22% of Mexican restaurants in the US are in California. Mexican culture is widely established in America’s restaurants. Some 11% of restaurants in the United States serve Mexican food, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from SafeGraph, which curates information about millions of places of interest around the globe, and the user review site Yelp.
Although especially common in California and Texas, Mexican food restaurants are found in a large majority of counties in the U.S. Some 37.2 million people in the U.S. trace their ancestry to Mexico, making Mexican Americans by far the largest Hispanic origin group in the nation.
Which states and counties have the most Mexican food restaurants?
This analysis finds that 85% of U.S. counties have at least one Mexican restaurant. In turn, the counties that don’t have Mexican food restaurants tend to have small populations. The 15% of counties without any Mexican restaurants have about 4 million people living in them. That is just 1% of the total U.S. population.
In California, Los Angeles County alone is home to 30% of the state’s Mexican restaurants.
Mexican food restaurants are most common in California and Texas. These two states, which are home to a majority of the Mexican American population, have around 40% of all Mexican restaurants in the country: 22% are in California, while 17% are in Texas.
In California, Los Angeles County alone is home to 30% of the state’s Mexican restaurants. In Texas, 17% of the state’s Mexican restaurants are in Harris County, which includes Houston; 9% each are located in Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, and in Dallas County.
All told, 51% of all Mexican restaurants in the U.S. are in California, Texas, Florida, New York or Illinois.
What are some common features of Mexican food restaurants?
This analysis finds that 22% of Mexican restaurants nationwide are “fast food” restaurants, 12% specialize in serving tacos, 8% are classified as food trucks or carts, and 6% offer “Tex-Mex” food.
The most common types of non-Mexican Hispanic restaurants include Caribbean, Cuban, “Latin American,” Peruvian, Salvadoran and Spanish restaurants.
Mexican restaurants also tend to be modestly priced. Among restaurants with pricing data, 61% of Mexican restaurants are rated as one “dollar sign” on Yelp’s four-point pricing scale. Less than 1% of all Mexican restaurants nationwide – just 251 in total – have a rating of three or four dollar signs on the Yelp scale. Around a quarter of these most expensive Mexican restaurants are in Los Angeles County; Cook County, where Chicago is located; and New York County, home of Manhattan.
How common are other types of Latino or Hispanic restaurants in the U.S.?
Mexican Americans are the largest Hispanic group in the U.S., but 40% of the nation’s Latinos claim another Hispanic origin. Yet our analysis finds that only 2% of U.S. restaurants serve Hispanic or Latino cuisine other than Mexican.
The most common types of non-Mexican Hispanic restaurants include Caribbean, Cuban, “Latin American,” Peruvian, Salvadoran and Spanish restaurants. But none makes up more than 1% of restaurants nationwide. (There are other types of Hispanic restaurants in addition to these, but they each make up 0.1% or less of restaurants nationwide and are not included in this analysis.)
How Latinos are dominating the culinary and beverage industry in the U.S.
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