The Best Mexican Restaurants In NYC

If we had to pin down Border Town’s perfect flour tortillas for the rest of our weekend mornings, we’d find a way to make peace with the situation. But since the former roving pop-up opened a brick-and-mortar in Greenpoint, there's no tracking necessary. Order these translucent flour tortillas with velvety beans and cheese, or soft hunks of carne con chile. The corn tortillas are very good too, as seen in the blue corn taco del dia stuffed with chunks of shrimp, peppers, onions, and melty cheese. Though we say go flour, even if that's just as a side with a plate of frijoles con veneno, or the pork ribs smothered in tangy salsa verde with beans and yellow rice.

This daytime tortilleria, a casual offshoot of Chinatown tasting menu spot Corima, singlehandedly transformed Park Slope into a destination for sourdough flour tortillas. They're soft, they're chewy, they're translucent—and you should try them via the supremely simple bean-and-cheese burrito, or with braised pork and salsa verde, or mushrooms that almost resemble chorizo. All of the above are available starting at 7am, and so are Vato's excellent pastries. The only non-negotiable order here is a bag of sourdough flour tortillas, which cost $10 for 10 tortillas, and stay fresh even right out of the fridge.

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.

Carnitas Ramirez—the carnitas-only East Village sequel to Taqueria Ramirez (see below)—is an education in just how many different, exciting 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.

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.

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.

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 5pm-10pm on Friday-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. (They now have locations in Greenpoint, Clinton Hill, and Park Slope.) 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 romanesco tlayuda, and a plate of scallops 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.

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.

Like sister restaurant Casa Enrique, Quique Crudo serves typical-sounding items that earn extra credit through quality ingredients and execution. The menu is almost entirely small plates, with options that include a simple fluke ceviche and scallop aguachile doused in Worcestershire. Most items hover around $25 and are gone in flash, but that’s the West Village for you. What's not so West Village is how you can pop in on a whim for a meal that’ll stick with you.

At Frijoleros, a statue of the Virgin Mary and a portrait of Method Man both occupy places of honor on the wall. This irreverent Greenpoint spot is theoretically a cocktail bar, pouring drinks like the Reverend Jones, and a mole milk punch with baking spices and a black-sesame savoriness. But if you leave here without eating, you’ve made a grave mistake. Think a veneer of ruby-red raw tuna over a crunchy flour chicharron, head-on shrimp glazed in a Mexican beurre blanc, and perfectly charred octopus over beans that are actually more pork than beans—every dish is surprising, fun, and beyond satisfying.

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.

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.

At Dolores, there are strawberries in your michelada, and the refried beans are so cheesy they could easily pass as queso. It’s a fun, funky place that nails the whole “we’re a restaurant, but also a bar” thing, which means you should always start with a cocktail, like the jerk batanga (with tequila, sherry, jerk spices, and Mexican Coke) or their version of a piña colada. The food falls somewhere between Mexico City-inspired small plates and Tex-Mex comfort—try the short rib tacos on see-through flour tortillas, those beans, and the daily special, especially if it’s chicken enchiladas smothered in salsa verde.

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.

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, lunch, or dinner, 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.

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.