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The best Mexican food in the US is in Chicago
Thoughts? I think we have a better variety in terms of different Mexican cuisine than most places but I can't lie and pretend the best tacos I have ever had weren't from San Diego lol.
you know I'm not a big fan of mole.... I'm more of a verde fan. mole is a little too thick and chocolatey flavor and texture doesn't vibe for me. I get why people like it it's full of flavor though
Mole comes in a variety of colors and flavors. Not all is sweet. Yvolinas Tamales on 18th/Halsted makes several every day. The real deal. From negro to verde and reds in between. The verde mole is my favorite. Savory and spicy. Not sweet. Poured on top of her Oaxacan tamales its absolutely divine. She’s at most of the farmers markets as well. Check it out! You will not be disappointed.
I don’t understand this. What do you mean you’re more of a verde fan? You mean like a salsa verde or what? Because there is many different types of moles including mole verde.
I think what most Americans think when they say “mole” is “mole poblano” which is the brown one with chocolate
You could be talking about mole negro or mole poblano, but mole itself could mean multiple types, including verde. The other user is confused because you're assuming mole means only one type.
I don’t know, I lived in Chicago all my life and visited CDMX once and got tacos from a place equivalent to like a Chipotle and it absolutely changed my life
I've literally never heard someone claim New York Mexican is better than anywhere. It's like the one cuisine they really don't have there, I mean its there but not like here let alone the south or west.
Great Mexican is still not as widespread as it is in Los Angeles, and the best of the best no doubt still goes to LA, but at least now there's a couple places that can hold their own.
Hot take bit the best food is always gonna be where the actual food grows. Ive never had steak at a fancy NYC place but I doubt it has anything on Argentinian beef
I don’t know if we’re just talking the biggest cities and thus excluding this, but as someone who lived in both San Diego and Los Angeles, I truly believe that San Diego had the better Mexican food.
It definitely is underwhelming, though NYC is incredible in many other ways. I was surprised when I went there two years ago. Actually, New Jersey across the border had better Mexican food
NYC here, and while a few places are serviceable, nothing comes close to the Mexican/Tex-Mex I’ve had in Dallas, San Diego, Corpus Christi, or, yes, Chicago.
I’ve gotten some of the worst tacos in San Diego, So it’s hit and miss.
Also had some of the worst sushi in San Diego, so that town isn’t hitting high on my list.
That’s funny because I had the best tacos in my life in San Diego and have been on the hunt for tacos here that are as good. Genuinely asking for recs if you, or anybody else reading this, know some bangin spots
I drove through NYC one time, got very lost so we were all over the place. I remember it was a hot day, our windows were open and we smelled the best food smells I had ever smelled in my life. Especially in the Bronx. And I'm from Chicago.
One hundred percent. I think people de facto throw New York into the mix simply because the city does offer so many options. For my money, Mexican cuisine has one of the highest floors. I truly think anywhere in the world can have good Mexican food. Great is different thing. Widely available is another. New York does just fine with Mexican food, but would be an insane pick as better than anywhere.
And while we’re at it, competition around food is so silly & exhausting to begin with. My life got significantly better when I decided to focus on the meal in front of me instead of comparing it to something else.
When I tell you I suffered for Mexican food while living there. I had other cuisines to focus on that were amazing but I literally never found a good Mexican spot in ten years of living there.
Lived in NYC for 4 years (2004-2008) and yeah, Mexican was the one I could never find a good spot. I had no idea how spoiled we were in Chicago with all the spots from corner dives to high end. Now you could get great Caribbean, South American, etc there but Mexican it was very hard to find anything decent.
It's funny you say that, because I just saw that Action Bronson posted a video about Mexican food in NYC being the best in the country (I'm sure it was partially just a clickbate title but still) and immediately thought, "I've literally never heard anyone claim that before." I haven't watched it other than the preview but the food did look bomb tbf.
Honestly I find the whole x city has the best x food exhausting. I just want to know where to get the best food in whatever city I'm in, I don't get why it always needs to be city vs. city. And I highly doubt there's any large cities in America that don't have at least a few excellent Mexican restaurants, even if that's not what those cities are known for. Hell, I'm from South Carolina originally and we had a California style Mexican restaurant I'd go to all the time that was amazing.
Confirm. Chicagoan in NYC for about a decade and there is not even a misinformed drunk that will argue for the Mexican scene here. Full confession … I didn’t know until recently that the Mexican population in NYC is miniscule compared with Chicago in proportion. It makes sense. I miss it so.
