• 🍸 The Winning Cocktail — Meet the Fox Tucson Theatre team behind La Luz, winner of the inaugural Streetcar Cocktail Competition.
• 🎭 Behind the Bar at the Fox — Hear how the Fox is elevating its beverage program while serving busy performance crowds.
• ☕ Coffee as a Tucson Connector — The drink was inspired by café culture across Main Gate, Fourth Avenue, Downtown, and Mercado.
• 🍪 Pan Dulce Inspiration — The team experimented with cochito flavors and bakery traditions before finding the final balance.
• 🌵 A Tucson Arrival Story — Darlene shares how a desert sunset helped pull her from the Bay Area and New York toward Tucson.
• 🧪 Craft, Chemistry, and Trial Runs — The final cocktail came after several failed versions, long prep sessions, and one big “aha” moment.
• 🚋 A Streetcar Story in a Glass — La Luz captures the flavor, creativity, and district-to-district energy of Tucson’s urban core.

This week on Life Along the Streetcar, Tom Heath sits down with the team behind one of the newest Tucson stories being poured downtown: La Luz, the award-winning cocktail from Fox Tucson Theatre.

Guests Darlene and Sofia/Sophia from the Fox share the story of how their drink came together for the inaugural Streetcar Cocktail Competition, a friendly challenge that invited bartenders along Tucson’s urban core to create a cocktail with a sense of place. The winning result was not a quick first draft. It was the product of long hours, failed experiments, texts back and forth, last-minute inspiration, and a whole lot of Tucson flavor.

The conversation starts with the people behind the drink. Sofia/Sophia talks about working her way up at the Fox, from part-time bartender to food and beverage manager, while Darlene shares her path from San Francisco to New York City and eventually Tucson, where the desert sunset made a lasting impression. Together, they bring a mix of local roots, big-city bar experience, and deep respect for the craft of hospitality.

At the heart of the episode is the creation of La Luz. The cocktail draws on the streetcar districts themselves, especially the shared café culture that connects Main Gate, Fourth Avenue, Downtown, and the Mercado area. Instead of making another espresso martini or carajillo, the Fox team built an iced coffee cocktail using cold brew from Caffé Luce, tequila, house-made piloncillo syrup, warm spices, Mexican vanilla tincture, and a thoughtful garnish inspired by Tucson’s bakery traditions.

Tom also explores what makes the Fox such an interesting home for this drink. While most people go to the Fox for a show, not necessarily a cocktail, the venue has been steadily elevating its bar program while still serving the fast-moving crowds that come through on performance nights. La Luz gives the Fox a new signature story to share—one that connects live entertainment, downtown hospitality, and the creativity happening all along the streetcar route.

Listen in for a behind-the-scenes look at how a Tucson cocktail is born, how local bartenders turn ingredients into storytelling, and why a little friendly competition can help shine a light on the people making the urban core feel alive.

Speaker-Labeled Show Notes / Edited Transcript

Editor’s Note: This transcript has been edited for readability. False starts, filler words, repeated phrases, and transcription artifacts have been cleaned up while preserving the substance and tone of the conversation. Speaker labels have been identified as host Tom Heath and guests Sofia Perez and Darlene Ollada based on the episode context.

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Tom Heath:
Welcome back to another episode of Life Along the Streetcar, where we talk about the social, cultural, and economic impacts happening within Tucson’s urban core, which we define as the area from A Mountain to the University of Arizona.

Thanks so much for joining us today. We have a duo conversation here with the dynamic team from the Fox Tucson Theatre, winners of the inaugural Streetcar Cocktail Competition. We have Darlene and Sofia with us. Welcome in.

Sofia Perez:
Thank you for having us.

Tom Heath:
How many podcasts have you been doing since winning this award? I’m assuming the media has just been blowing up.

Sofia Perez:
I’ve lost count. Actually, this is my first and only podcast I’ve ever done.

Tom Heath:
That’s how special they are. I had to call people to get them in here.

