There is one test for Mexican food in London and it takes five seconds: ask whether the tortillas are made on the premises from whole corn. A handful of places in the city do it, and they taste completely different from the rest. Everywhere else is working from imported flour wraps, which is fine for a burrito and hopeless for a taco.
London came to Mexican food late. While New York, Los Angeles and Chicago had Mexican neighbourhoods for a century, London had Tex-Mex restaurants with sombreros on the wall, and then, from about 2005, a wave of burrito counters. Proper taquerias arrived later still and there are not many of them. The good news is that the ones that exist are genuinely good and mostly cheap.
Our guide to London's chain restaurants explains the burrito counters as a business format. This page is about telling a taqueria from a burrito shop, what each dish is, what a fair price is, and why two of the best-known Mexican names in central London are not recommended here.
Mexican London at a glance
- The test
- Corn tortillas pressed on site from nixtamalised maize. Ask; staff are proud of it
- Taco prices
- Our September 2026 estimate: £4-£7 per taco, three or four making a light meal
- Burrito counters
- £8-£11 for a large burrito or bowl, assembled in front of you
- Best areas
- Westbourne Grove, Stoke Newington, Clerkenwell, Battersea, Covent Garden
- To drink
- Mezcal and tequila labelled 100 per cent agave, or a michelada if you like salt
Nixtamal, and why it is the whole argument
A real corn tortilla starts with dried maize cooked in water with a small amount of slaked lime, left to steep, then rinsed and ground wet into a dough. The lime softens the hull, releases nutrients and changes the flavour completely: the result smells of toasted corn and tastes sweet and slightly mineral. That process is nixtamalisation, and a tortilla made from it is soft, pliable and worth eating on its own.
A tortilla made from dried corn flour reconstituted with water is a different object: flat, dry, prone to cracking, and something you notice rather than enjoy. A wheat flour tortilla is a third thing again, and perfectly correct for a burrito, which is a northern Mexican and Californian dish built around a wheat wrap.
So the argument is not snobbery. Corn is for tacos, wheat is for burritos, and a place that serves tacos in a wheat wrap has told you what it is.
Where the corn is ground in London
Two long-established places do the whole process and are open to anyone walking in.
Taqueria, 141-145 Westbourne Grove, W11. It has been on that corner since the mid-2000s, which makes it the oldest of the serious taquerias in London, and it presses its tortillas in the kitchen. It currently holds a top hygiene rating. It is a sit-down restaurant rather than a counter, with a proper margarita list, and it is five minutes from Royal Oak or Bayswater stations. Our guide to eating around Notting Hill and Portobello covers the rest of that area, and Notting Hill has the neighbourhood itself.
Sonora Taqueria, 208 Stoke Newington High Street, N16. This began as a market stall and grew into a shop, and it nixtamalises its own maize. Also currently rated 5. It is the cheaper and more informal of the two, and it is a twelve-minute walk from Dalston Kingsland or a bus up Stoke Newington High Street. See our guide to Dalston and Stoke Newington.
A small number of other kitchens grind corn intermittently, usually in market halls and railway arches where the rent allows it. If a menu says "nixtamal", "masa" or "corn milled in house", believe it and order tacos. If it does not say so, order something else.
Order the tacos in threes and eat them with your hands. A taco is a single mouthful-and-a-half, not a course, and it is meant to be eaten immediately while the tortilla is still warm and flexible. Three or four of different fillings for one person is the standard order. Cutlery arrives in London out of politeness; nobody expects you to use it.
How to spot a burrito chain in disguise
Several places in London are dressed as independent taquerias and run as assembly lines. The signs are consistent:
- A queue along a counter with vats of rice, beans, two meats and a salsa rack. That is a burrito line, whatever the sign says.
- Rice inside the burrito. Rice is a filler that makes a fixed price work. It is not wrong, but it is a business decision.
- A "build your own" board with tick boxes and an extra charge for guacamole.
- Tacos, burritos, nachos, quesadillas, fajitas and enchiladas all on one menu with the same three fillings rotated through them.
- No corn on the premises. Ask where the tortillas come from. A taqueria answers in one sentence.
None of this makes a burrito counter a bad lunch. Tortilla and Chilango both do what they set out to do, they are cheap, they are everywhere and they are quick, and our page on eating cheaply in London puts them in context. Wahaca, which started in London and now has branches from Covent Garden to Wimbledon, serves Mexican small plates in a sit-down room and is a reasonable answer with children, as our guide to eating out with children notes.