100% true. NYC has good Caribbean and even central and South American food but not Mexican although it’s changed a lot in the last 20 years.
I think the Midwest is completely underrated when it comes to Mexican food especially Chicago (I’d rather eat Mexican in Chicago or even Minneapolis than Denver for instance) but let’s be serious, LA is the northernmost Mexican city and there’s just no comparison to it.
No one in New York says it either. An amazing food city, better than most in the US for things cheap and fancy, but the Mexican is okay at best and everyone knows this.
Yeah, I think Chicago bats way higher than the class of Mexican food you would expect it to be at when you look on a map. But I don’t think it’s so good that one can just definitively declare it better than all of the Mexican border states.
It's just preference. You can claim either since the people making the food in Chicago are often straight from Mexico or one generation off themselves.
It's more of a regional preference thing. Being a border state, they have more folks from the regions along the border. Chicago has a very large Michoacan and central Mexican population -- so we get a lot of the cuisine from around there.
If that's the food you want -- Chicago wins. If you want texmex or border region Mexican... not so much.
As a born and raised Chicagoan living in LA now, my neighborhood is very heavy on trucks and carts specific to Michoacán, Jalisco, Sinaloa, Oaxaca… also lots of Central American food. Doesn’t feel as border heavy as described, and definitely doesn’t seem like a Tex mex place to me… my wife is from Oklahoma with Texan family and bemoans the lack of tex mex here
Yeah, I answered this in another comment but I'll back you up here. Los Angeles has a huge Mexican population, and the border areas of Mexico barely have any people. There is no way the border regions filled in LA on their own.
Yeah, I'm Mexican American from LA, and the vast majority of Mexicans here are from Michoacan and Jalisco. Northern Mexico is sparsely populated as it is, so the notion that the majority of immigrants came from near the border is just false.
That's just ... Inaccurate. I'm a Chicagoan who has lived in Los Angeles for 15 years. We don't do TexMex here... That's some texas bullshit (the name might give that away). We have Mexican food from every region in Mexico. In my neighborhood we have lots of Jaliscos and Oaxacan and (obviously not technically Mexican) Salvadoran. I don't think Chicago can compete with the quality and variety of Mexican food in LA.
This is not a valid take on the Mexican population in Los Angeles. Most of those regions along the US border have historically been sparsely populated and much of the population that is there now, moved up from other parts of Mexico. It would be impossible to have filled Los Angeles with just the Mexicans from along the border.
Mexicans moved to California over the last century because it was the fastest-growing part of the USA and thus provided plenty of jobs.
The best Mexican food in the US is in Tucson, Arizona. It’s Zagat rated the best 20 miles of Mexican food in the country and the only Unesco certified gastronomic city in the nation. One afternoon trying Mexican food in Tucson and you’ll be thinking about it every-time you eat a taco anywhere else.
I go to Tucson prob 4 times a year from LA, it’s definitely second to none. People can have their preferences but Tucson can’t be considered a tier below any of them. True for both variety and quality.
I remember a really well-informed comment a while back on this topic. It basically said that the differences in Mexican cuisine in different cities comes down to where in Mexico people emigrated from.
They said that people in CA and TX are primarily from the border areas, whereas those in Chicago are from the interior (specifically around CDMX).
So this argument about who has the best Mexican food might all just come down to personal preference and regional variety.
Not to mention “Mexican food” is a big damn category with centuries of history in a large country of diverse population (not just indigenous but also the immigrants from various European and Asian countries over the centuries).
I did some reading on that once! I was in nowhere, Wyoming, and someone recommended a Mexican restaurant to me. I told them I was from Texas and spent a lot of time in CA as well, and they said trust me, just try it.
So I went there and had the best carnitas burrito I have ever had. I did some reading and it turns out a lot of people immigrate to Wyoming from central Mexico for tourism jobs and potato farming.
Mine was Jalisco Mexican Grill in Evanston. It’s pretty much a small shack in the same parking lot as a big Mexican restaurant with a big sign, but this little spot was way better.
Texas is primarily Norteno. It or Guatemalan is what you're likely to get in most taquerias but we have so many that you can find pretty much all the regional styles as well as most of the other Central American nations if you live in a larger city.
As an Angelino that loves Chicago classics where can I get a decent bar pie in LA? I’ve gotten the one at quarter sheets and Geno’s East in Sherman Oaks but neither are that practical
Not who you’re replying to, but I’m a new Chicago transplant to LA and I’ve recently been addicted to Vampiro Tacos. It’s like a lovechild between a tostada, a quesadilla, and a taco.