We’ll get into the cocktail in a moment, but I’d love to know a little bit about the two of you. You’re both at the Fox Tucson Theatre. Sofia, you’re the food and beverage manager, right?

Sofia Perez:
Yes, I’m the food and beverage manager for the Fox.

Tom Heath:
How long have you been with the Fox?

Sofia Perez:
I started at the Fox in 2022 as a part-time bartender. I also got some hours working in the box office, and then moved up from there to head bartender, then assistant food and beverage manager, and now food and beverage manager. So I worked my way up.

Tom Heath:
And Darlene, you’re fairly new at the Fox, right?

Darlene Ollada:
Yes, new at the Fox, but not new to bartending. I’ve been doing this for about ten years or so.

Right now, I work for a mental health and behavioral health organization, but I’ve also done creative director work in the restaurant and beverage industry. I’ve been a pretty serious bartender for a long time. I worked at Tough Luck Club for a bit, and before that I came from New York City, where I was working on my bar career. I’m originally from San Francisco.

Tom Heath:
So San Francisco to New York to Tucson. I need to know more about that. What brought you from New York to Tucson?

Darlene Ollada:
Lots of reasons. I actually wanted to move from the Bay Area straight to Tucson, but I took a long detour through New York.

I visited Tucson for the first time with my partner, and I remember getting on the highway as we got close to town. It was the most beautiful sunset. I know a lot of people say this about Arizona, but it felt like a very spiritual experience for me. I thought, “I think I need to move here.”

Tom Heath:
And it happened.

Darlene Ollada:
It happened. I took a long detour, but we’re here, and that’s what matters.

Tom Heath:
When you were in New York, you were working in the bar scene, so you probably honed your skills in some pretty interesting environments.

Darlene Ollada:
Absolutely. Like Sofia said, it’s a lot of climbing the ladder. I definitely put blood, sweat, and tears into my bar career.

I started at a dive bar in San Francisco, then went into a brewery. From there, I realized I really liked making drinks. That led me into more mixology-heavy spaces, working with nicer food and some really interesting concepts. I just kept working on my craft and getting better at it.

Tom Heath:
Apparently, it’s an award-winning craft now.

Sofia, are you from Tucson?

Sofia Perez:
I am. I was born and raised here. I lived in California for a couple of years, but I got homesick and moved back.

Tom Heath:
What was your path into bartending?

Sofia Perez:
I remember being younger and always thinking bartending looked so cool.

Before bartending, I worked for the Boys & Girls Club for seven years. I was looking for something different, so I started bartending part-time. I found that I enjoyed it, and it became something of a hobby, too.

It was also a little less emotionally heavy than what I had been doing before. Working with youth can really take a toll on your mental health. So I stuck with bartending.

I also worked at HighWire for a while, where I learned a lot from Barb and Justin, the managers there. I learned a lot of my craft at HighWire, too. They have those molecular shots, and that was really fun to learn.

Tom Heath:
That’s chemistry.

Sofia Perez:
Exactly.

Tom Heath:
You both have these extensive backgrounds, and this is not a slight against the Fox, but it doesn’t necessarily seem like a destination for bartenders in the way a cocktail bar might be. What drew you to the Fox?

Sofia Perez:
I had a friend who was the bar manager at the time, and they helped me get a job there. From then on, it became something I truly enjoyed doing, whether I was getting paid for it or not.

I’m always the designated bartender at family birthdays and events. I enjoy it.

And the Fox is a historic venue. You’re right that it’s not a bar destination in the sense that people aren’t usually going to the Fox just to get a cocktail. They’re going to the Fox to see a show.

But since I’ve been the food and beverage manager, and even when I was assistant food and beverage manager, we’ve been trying to elevate the bar. I learned a lot from Olivia Reardon, who was our food and beverage manager before me. We’ve been working to make the bar program a little more intentional.

Tom Heath:
The thing I find interesting about the Fox is that when you’re there for a busy or popular performance, there can be four or five bars operating at once.

