Chef Jose Contreras: 2026 Southwest Chef Series
“Everybody was happy when they were at the table,” Chef Jose Contreras recalls, watching his grandmother Amelia cook in Hermosillo, Sonora. When he opened a restaurant of his own in Tucson in 2021, he named it for her and put the food he remembered from her kitchen on the menu.
At Amelia’s Mexican Kitchen, that means enchiladas, chilaquiles, tamales and quesabirria. For Contreras, these dishes are a memory of how it felt sitting down together at his grandmother’s table.
2026 BOSW Southwest Chef Series Hub
Chef Jose Contreras at a glance
- Restaurant: Amelia’s Mexican Kitchen
- Location: Tucson, Arizona
- Role: Chef and owner
- Cuisine: Sonoran Mexican cooking
- Upcoming project: Carrizal Molino + Cocina
- Recognition: 2025 James Beard Award semifinalist for Best Chef: Southwest
- Website: Amelia’s Mexican Kitchen
- Instagram: @ameliastucson
From restaurant design to a kitchen of his own
Before opening Amelia’s, Contreras spent years working in restaurant design and marketing in Tucson. When he transitioned to restaurant ownership, he started with a small storefront. A second location followed, along with national recognition for his cooking.
Recipe for success
Family recipes gave Contreras a starting point. Relationships with local farmers and purveyors help him bring those recipes into a Tucson kitchen. He remains hands-on in his restaurants, where the Sonoran dishes he grew up with still guide what he cooks.
Chef Jose Contreras’ impact on Arizona dining
Contreras is a champion of Tucson’s designation as a UNESCO City of Gastronomy. His next project, Carrizal Molino + Cocina, draws on his childhood in Santa Rosa de Yécora, Sonora. This enables him to showcase an Indigenous culinary technique: nixtamalización, the traditional process of treating corn in an alkaline solution before grinding it into masa.
Where Amelia’s began with his grandmother’s recipes, Carrizal gives him room to explore how one of the ingredients behind those recipes is made.
Signature dishes: Molcajete Amelia’s and birria
The Molcajete Amelia’s arrives bubbling in a volcanic stone mortar. Grilled meats, cactus and melted cheese sit in a rich salsa, and the generous portion is meant to be shared.
His birria offers another way into Amelia’s cooking. The meat is slowly braised until tender and served with consommé for dipping. It’s one of the dishes that helped establish the restaurant and a direct tribute to the kitchen where Contreras first learned what a meal could mean to the people around it.
Explore the 2026 Southwest Chef Series
This profile is part of The Best of the Southwest’s 2026 Southwest Chef Series, celebrating the chefs and culinary leaders shaping dining across Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Texas and Southern California.