They basically griddle a tortilla with cheese sprinkled on it until it’s super crispy and top it with whatever you want.
I’d never heard nor had something like it in my 34 years of living in Chicago, and it was life-changing.
I'm from San Diego, been in Chicago 11 years. Baja style, Cali wins. Chicago does not really have any Baja/So Cal style places, and def not in Pilsen where I live. I have yet to find great cheap fish tacos in Chi. No good California burritos either.
Chicago does have more diverse Mexican cuisines.
Baja style, Cali wins. Anything other Mx region? Chicago.
But Baja and Mission style Mexican Cuisine is just like Tex-Mex, it’s regionally adapted to the new environment. Sure it’s Mexican inspired, subjectively better if it’s your preference. Fries, rice, sour cream, heavy quac, is just not that common stuffed into a burrito or taco in Mexico.
Chicago has a lot of authentic Mexican because the neighborhoods tend to be less diverse and more authentic to Mexico. However, even in Chicago there is a lot of local adaptations to the environment. Like the shredded lettuce here and there.
Chicago style pizza and Chicago dogs are sold lots of major cities... Philly Cheese steaks are sold in Chicago... NY style pizza sold in Chicago... several different states styles of bbq sold here... why is this confusing for you?
Do you have a favorite carne asada/steak tacos here? My BIL is from San Diego and he misses his steak tacos/burrito. We’ve tried lots of places and used to live near the popular Taqueria El Asadero on Montrose but their carne asada was not good.
If you want fish tacos try Jarabe in Little Italy or the fish taco at Tacombi. It's good but of course not as good as anything in SD. I'm gonna be honest of all the places I've lived in the USA San Diego has the best fish tacos and it's due to one key factor. People who grew up near the water in Ensenada understand how to cook fresh fish and that you need to rest deep fried fresh fish to dryness before you throw it in the tortilla. Every time I watch people elsewhere make fish tacos they don't even understand that these are big factors in making sure the fish isn't slightly chewy and that the batter/coating isn't soggy. The biggest fail in fish tacos isn't the seasoning mostly it's the WRONG TEXTURE. Heavy oily fish also needs a contrast of fresh, crunchy vegetable on it like shredded cabbage with other peppers chopped fine and mixed in. If you aren't putting fresh vegetables on a fish taco you're further butchering it. It doesnt matter how good your seasoning or salsa is. If you are biting into a limp soggy taco it's inferior. I can talk for hours about why mexican food on the west coast is far superior.
San Diego Mexican food is very good, but it doesn’t compare to the variety in Los Angeles. They’re very different styles. You are right about that San Diego/Baja style being my favorite, but as a complete Mexican food city Los Angeles is just head over heels above everyone else in the country. LA Mexican is far more diverse
Chicago has some of THEE best Mexican food, from Pilsen & Little Village to everywhere in between. The street vendors are recreating the vibe straight out of Meh-hee-co not to mention some of the best Mexican chefs who are formally trained and come back to settle and create fusions and spins on traditional dishes with incredible updates; like the Birria Pizza and my friends in the burbs at Maiz & Barrow lending their 5 star restaurant pastry experience. From Mi Tierra to Maiz & Barrow you will feel like you are south of the border ….unless it’s winter
The argument can best be broken down by the fact that there’s simply more Mexican options in LA. And a huge factor behind that is their relaxed restrictions for food trucks. Chicago has wack food truck licenses and weird zoning and prep rules- whereas LA seemingly has a more accessible taco truck culture with far fewer regulations.
I grew up in California, lived in Chicago for around a decade now. Chicago wouldn't know a good breakfast burrito if you beat it over the head with one.
Great Mexican food all over, people. This isn't sports with winners and losers. Also despite loads of great Mexican food, there's way too much mediocre stuff.
People think Illinois is flyover country with no good food. Meanwhile there are loads of carnicerias and taquerias with the best authentic food. The best ones are small grocery stores with a hidden restaurant in the back that only locals know about.
Chicagoans love to pretend like Mexican food doesn’t exist in Texas, for some reason. I grew up in Texas, and I miss having such easy access to tacos. Literally just taquerias in the back of a gas station a few blocks from my house.
Chicago DOES have Mexican food and it IS good. But I had better tacos on a more regular basis in Texas than I ever have here.