What the dishes actually are
| On the menu | What arrives |
|---|---|
| Taco | One small soft corn tortilla, a filling, onion, coriander, a wedge of lime. Two bites |
| Burrito | Large wheat tortilla wrapped around rice, beans, meat and salsa. A full meal |
| Quesadilla | Tortilla folded over melted cheese and grilled. In Mexico, corn; in London, usually wheat |
| Tostada | A flat tortilla fried crisp, piled with something cold such as ceviche or tinga |
| Al pastor | Pork marinated with chilli and achiote, cooked on a vertical spit, served with pineapple |
| Cochinita pibil | Yucatán pork slow-cooked with achiote and sour orange. Usually the best thing on the menu |
| Elote | Grilled corn on the cob with mayonnaise, chilli powder, lime and crumbled cheese |
| Michelada | Beer with lime, salt and chilli, sometimes tomato juice. A drink, not a cocktail |
Two British-menu habits are worth flagging. "Nachos" as a plate of crisps under melted cheese is a North American invention and is not what anyone eats in Mexico. And "spicy" in a London Mexican restaurant usually means mild by Mexican standards, with the heat put in a bottle on the table instead. Ask for the salsa picante and use it.
The Tex-Mex years, and what survived them
Before the taquerias, London's Mexican food was Tex-Mex: sizzling fajita platters, hard-shell tacos, chilli con carne, refried beans under grilled cheese, and frozen margaritas by the jug. It is a real cuisine of the Texas borderlands rather than a fake one, and it is fun in the right mood, particularly with a group. What it is not is Mexican cooking.
Cafe Pacifico on Langley Street in Covent Garden is the best-known survivor of that generation in central London and currently holds a hygiene rating of 4. It is a large, loud room with a long tequila list, and it works for a birthday rather than for a quiet dinner. Our guide to eating near Covent Garden without tourist prices covers the surrounding streets, where the cheaper options are.
Mezcal, tequila and reading a bottle
Both spirits are made from agave; tequila from blue agave in and around Jalisco, mezcal from a wider range of agave species, mostly in Oaxaca, and usually with the smoky flavour that comes from roasting the hearts in an earth pit.
One phrase on the label decides quality: 100 per cent agave. Without it, up to half the sugar may come from elsewhere, and that is what causes the headache people blame on tequila in general. Good bars in London list this and will tell you. Drink it in small sips at room temperature rather than with salt and lime, which is a way of getting through the other kind.
Our guides to cocktail bars in London and drinking without alcohol cover the wider drinks scene, and Peruvian and Latin American food covers the rest of the continent's cooking in the city, which is better represented here than Mexico's.
Two well-known Mexican addresses in central London are missing from this page on purpose. A widely recommended taqueria in Soho and a widely recommended one in Marylebone both held a food hygiene rating of 2 when we checked in September 2026, and other branches of the same two businesses were rated 5. We do not name an address rated below 3, however good the reviews are. Check any place you plan to eat at on the Food Standards Agency register by its street address, not by its brand.
Buying the ingredients
If your accommodation has a kitchen, Mexican cooking is one of the easier cuisines to assemble here. Dried chillies (ancho, pasilla, guajillo, chipotle), masa harina for tortillas, black beans, tomatillos in tins and Mexican oregano are stocked by specialist importers with warehouses in west London and by the larger Latin American grocers around Elephant and Castle and Seven Sisters.
The big supermarket chains now carry a limited range, usually chipotle paste, tinned black beans and wheat tortillas, and nothing else useful. Our guide to supermarkets in London explains which chains stock what, and picnic supplies and self-catering covers cooking in a rented flat.
Frequently asked questions
Is there good Mexican food in London?
Yes, but not much of it. A small number of taquerias make their own corn tortillas from nixtamalised maize and those are genuinely good; the much larger number of burrito counters are cheap and competent rather than interesting. London has nothing comparable to the Mexican food of a large American city.
How much does a taco cost in London?
Our September 2026 estimate is £4 to £7 for one taco at a proper taqueria, so £15 to £25 a head for a meal with a drink. A large burrito from a counter chain is £8 to £11 and is a full lunch. These are our estimates rather than quoted menu prices, so check before ordering.
What is the difference between a taco and a burrito?
A taco is a single small corn tortilla with a filling, eaten in two bites, and you order several. A burrito is a large wheat tortilla wrapped tightly around rice, beans, meat and salsa, and it is one complete meal. They come from different parts of Mexico and the borderlands, and a kitchen that does one well may not do the other at all.
Where can I buy Mexican ingredients in London?
Specialist importers and the Latin American grocers around Elephant and Castle and Seven Sisters stock dried chillies, masa harina, tomatillos and Mexican oregano. Mainstream supermarkets carry little beyond chipotle paste, tinned black beans and wheat tortillas.
Is Mexican food in London vegetarian-friendly?
Increasingly, yes. Beans, grilled cactus, mushroom, courgette flower and cheese fillings are common, and the corn tortilla itself contains nothing but maize and lime. Check whether the beans are cooked with pork fat and whether the rice is made with chicken stock, because both are usual in traditional recipes. See our guide to vegan and vegetarian London.
Sources
- Food Standards Agency - food hygiene ratings search (checked September 2026)
- Food Standards Agency - establishment register, open data API (checked September 2026)
- Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs - food labelling and information for consumers (checked September 2026)
- Food Standards Agency - food allergy and intolerance (checked September 2026)