The Best Mexican Restaurants In NYC

Almost everything at this Greenpoint taqueria is modeled after Mexico City’s legendary eateries, complete with colorful plastic plates and a comal custom-made in CDMX. Their tacos range from shredded suadero and al pastor, to longaniza with bright orange porky juices. The tripa (our favorite) is technically stuffed with blowtorched cow’s stomach lining, but some bites are so creamy, we’d swear there’s bone marrow in there. This taqueria barely has room to stand in, so snag a spot on a bench outside or just eat on the sidewalk—possibly while you get back in line for another round.

Across from Corona Plaza, in the shadow of the 7 train tracks, there’s a street cart selling tlayudas wider than a steering wheel. We’re talking a crisp layer of freshly griddled masa, topped with cheese, beans, shredded lettuce, and your choice of meat. The correct choice is the combo with crumbles of chorizo, cecina that tastes like the salty essence of beef, and planks of both carne enchilada and carne asada. Grab a quesadilla and huarache as well, and plop yourself at the little table to the side where you can accessorize with hot sauce and pickled onions.

Everything at Ensenada is good, and we don’t make that statement lightly. This beachy seafood spot in Williamsburg makes buttery tuna tostadas, saucy shrimp tacos, and three types of aguachile, and they have a daily Happy Hour from 5:30-7pm, when you can get $12 margaritas and $7 tiny pescaditos fritos with chipotle aioli. But once Happy Hour ends, the real party starts, when the pescado del dia lands on your table. The preparation of this charred whole fish changes from time to time, but whether it comes "al pibil" or "al pastor"-style with a salty-sweet pineapple butter, order it.

This Tijuana-style spot is a New York City landmark, like the Statue of Liberty, except it’s a truck under the subway track in Jackson Heights. Birria-Landia now has four other locations from the Bronx to the Lower East Side, and they still make the city’s best birria. Everything on the menu (tacos, mulitas, tostadas, and consomé) is bolstered by tangy, mildly spicy stew. Take your crunchy-soft tortilla filled with beef and dip it in some consomé. What happens is a sea change. The word delicious seems inadequate.

Carnitas Ramirez—the carnitas-only East Village sequel to Taqueria Ramirez—is an education in just how many different, pleasurable textures can be derived from one animal. The pig reigns supreme at this pea-green counter-service spot: from creamy brain stuffed inside a fried tortilla shell, to snout that could pass off as pork custard. There are 10 cuts, available individually as tacos, or all together in the must-order surtida taco. Come here for an easy weekend lunch on an overturned paint bucket, and to pack enough lard into your GI tract that it needs its own flammable warning.

For a food truck that sees the most action after midnight, El Jalapeño doesn’t need to be as good as it is. You can’t go wrong with any order, but the spicy pork burrito is our favorite. Ask for yours extra spicy, and they’ll throw in a mix of jalapeño, green peppers, and sichuan peppers, resulting in a tortilla dripping with chili oil and pork fat. If you want something a little less intense, their shredded chicken flautas are by far the best in the area. Parked in the West Village, this cash-only operation stays open until 4:30am every night.

Chalupas Poblanas El Tlecuile is a cash-only chalupa stand in Jackson Heights that operates outside of a Chipotle, of all places. The tortillas get cooked in lard on a charcoal-fired comal until they're brown on the bottom, and then doused with both salsa rojo and verde, shredded pork, and onions. Wildly porky in flavor and stacked into a tower, these make for a perfect $10 meal. The stand is typically only open from 6pm-11pm on Saturday and Sunday, and it’s worth planning your entire weekend around a pile of these street chalupas.

We love all the seafood at this restaurant in Jackson Heights, but a meal here is incomplete without an order of Submarino ceviche. This massive bowl of jalapeño-covered prawns, fresh white fish, and tender octopus will mentally transport you to a chill beachside seafood shack in Puerto Escondido, when in fact you’re in a space that has the look of a fluorescent lunch counter with cartoons on the walls. (There's now a second, more grown-up looking location in Greenpoint.) Once you try their aguachile negro, made with a blend of charred green and red chiles, you won’t know or care where you are at all.

Filled with jet black accents and dim spotlights above each table, this upscale Flatiron restaurant works best for special occasions. Cosme serves things like a tlayuda covered in mushrooms, and a plate of lobster prepared al pastor-style. If you get just one thing, make it the duck carnitas, a massive, juicy roast duck paired with warm tortillas. Share this feast with a few friends the next time you earn a degree, have a birthday, or decide to spend the rest of your life with someone. For a more casual occasion, check out Atla, their all-day cafe in Noho, where you can eat the best chicken soup of your life during the day, and drink margaritas at night.

Painted an unmissable, electric Frida Kahlo-blue, this little restaurant in Hamilton Heights grew out of a pandemic supper club run by couple Karina Garcia and Lalo Rodriguez. At night, it still feels like a dinner party, with spontaneous music from an upright piano, laughter, and the smells of great food cooking. Stop by with a date for an evening of fresh, earthy-sweet tortillas to go with your savory, birria-topped bone marrow, or a glass of Mexican wine with a juicy cornish hen stuffed with grains and quelites. We love breakfast here even more, when you can pair some eggs and fried tortillas with a refreshing café de olla or pineapple espresso.