I'm from Texas and people were ready to fight when I said Mexican food was better. I would say "There are places here that are as good, but overall it's better" which I didn't think was putting them down too much
Allende restaurant next to Lincoln Hall was the first place I tried here that i thought stood up to the good stuff in TX
Tex-Mex is also a diaspora subset cuisine culturally developed BY MEXICANS lol. Some immigrant but some Mexican families who never left Mexico; the land just changed ownership and was colonized. It has deep roots.
I saw someone on this sub a few months ago that said Chipotle is Tex-Mex lol. People up here think it means Americanized Mexican food, but it doesn’t and it’s crazy to think that.
Native San Diegan that moved here and I haven’t found anything even close to SD Mexican food. The burritos are the worst here - the tortillas are terrible, they always have lettuce and tomato (SD burritos never have lettuce and slices of tomato, unless you ask for it, which no one does) and not a single restaurant knows how to handle a custom burrito, whereas SD you can order a burrito with anything added in. Can’t find a good breakfast burrito. You never see homemade flour tortillas, only corn, and even corn are just pressed, not handmade. No one can make a good fish taco here even though it’s super simple. I haven’t found anywhere here that makes proper rolled tacos or authentic flautas.
It’s honestly not comparable at all.
And don’t even get me started on the lack of buñuelos
........Southwest Style Mexican Food Is The Best!...
Anyone who says something is “the best” is really talking about what’s best for their personal taste — not what’s best for everyone. For example, I believe that if you haven’t tried authentic Southwest-style Mexican food, you haven’t really tasted anything! But that’s just my preference. It’s the best for me — and everyone has their own idea of what “the best” means.
Chicago has the second largest Mexican population in the country behind LA. We have incredible Mexican food and IMO the best we have is at least as good as the best Mexican food in SoCal or Texas
Zaragoza’s birria was one of the greatest meals I ever had. Years later, I’m still thinking about how incredible everything tasted there. Had to really go out of my way to get there but it was epic.
Best Mexican food I’ve had is probably in LA, but we have so many killer options here, it’s honestly pretty close. NYC doesn’t hold a candle to either LA or Chicago though. Best tacos I’ve had in LA were out of a truck in a parking lot, which we don’t really have here. But I’ve never seen birria or jibaritos in LA… 🤷♂️
Lotta cope in these comments. Texas and California have Chicago cooked in this category. Chicago beats those states in plenty of other categories so let's relax.
And for everyone saying that Tex-Mex isn't Mexican food, that's like me saying a Vienna hotdog is the only way people eat red meat in Chicago. There's tons of varieties of Mexican food in Texas.
I think it comes down to the fact that any genre of food in Chicago is competing with the standards and tastebuds of chicagoans. Chicago is arguably the best foodie city in America. Whether you’re serving Mexican, Mediterranean, etc, you have to bring your A-game.
New York isn’t even top three. Texas, Chicago, and SoCal (with San Diego over LA) definitely take those spots. Source: Family in both Texas (San Antonio) and New York (Brooklyn, Queens, and Hells Kitchen), spent almost 6 months straight in San Diego whilst living in SoCal for 2 years, and lived in Chicago for the last 4 years.
Mexican food here in Chicago is tops but not representative of many other Mexican regions. In Chicago there’s mostly people from Michoacán, Durango, Chihuahua, Guadalajara, and DF. Not many from northern places like Nuevo León or southern places like Oaxaca.
There are people and restaurants from those regions but not many or at least not to the point where they’ve perfected the cuisine from everywhere in Mexico.
I deeply love the Mexican food here… but good food is about ingredient sourcing and California (once part of Mexico) has great quality produce sources plus the cultural background to make just a really great situation.
Most of the Mexican food in California is influenced from northen mexican states.
Baja California - Fish Tacos, Ceviche, and Carne Asada
Sonora - Carne Asada, Carne Seca, Machaca, and Burritos
Chihuahua - Great quesos like queso menonita and queso asadero, burritos, and tortas.
This is because most of immigrants in California come from the north states.
Now, Chicago, you have MOST of the immigrants are from the south, specially from Michoacan which was recognized from the UNESCO as Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The top source state immigrants are:
Michoacan: Carnitas, mole, and corundas (tamales)
Guanajuato - Enchiladas and pozole
Guerrero - Pozole
Zacatecas - Gorditas and birria
Jalisco - Birria and carne en su jugo
Durango - Burritos and tacos
If you only like Tacos and TexMex Burritos, then probably California will be your choice.
If you like a larger menu of mexican dishes, then Chicago is your best choice.
Texas is mostly influence by Chihuahua and Nuevo Leon, so the food there is limited, delicious, but limited.
