These Are the Best Cities in America for Taco Lovers

BRB, booking a flight out west.

When it comes to which city serves the best tacos, people certainly have a lot of opinions. Surely it’s San Diego, thanks to its proximity to Mexico, right? What about Santa Fe, New Mexico, with its spice-ladened cuisine? Concord, California, for its dedicated Taco Trail, or maybe Austin, you know, for all that Tex-Mex fusion? Well, wonder no more because Real Estate Witch has come up with a way to determine which state boasts the best tacos and has even named a winner in its new rankings.

“Tacos have become an integral part of American cuisine, captivating the taste buds of millions across the country,” the real estate website wrote in its findings. “It’s estimated that Americans consume 4.5 billion tacos a year, helping the Mexican restaurant industry reach $79 billion in 2022.”

To figure out which city is serving the best tacos in the nation, the company analyzed data it collected from the U.S. Census and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, along with user-generated data via Yelp, Numbeo, and Google Trends.

It weighted each ranking by how many taco restaurants a city has per 100,000 residents and how many taco restaurants a city has per square mile, the average Yelp rating for said taco restaurants, and the cost to supply the ingredients — which it defined as cheese, chicken, lettuce, tomato, and onion. Also considered was the affordability of taco supplies as a percentage of average income and a more obscure variable called “Taco Passion,” which was measured via Google Trends.

Without further ado, the city that came out on top of the website’s rankings is … Austin.

According to the site, Austin won major points thanks to having the “highest percentage of restaurants that are taco places,” as well as high Yelp scores and an extremely high Taco Passion score of 96.

“The city’s dedication to all things tacos is highlighted by its Google Trends score of 95.9 out of 100, a whopping 55 percent higher than the average city in our study (61.7),” the site wrote in its findings. “But there’s more to the taco love — 7.4 percent of all restaurants in Austin are dedicated to tacos, an exceptional 172 percent higher than the average city (2.7 percent).”

Following closely behind in second place is San Jose, California, with Las Vegas; San Antonio, Texas; and San Diego rounding out the top five.

As for who came out at the bottom, that (dis)honor went to Cleveland, which was joined by Boston; Pittsburgh; Hartford, Connecticut; and, perhaps surprisingly, New York City rounding the bottom five.

“On average, these cities have only 0.88 taco restaurants per 100,000 people, which is 61 percent fewer than the average city in our study (2.3),” the findings read. “Furthermore, taco supplies for three to four people tend to be more expensive in these cities, costing an average of $26.40, or 9 percent more than the average city ($24.28).”

So, next time you’re feeling a tasty taco, perhaps book a flight out West, where taco happiness is nearly guaranteed. See the complete rankings on RealEstateWitch.com.

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