Imagine sitting at a table on an outdoor patio as you take a bite out of the perfect taco, the sharp flavor of the fresh onions and cilantro mingling with that of the richly aromatic lengua meat. As the nearby mariachi band starts up another lively tune, you relax and slowly sip your horchata from a cool glass, dressed with beads of condensation. This classic Mexican food experience, whether it be in the historic center of Puebla or downtown Denver, is now deeply integrated into American restaurant culture.
Although cuisine found closer to the U.S.-Mexico border may vary greatly from the plates served in the North, Mexican food and its variations occupy a special place in the heart of Americans. Far from being an occasional novelty, Mexican food ranks as the third-most popular menu type in the U.S. It is an estimated $38 billion industry with consumption growing at a faster rate than any other restaurant type. Looking at this industry heavyweight on a neighborhood level shows just how important Mexican food is to the American palate.
Using company classification from Localeze and Dun & Bradstreet, along with population estimates from the 2014 American Community Survey, the data analysts at FindTheHome calculated the number of Mexican food restaurants per 10,000 people. This aggregation of local listings includes small, local restaurants as well as mainstream Mexican food chains, such as Taco Bell and Chipotle Mexican Grill. We then identify the city within each state that has the highest density of Mexican food restaurants. Only cities with a population over 15,000 were included in our analysis. The overall list is ranked from least to most dense. Explore the following list to see if your city made it as one of the Mexican Food Capitals of the U.S.
Note: For the sake of simplicity, we round the “Mexican Food Restaurants per 10K People” to the nearest hundredth, which results in ties. Ties do not exist in the unrounded list. The order of the list reflects ranking based on the original calculation.