Sofia Perez:
Yes. We have two bars in the lobby, one large bar upstairs that has two wells and terminals, and then we have our donor bar, which is more private and located downstairs.

Most of what we sell during shows is still going to be basic drinks: rum and Coke, vodka cranberry, canned beers, things like that. But we do try to offer seasonal menus. Right now, we have a seasonal menu with springtime drinks, and it changes each season.

Soon, we’ll also be offering La Luz, which was the winning cocktail from the Streetcar Cocktail Competition.

Tom Heath:
Nice segue. Tell us about La Luz. How did this creation come together?

Sofia Perez:
It wasn’t easy. There were a few times when I told Darlene, “Maybe we should just say we’re sick and not go,” because it wasn’t coming together.

We had three or four other ideas for cocktails, and none of them were working. It was definitely a journey.

Darlene Ollada:
We didn’t have that many days to prepare before the competition, but we worked on it for so many hours each day.

It started with a little trickle of inspiration from La Estrella Bakery. We thought about using cochitos, the little gingerbread pig cookies, as part of the idea. We were optimistic. We thought, “There’s no way this can’t work. We’ll be in the kitchen for 15 minutes, and it’ll be perfect.”

But it was not perfect. It tasted kind of bad.

Over the next couple of days, we were texting each other and coming up with all these other ideas. We kept thinking, “This one is going to be the winner,” and then we’d try it and realize it wasn’t right.

Eventually, we went back to the original idea, but with some changes. After about six hours of working on it the day before the competition, we had this aha moment. We tasted it and thought, “This is really good.”

Tom Heath:
The Streetcar Cocktail Competition actually came out of an interview on this show. We were talking about the space next to the Rialto Theatre, which is now Rialto Gardens, and the idea of activating that space.

The bartenders weren’t given a lot of direction. It wasn’t “create the best margarita.” It was “create a cocktail that tells a story of Tucson and embodies the urban core.” We wanted to focus on the four districts: the University area, Fourth Avenue, Downtown, and the Mercado.

That has to be challenging, because you have to decide what story you want to tell.

Sofia Perez:
The Type A part of me was freaking out. I kept thinking, “What story can we tell with this?” Darlene was more like, “We’ll worry about that later,” and I was thinking, “No, we have to know.”

Tom Heath:
What came together first: the cocktail or the story?

Sofia Perez:
It kind of flowed together.

I started by asking myself what those four districts have in common. I thought about restaurants, but then I realized something else: if you know me, I always have an iced coffee in my hand. You will never see me without one.

People at work make fun of me because I’ll still have yesterday’s iced coffee sitting there with a little bit left, and then I’ll replace it with a new one.

So for me, coffee was something all four districts had in common. There are cafés in each of those areas that I love. That became the starting point.

We thought, “Let’s create a cocktail with coffee.” But we didn’t want it to be an espresso martini or even a carajillo, even though I love those. We wanted to make something a little different. So we went with an iced coffee cocktail. You don’t see that as often.

From there, we added the cochito idea from La Estrella, and it started to take off.

Darlene Ollada:
Looking back on it, what’s really great is that both of our personalities and our connection to the drink came through pretty equally.

When Sofia first started thinking of ideas for the competition, I wasn’t even expecting to be part of it. I was invited more as someone to support her.

Sofia Perez:
I had asked Darlene for advice on one of my first ideas. She helped me with that, and then I asked if she had any other ideas. She was the one who came up with the cochito idea from La Estrella.

Then we came to the piloncillo idea. I think that actually came from my mom. My mom created the first batch of the syrup. She made just enough for us to try in the drink, and we realized, “That’s what it was missing.” So shout out to my mom.

Darlene Ollada:
And I have to feature the garnish, because that was all Sofia. Last minute, she suggested adding a piloncillo brittle to the cocktail. I thought that was genius.

Then we started thinking through allergies. We didn’t want anyone with a nut allergy to react to it, so we considered doing a plain version. At one point, we were talking about pepitas and whether that counted as a nut issue, but we worked through it.

