Grand Marshal

The Downtown Parade of Lights is honored to present the 2024 Grand Marshal Carlotta Flores.

The matriarch of Tucson’s Mexican food scene, Carlotta Flores, ACF, is the third generation overseeing El Charro Café, the country’s oldest Mexican restaurant in continuous operation by the same family since 1922. Chef Carlotta Flores of Tucson, AZ was one of 2021 Forbes Magazine’s 50 Women over 50 and the only woman amongst the 10,000 nominees to be given the award from the hospitality or food industries. Other winners included Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, and Astronaut Wally Funk.

She’s the author of “El Charro Café: The Tastes and Traditions of Tucson” and “El Charro:Café: Flavors of Tucson From America’s Oldest Family-Operated Mexican Restaurant.” Her award-winning recipes have been reviewed by nationally recognized critics from the LA Times to Gourmet Magazine. A USA Today poll voted El Charro Café as one of the best restaurants in the country. In 2019, El Charro Café was a semifinalist for a James Beard Award.

Flores and son Ray Jr. opened The Monica, the family’s newest culinary vision in honor of their 100th Anniversary and in celebration of Monica Flin, her great aunt who founded El Charro Café in 1922.

In 2022, Carlotta Flores’ El Charro Café was chosen as one of the semi-final sites for Bravo Network’s highly rated show TOP CHEF and was a finale judge when the show visited Tucson. Her work with the Top Chef team led the production team to say that their time in Tucson was “a visually stunning destination and a culinary hidden gem”

Carlotta recently celebrated being married to her husband Ray for 56 years and is the mother of three children Ray Jr., Candace, & Marques, and is the proud grandmother of five beautiful grandchildren

The 2023 Grand Marshal was Dr. Dante Lauretta.