Mexican Food in Ontario: From Toronto's Pan-Latin Stores to Leamington's Greenhouse Workers

Ontario has more of everything Mexican in Canada than any other province — on paper. Our own directory lists 83 active Mexican restaurants and 31 Mexican or Latin American grocery stores across Ontario, out of 219 restaurants and 85 stores nationwide. That is 38% of the country's Mexican restaurants and 36% of its stores, sitting in a single province. But the number that actually matters for a home cook is a different one: of Ontario's 31 stores, only 8 are stores we've classified as specifically Mexican (tienda_mexicana — a business built around Mexican products as its core identity). The other 23 are pan-Latin American grocers (tienda_latina) that carry Mexican items alongside Colombian, Peruvian, Salvadoran and Caribbean stock. That's a 26% Mexican-specific share — the lowest of any province with meaningful numbers, and a fact nobody selling you a "best Mexican stores in Ontario" listicle is going to compute for you, because it means the shelf space per product is thinner than the headline count suggests.

How many people this is actually serving. Census figures for people reporting Mexican ethnic or cultural origin (2021 Census, single or multiple response — not citizenship, not recent immigration specifically) put Ontario at 54,725, the largest of any province, and about 35% of Canada's total Mexican-origin population of roughly 155,495 people. That percentage's base is the national Mexican-origin count, not Ontario's or Canada's general population — a distinction this project has gotten wrong before and is now careful to state explicitly. We could not independently re-verify this exact figure against Statistics Canada's own published table in this pass (the specific StatCan URL we tried returned a 404), so it's cited from a secondary source (Wikipedia's "Mexican Canadians" article, itself citing the 2021 Census) rather than a primary table we confirmed ourselves — treat it as directionally reliable but not independently confirmed by us.

Where the restaurants actually are. Toronto and Ottawa are tied at 16 restaurants each — a genuine surprise, since Ottawa is a fifth of Toronto's size. After that: London (8), Mississauga (8), Hamilton (7), North York (5), Waterloo (4), Scarborough (3), York (3), Cambridge (3), Kitchener (2) and Etobicoke (2), with single listings scattered through Stittsville, Kanata, Stoney Creek, Orléans, Vanier and Nepean — mostly Ottawa-area suburbs, which explains why the capital punches so far above its population.

Where the stores actually are. Store geography tells a different story than restaurant geography. Toronto proper has only 4 stores (Latin World Store, Tierra Azteca Grocery, Mad Mexican Market, Maizal), even though it has 16 restaurants — cooks in the city are eating out more than they're stocking a pantry from a specialist shop. The real grocery density is in the Kitchener-Waterloo corridor (4 stores: Mi Tienda Latina, Rincón Latino Supermarket, América Latina Grocery and Eatery, Seu Mercado) and Hamilton (3: Mi Ranchito, Lola Latin Grocery, Latin Food and Products). Ottawa, despite tying Toronto for restaurants, has just 2 stores — Bienvenidos Latin Market and La Tiendita.

Bienvenidos Latin Market, in Ottawa, is also one of the pricing sources behind RecetasMexas's own Canada-wide ingredient database, so we can quote it directly: Oaxaca cheese (La Vaquita brand, made in the US) runs $13.79 for 300 g there — $45.97/kg — and cotija (Rumba brand, made in Val-des-Sources, Quebec) runs $15.99 for 300 g, or $53.30/kg.

The Leamington story, which is the most specifically Ontarian thing in this whole piece. Leamington and neighbouring Chatham are the only two municipalities in our directory whose sole retail presence is a chain called Super Amigo Mexican Groceries, with one location in each town. That is not a coincidence: Leamington sits at the centre of the largest cluster of commercial greenhouses in North America — 1,969 acres of greenhouse vegetable production, per Wikipedia's entry on the town — and Mexican and Caribbean seasonal agricultural workers have been coming to work those greenhouses under Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program for decades. A 2006 census snapshot cited on the same page found Leamington had the highest concentration of Latin American residents of any municipality in Canada, at 4.9% of its total population (1,390 people) — the base for that percentage is Leamington's total population, not its Latin American or Mexican-origin population specifically, which matters because the two bases have been confused before in this project. The same source notes that a Mexican consulate presence opened in the town specifically to serve migrant workers — this is a consular service point for a seasonal population, not a resident diplomatic mission comparable to the ones in Toronto or Ottawa; we could not independently verify its current operating status, so treat that detail as NO VERIFICADO.

What Ontario itself produces that helps. Essex County's greenhouse belt (the same one built by that migrant labour force) grows tomatoes, bell peppers and cucumbers year-round under glass, which means fresh produce for salsas and pico de gallo doesn't disappear from Ontario stores in January the way it can in the Prairies. Ontario is also, alongside Quebec, one of Canada's two dominant dairy provinces, though the specific Mexican-style cheeses (Oaxaca, panela, cotija) sold here are imported from the US or trucked in from the Val-des-Sources, Quebec factory that makes the Rumba brand — Ontario's own dairy industry does not appear to manufacture Mexican-style cheese domestically, based on what we could find in this pass. NO VERIFICADO: whether any Ontario-based creamery makes Oaxaca or queso fresco under its own label.

What you genuinely cannot get. Fresh masa (wet, unpackaged corn dough) is not sold prepared anywhere in the province according to our pricing data — every Mexican or Latin store selling "masa" is selling Maseca-brand dried masa harina, reconstituted at home. Fresh nixtamalized tortillas made same-day, the kind sold from a tortillería counter in Mexico, exist at a handful of specialty spots (Tortillería Maya is a Quebec example, not an Ontario one — Ontario's directory has no dedicated tortillería by that model). Blue corn tortillas are not sold pre-made in Canada at all; only blue masa harina is, and even that is a special-order item. Ontario's taco culture also skews more toward sit-down "mexicano" restaurants (49 of 83, 59%) and cantina-style venues (10, 12%) than dedicated taquerías (23, 28%) — meaning a fast, cheap, stand-up taco counter is harder to find here proportionally than in Quebec.