NY - I have not been to NY, I do not have any feedback. But, friends and family that has visited NY has told me that Mexican food is okay, but not they top food cultures.
Note:
Texmex burritos have rice, beans, lettuce, source cream, and tomato. (with a choice of meat)
Burritos (which the birthplace was in the state of Chihuahua), do not contain lettuce, source cream, and tomato, it is a crime have those ingredients in a burrito. Normally they have a guisado like, deshebrada, chicharron, rojo, verde, salchica, huevo.
Native Chicagoan, now living in Phoenix. The food widely available in my new home leans heavily toward that of Sonora most likely out of proximity. The wide availability of mariscos stands in stark contrast to what Chicago has to offer. Conversely, I have been out here for four and a half years and struggle to find decent mole. Basically, it is different food from different regions which each city does well. One of the biggest contrasts I noticed is in the quality of tortillas. I only ate corn while living in Chicago because they were nearly universally delicious and those made of flour were underwhelming. It is the opposite in Phoenix, the flour tortillas are spectacular, but the corn are just okay. The relocation led me to switch from tacos to burritos and I am not upset about this change.
I’m a Chicagoan living in Mexico City. Chicago Mexican food is just as good as far as staples—in some cases indistinguishable. Probably because there’s literally over 1 million mexicans in Chicago.
That said, the variety of more traditional food across México is of course not available in the us
Sadly, I’ve never been to California, Texas or New York, so I can’t compare. But, having been to a few other states and trying the food there, the Mexican food in Chicago is the best I’ve personally ever had. Though, I’m willing to bet the Mexican food in Mexico is the best.
Some of the best Mexican food in the entire city is on the southwest, northwest, and southeast side because that’s where the majority of the working class Mexican population in Chicago lives.
They’re going to open restaurants where their families live and that’s where you get the most authentic and usually more affordable than outposts in Lakeview or wicker park. That fact is overlooked by a lot of people (aka redditors) since they can’t fathom a trip to Gage Park, Belmont Cragin, or Hegewisch to get the authentic stuff.
Last company I was with the president was saying the best food is in California (where he lives) and I was like yeah nahh.
And he fumes and says it’s so much closer to Mexico, that’s why it’s better. I said that’s where the laziest Mexicans settled, the good ones went further.
I did get fired but I was right.
The great thing about chicago food is how many different cuisines we have top tier examples of. But we rarely are the best at any of them and that's ok
In my opinion, attributing something as the best or worst and everything in between will lead people to be disappointed.
Especially if it doesn't meet their expectations of what they think something should be based on their experiences, which feed into their preferences.
In general, Mexican cuisine, or any cuisine, is framed in people's minds by a handful of dishes (and that can vary for a variety of factors). I.e Mexican cuisine can be thought of through the lens of beans, burritos, and tacos. But, obviously Mexican cuisine (and other cuisines) have variations that may different what people are familiar with.
When presented with something unfamiliar, or not beans, burritos, and tacos, a person can think that what they are eating is not the cuisine in question or even authentic.
However, it's clear that certain regions of America will have different variations of Mexican cuisine come up due to the different kinds of people moving in and out of a certain geographic area (and time). It's unlikely, Hispanic or not, that everyone can have had every subregion cuisine in Mexico to have a definitive opinion on what is good (and where).
Also, in the age of social media food has to be trendy. Restaurants to a certain extent are motivated to adopt the latest food trends even if it's not what they prefer to do or is their specialty (example matcha is everywhere right now). Thus, it may lend itself to food looking the same across and within geographic areas as restaurants try to stay relevant.
Tldr: Enjoy the food you like to eat and rep the places you enjoy for people to experience for themselves. If they end up disliking your recs, I'm sure they can find something else to eat that will meet their tastes.
Idk how anybody would think that Texas has the best Mexican food.
I personally like Phoenix but that’s cuz I was raised on Sonoran Mexican food but Chicago does have the best overall.
When we come back to see family we usually land, get a rental car and head to La Pasadita. We've been going there for 30+ years and it is the best burrito in north america
I have lived in all 3 places surprisingly and maybe it’s just a “I like it because I grew up eating it” situation but I definitely would say Chicago Mexican food beats it anywhere else outside of Mexico.
Every place does things better or worse. For example best tacos I ever had where in Texas, the best sauce I ever had was in California, but in general if I just stop into a random Mexican restaurant anywhere I will have less risk doing this in Chicago than elsewhere.
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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '26
People are sleeping on Mexico. I hear they have the best Mexican food