed out and balanced nicely as a stepping stone into straight up tasting. 

The first course paired a beautifully simple caldo de piedra, or stone soup, with one of Del Maguey's most well-known (likely because its reasonable price point) mezcal varietals: Vida. The smoky, earthy notes from the spirit paired well with the very rustic soup, which had thinly sliced red snapper, shrimp, half a potato, fennel and coriander. The clean broth, which was poured over the other components tableside, successfully used its river stone boiled seafood base to provide a very subtle, but intentional palette by which to compare flavors.

Next up was a fideo with pulled roasted pork sholder and seared barbecue pork belly. The lightly sweet barbecue flavor on the vermicelli matched the citrusy notes of the mezcal Chichicapa. Although of all the dishes served this one suffered the most from temperature issues, the balance of sweet and spicy/smoky elements redeemed that issue. Plus, getting all of those portions out simultaneously is no easy task and most of the coursed dinners I've been to have also had that issue.

Course three was the dinner's main event. Roasted lamb was covered in a complexly spiced Oaxacan mole, rich in flavor and thick in texture. The dish came with a lamb tamal with incredibly smooth masa and a simple salad of thinly shaved squash and cucumber marinated in lime and cilantro to brighten up the more hearty elements of the plate.

This dish, paired with Del Maguey's Minero mezcal, which hails from Santa Catarina Minas, was my favorite combination of the night. Both the dish and Minero had a lot to think about. Distilled in clay pots, the Minero did have a distinct earthiness to it on the back end, complimenting the mole. The initial fruitiness of the mezcal contrasted the tart and herbaceous salad and the overall robustness of the plate's components went well with the roasted agave notes.

To finish, the dessert served up a bread-pudding like corn cake that tasted distinctly of its namesake. The accompanying spiced hot cocoa had a hint of orange flavor and a thick, but not completely smoothed texture. Served with the crema de mezcal—a blend of mezcal and agave syrup—the cake was equally sweet as the spirit. Made to to be an apertif or digestif, the crema de mezcal is a lot sweeter than your typical mezcal, which makes it more palatable for the beginning mezcal enthusiast. While it wasn't necessarily my favorite of the four spirit tastings because it took away from the mezcal itself, it did make sense in the context of a post-dinner drink.

Overall, the $30 four-course meal was an insane bargain, showing off both what chef Ramiro Scavo of Pasco can do in the kitchen and what the single village mezcaleros from whom Del Maguey source can do, which is to paint a broad spectrum of flavor with indigenous ingredients. The dinner was a brilliant look into the flavor of Oaxaca. 

Every Tuesday, Pueblo Vida Brewing Co. downtown releases a new beer infused with inventive ingredients to enhance the flavor of the original brew. This month has some great infusions to be released still and all you have to do is head over to the brewery, located at 115 E. Broadway Blvd., to test out the unique and limited quantity creations.

On Tuesday, April 14, Pueblo Vida will be pouring pints of pink hibiscus-infused dry hopped pale ale. Nothing says "I don't care what you think of me" quite like sipping on a pink beer, but the tart and floral notes combined with the hoppy beer mean you'll be drinking something a lot more interesting than just the beer equivalent of Tab. 

Coming up on April 21, you can get the Belgian golden strong ale infused with dark sour cherries, which was made to mimic the flavor of a traditional Belgian Kriek. Then, on April 28, Pueblo Vida will be cracking a keg of another infused dry hopped pale ale, but this time it will use lemon and ginger to add some tang and spice to the beer.

All infusion release events take place from 4 until 10 p.m. at the brewery location. For more information on upcoming Pueblo Vida releases and other events, visit the Pueblo Vida website.

Listen up, juicers and healthy eaters. Dallas-based Smoothie Factory is serving up a variety of, you guessed it, smoothies for folks who like to drink their meals now near the UA campus.

In addition to the Smoothie Factory location at 4246 N. 1st St., local franchise owner John Wilfert added a second smoothie spot to his repertoire at 1031 N. Park Ave., Suite C.

Smoothie varieties come in classic, berry, tropical, protein and specialty. Some classic smoothie flavors you can look forward to include banana with rice milk, honey, vanilla and turbinado sugar and the fruit-packed Factory Original with strawberries, banana, pineapple, mango, peaches, papaya, honey and turbinado sugar.

The smoothies can also be boosted with creatine, a cleansing blend, liquid ginseng, bee pollen and a meal replacement formula. The Park Avenue location also serves an expanded line-up of fresh cold-pressed juices, flatbread sandwiches, salads and Red Mango frozen yogurt in a variety of rotating flavors with a toppings bar.

Wilfert plans to open a third Smoothie Factory location in Tucson early this summer. 

The new Smoothie Factory is open Monday through Thursday from 8:30 a.m. until 8:30 p.m., Friday from 8:30 a.m. until 7:30 p.m., Saturday from 9:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. and Sunday from 11:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m.