Tucson is for lovers. There. I said it.
In my various travails across Tucson these many years, I have luckily stumbled upon a
good gaggle of fine folk that have moved on from the comforts of their home territory to
be in a desert climate mainly because of the calling of their hearts. That and the rent
isn’t too bad here either.
In a way, if you look at it with proper eyes, our fair city is sort of mythological.
The surrounding townships dotting Syracuse, New York can be labeled quite charming if
not feasibly quaint. One such transplant from said area moved to Tucson because she
found love that resided here. Which didn’t work out so much. Then moved back to New York before returning to Tucson and, yes, found love again. It sounds like a Hallmark movie of the week but, in a way, its more like some kind of a
fable.
Carolyn O’ Connor is the center of this tale and she is the proud owner and chef in a
fairly new downtown pasta and coffee café called Ceres. Pronounced ‘series’. Ceres is the
Greek goddess of the harvest and fertility and is also one of the largest dwarf planets in
the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. A moon of sorts. And moons are usually
associated with love. There’s a theme here.
“At first, I was considering a few different names for my place, but it was an email from a
friend that changed my mind,” says O’Connor. “She wrote, ‘Pray to the goddess Ceres
for good luck’. After looking her up, I discovered that Ceres was the working girl of the
Greek gods. So it was that girl power aspect that gave my place the name.”
O’Connor first arrived came to Tucson in 2013, for aforementioned love, but soon
moved back to her east coast home where she worked in behavior therapy. Missing our
fair southwest haven, she returned and was fortunate to find the man she is now
engaged to. Knowing that her calling was far from the likes of her previous chosen
career, it was of some coincidence that her fiancée is part of the La Cocina familia. The
space across the way, a store front taco spot for a while, was available and her soon to
be in-laws were more than welcome to have the newest member of the family move in,
cook in and bring it back to life.
“I grew up in a city that had a large Italian population so fresh made pasta was always
available,” O’Connor notes. “My mother and three sisters were always cooking and
interacting and that was the feeling I wanted to bring to downtown. Just real food made
by real people.”
Having very little experience in an actual restaurant kitchen, and basically being self-
taught, O’Connor’s pasta, along with her sauces, are exquisite. The process to make
the varieties of tagliatelle and bucatini sounds easy, just imported 00 Italian flour, durum
wheat and egg, but it takes a lot of mixing, kneading and cutting to get it right. She gets
to her shop in the early dark hours, starts the pasta and is ready to open her doors by 8
a.m. This is because Ceres serves coffee and espresso drinks, along with fresh baked
goods and bread provided by the pastry chef of La Cocina, before lunch service begins
in the afternoon.
With very limited space, O’Connor whips a sensory trajectory of
simplistic divinity that one usually stumbles upon in crooked European alleys or that
clandestine shop you passed by a few times with an unusual sorting of patrons spilling
out into the narrow straits with bags in hands donning satisfied smiles.
“This is the kind of food that I want to eat,” states O’Connor. “I just get overwhelmed by
restaurants that overdo Italian food, be it high end or with just so much cheese. What I
do is very hard work, but it feels so natural. Plus, this location feels like it wanted to be
serving food again.”
Her rich yet bright red sauces are all based with San Marzano tomatoes, the
effervescent pesto is writhe with local basil and garlic. All of it outstanding because of
the basis working with the basics. Just know there is very limited seating at Ceres, with
some additional provided in a picnic area across in La Cocina, but the note that
O’Connor wants us to read is that when you take freshly made food home and cook it
with your friends or family, is a pure indication of what human divinity is all about. And
that’s what love is. Isn’t it?
Because of quiet culinary salvos such as Ceres, Tucson is writing its own sumptuous
food fable. Are we moving into near mythic territory because of our thriving culinary
scene? Goddess only knows…
Ceres Pasta + Cafe
77 W. Washington St.
520-365-3500
cerestucson.square.site