A tidy scoop of refried beans topped with queso fresco. A jiggly sunny-side-up egg submerged in chunky salsa roja. The food at this Midtown East daytime cafe is hearty, straightforward, and greater than the sum of its parts. Stop by for breakfast or lunch, claim one of the little booths built into the window-lined walls, and enjoy a plate of huevos rancheros so simple it looks like a Rothko painting. Pretty much everything at the counter-service spot—from the crumbly conchas to the thin, stretchy corn tortillas—is made in-house, and you can tell.

You should, of course, order the al pastor tacos at Taqueria Al Pastor, a counter-service spot in Bushwick with a couple of stools but no tables. They come piled with strips of crispy pork and cubes of pineapple. But the carne asada taco is even better. The chunks of garlicky beef are stuffed into sturdy, pleasantly chewy house-made corn tortillas with spicy guac. On one occasion they ran out of corn tortillas, and made our tacos with flour ones instead. The result? An equally outstanding handheld meal.

For All Things Good runs on masa, but you won’t find any tacos at this minimalist Bed-Stuy spot that looks like a coffee shop. The focus here is on Oaxacan dishes, like giant memelas topped with avocado and a fried egg, tetelas filled with everything from hibiscus flower to black bean, and tlayudas covered in a ridiculous amount of mushrooms. They make some of the best tortillas we’ve had anywhere in NYC, and you can get a package of these colorful heirloom corn creations to go.

La Morada in Mott Haven is in one lavender room with the lighting scheme of a dental office. Plain decor aside, much like Donald Glover, the kitchen is good at pretty much everything. The tamales are like warm little pillows made of chicken and corn, and we’d gladly eat an entire meal of the crunchy gorditas. But the real reason you come here is the mole. Get the mole oaxaqueño. It’s a deep red color, and it’s possibly more complex than any equation currently being worked on by Nobel laureates.

El Kallejon in East Harlem looks like the mercado of your dreams—Huichol cats, rainbow piñatas—but the food is more of an ode to Mexican cuisine, not a classic rendition. Japanese, French, and other international influences fly freely in signature dishes like escargots with a silky pasilla sauce, crispy brain flautas sprinkled with tobiko, and grilled shark tostadas with kalbi sauce. Great for a low-key celebratory meal, everything about this place reflects the passion and quirkiness of host/chef Nestor Leon, who brings your food and flower-garnished cocktails to your table himself.

This Tijuana-style taco shop started in Chelsea Market in 2013, and you’ll still consistently find lines there any time you go. But now they also have a handful of outposts around Manhattan—including useful locations near Grand Central, Penn Station, and Times Square. There’s nowhere to sit, but there are counters where you can stand and eat asada, adobada, or nopal tacos with all the fixings, and we encourage you to expand beyond tacos to try some of their cheese-layered mulas.

This Long Island City restaurant made waves when it first opened in 2012, and everything from the ceviche to the chile relleno served in a little pool of mildly sweet sauce is still excellent there. Nowadays we find Casa Enrique more reliable than groundbreaking, but you can definitely count on this art gallery-like space for anything from an impressive date that doesn’t feel too formal, to a casual dinner at an outside table, with a couple of friends who appreciate good crab tostadas and ending a meal with tres leches cake.

If you’ve been searching for a Mexican restaurant in Park Slope that you can get excited about, you can stop. This Oaxacan spot has outstanding fried cod tacos and perfectly seasoned carne asada with a sauce that’s so good we would pour it on pretty much anything (edible or not). The dark, candle-lit room has huge booths with tall partitions that make you feel like there’s no one else in the restaurant, which makes Casa Azul an ideal spot for a casual date night.

Some things at Oxomoco in Greenpoint are optional. Starting out with a margarita or giant frozen cocktail is not. And neither is ordering the tlayuda—our favorite tortilla dish at a restaurant with many good tortilla dishes (which probably has something to do with the fact that they make their own). We’re done giving you rules for this spot—now just figure out when to come here for a fun date night, a group dinner, or a taco-eating competition against yourself.

Tacos El Bronco operates two trucks and a brick-and-mortar location in Sunset Park with a long dining room with a mural of (you guessed it) broncos. At each location, the menu has almost as many potential moves as a game of chess, but if you do this cash-only spot the right way, you don’t even need a menu. Stick to tacos—specifically the smaller ones, which are all around $3, and involve double tortillas with your choice of meat. The al pastor and campechanos are must-orders, and you also can’t go wrong with the chiles rellenos.

From the daily brunch to mezcal flights, Ruta Oaxaca takes the maximalist approach at every turn. And that’s exactly why we love this Mexican restaurant in Astoria. Eating rich, mole-covered enchiladas under the electric pink patio structure will make you feel like you’re in a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory reboot without any of the terror. If you need another reason to make this Oaxacan spot a priority, know that Ruta offers 2-for-1 cocktails and sangria during weekend brunch.

On any given night, you may find us closing our eyes and pretending we’re sitting at Claro’s outdoor bar underneath some twinkly lights, with a mezcal cocktail in hand, watching our tortillas being made on an open flame in front of us. This restaurant in Gowanus serves food inspired by Oaxaca, involving housemade cheeses and masa made from heirloom corn that's ground in-house. Get the memela topped with wild mushrooms and goat cheese crema, and definitely try one of their moles.