What I love is that both of us brought ideas to the table. At first, Sofia asked me for feedback and joked that I was managing her for the competition. But she had wonderful ideas, too—things I wouldn’t have come up with without her.

Tom Heath:
Walk us through the final drink. What is La Luz?

Sofia Perez:
The final drink uses Hornitos Reposado tequila. I don’t remember exactly why I chose that. My original idea was going to use Suncliffe Gin, but that cocktail didn’t work out. We had a list of spirits we could use, and I chose Hornitos Reposado.

The biggest challenge was working with that flavor profile and balancing it.

We used cold brew from Caffé Luce, which tied in the coffee element. That’s one of my favorite cafés downtown.

Then we used our house-made piloncillo syrup, which has fresh ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and other spices.

Darlene Ollada:
Secret herbs and spices.

Sofia Perez:
Yes, secret herbs and spices.

Then Darlene created a spiced and salted Mexican vanilla tincture, and I think that really brought the cocktail from one level to another.

Tom Heath:
For those of us who are cocktail novices, what is a tincture?

Darlene Ollada:
A tincture is something very concentrated that you might use from a dropper bottle. Ours is very potent, so you only need a couple of drops per cocktail.

Sofia Perez:
It’s basically like making our own bitters.

Tom Heath:
So you used coffee from Caffé Luce, but then created all of these other elements yourselves and blended them into La Luz.

There were 11 participants in the competition, and I was really impressed with the level of detail everyone put into it. The thought process you’re describing is something many of the other bartenders and teams went through as well. This was not something people took lightly.

I was pleasantly surprised. I thought some people might just show up and say, “Here’s a prickly pear margarita.” But everyone put a lot of thought into it. Coming out on top must have felt even more special because it really was a tough competition.

Sofia Perez:
I didn’t get to try all of them, but my mom brought me little samples. There wasn’t one where I thought, “I don’t like this.” There was a beet cocktail—I don’t remember who made it—but I was surprised by how much I liked it. I would have chosen that one for first place. It was really good.

Tom Heath:
I don’t remember the final standings, but I know you scored very well with the public, possibly number one. Clearly, you also scored well with the judges.

The criteria focused primarily on the flavor of the drink, but also on the story and how well the cocktail tied together the urban core. I think you did that very well in your presentation, and the judges remarked on that.

You were also dealing with a rainstorm, by the way. You were on the unprotected side and got pelted with rain for part of it.

Darlene Ollada:
I almost forgot about that. I think I tried to block it out.

Sofia Perez:
We were taking turns holding the umbrella over each other at one point.

Darlene Ollada:
At one point I thought, “Do we even need to shake this cocktail anymore? There’s water in it already.”

Sofia Perez:
It was diluted with rain.

Tom Heath:
As natural as it gets.

I’m excited to see La Luz on the menu. The competition went really well, and I think we’ll probably have something similar in the future.

The creativity and thoughtfulness of the drink come at a great time for the Fox, too. The Fox is going through some major changes over the next few years, and this could be a nice anchor point as the venue continues to build out its brand.

I really appreciate both of you taking the time to come in today and tell the story.

Listeners can try La Luz at the Fox Tucson Theatre. Maybe see a show, pick something you like, and stop by one of the bars. Ask for La Luz and taste an award-winning cocktail from a couple of fabulous bartenders who brought their local and big-city experience together here in Tucson.

Sofia Perez:
Thank you for having us.

Darlene Ollada:
Thanks for having us.

Tom Heath:
Thanks again for listening to Life Along the Streetcar and watching on our website, LifeAlongTheStreetcar.org.

Each week, we highlight people making things happen within Tucson’s urban core, from A Mountain to the University of Arizona.

Music is provided by Ryanhood, and I always want to thank James Portis, our executive producer.

My name is Tom Heath. I’m your host. I hope you tune in every Sunday for another episode of Life Along the Streetcar. Until next time, stay curious, Tucson.