Best Mexican Restaurants in Manchester, Ranked by Google Rating

If you searched for the best Mexican restaurants in Manchester, here is the short answer, with the method stated up front: we ranked every Mexican venue in our Manchester listings by its average Google rating, used the number of Google reviews as the tie-breaker, and left out anywhere with fewer than fifty reviews. The figures are the ones held in our directory in October 2026. That gives a list of 8 venues out of the 18 we have mapped under Manchester, and the table below is generated from those figures rather than typed in by hand.

We have not eaten our way round the city to produce this, and we do not score restaurants ourselves. A Google rating is a crowd measure with known weaknesses, which we come back to further down. What it does offer is a criterion you can check for yourself, which is more than most ranked lists give you.

The ranking: Manchester's Mexican venues by Google rating

Each row is a venue with at least fifty Google reviews. Venue names link to their page in our directory, where the address, hours and website are kept up to date.

#	Venue	Address	Google rating	Reviews
1	The Taco Joint	1 Lostock Rd, Urmston, Manchester M41 0SU	5.0	50
2	The Mexican Restaurant, Cocktail Bar and Takeaway	248 Wilmslow Rd, Fallowfield, Manchester M14 6LD	4.8	252
3	Wrap It In Trafford Park	392 Third Ave, Trafford Park, Stretford, Manchester M17 1JE	4.7	240
4	Zambrero Cross Street	59 Cross St, Manchester M2 4JW	4.6	91
5	Barburrito - Manchester Piccadilly Gardens	1 Piccadilly, Manchester M1 1RG	4.5	2,592
6	Barburrito - Trafford Centre	134, The Orient, The Trafford Centre, Trafford Park, Stretford, Manchester M17 8EH	4.5	1,877
7	carlos kitchen	99 Heywood Rd, Prestwich, Manchester M25 1LP	4.3	66
8	Tacorrito	197 Langworthy Rd, Salford M6 5PW	3.3	51

Two things stand out before you read anything into the order. First, the spread at the top is narrow: a difference of one or two tenths of a star between venues is well inside the noise of a few dozen reviews either way. Second, the list mixes formats that are not really competing with each other. A neighbourhood taco kitchen, a counter-service burrito chain and a cocktail bar with a takeaway hatch can all sit next to each other in the table, because Google rates them on the same five-star scale.

Why fifty reviews, and what the cut-off leaves out

A venue with a perfect score from a handful of friends and early customers is not comparable with one holding the same score across thousands of visits. Fifty is an arbitrary line, but it is a stated one, and it removes the most obvious distortions without hiding very much. The places below are in our Manchester listings but fall under the threshold, either because they have fewer reviews or because our directory holds no Google rating for them yet. Several are well-known names that simply have not been matched to a rating in our data, so their absence from the table says nothing about the cooking.

• Barburrito Manchester, Unit 6, Halle Place, Arndale Centre, Manchester M4 3AQ (no Google rating in our directory)
• Don Tacos, 61-63 Wilmslow Road, Rusholme, Manchester M14 5TB (no Google rating in our directory)
• El Jefe Birria NORTHERN QUARTER, 8 Dale St, Manchester M1 1JA (4.2 from 37 reviews)
• Las Iguanas Manchester, 84 Deansgate, Manchester M3 2ER (no Google rating in our directory)
• Luck, Lust, Liquor & Burn, 100-102 High Street, Manchester M4 1HP (no Google rating in our directory)
• Madre Manchester, 47 Chorlton St, Manchester M1 3FY (no Google rating in our directory)
• Pancho's Burritos, Unit FC1 Arndale Market, 49 High Street, Manchester M4 3AH (no Google rating in our directory)
• Peter Street Kitchen, Free Trade Hall, Peter Street, Manchester M2 5GP (no Google rating in our directory)
• Pico's Tacos, Mackie Mayor, 1 Eagle St, Manchester M4 5BU (no Google rating in our directory)
• Tortilla Manchester, 50 Oxford Street, Manchester M1 5EJ (no Google rating in our directory)

If you are choosing between a ranked venue and one of these, the directory page is the better guide: it carries the hours and the website, and the website is where a kitchen tells you what it actually cooks.

The top of the table, one by one

These are the venues at the head of the ranking, with the details our directory holds for each. Opening hours come from each venue's own listing; they change, especially on bank holidays and in the weeks around Christmas, so check before a long journey.

The Taco Joint

Address: 1 Lostock Rd, Urmston, Manchester M41 0SU
Google rating: 5.0 from 50 reviews (as held in our directory, October 2026)
Opening hours (directory listing): Mon–Wed closed · Thu–Fri 12:00–20:00 · Sat 12:30–20:30 · Sun closed
Website: tacojoint.co.uk

The Taco Joint is in Urmston, on the western side of Greater Manchester, rather than in the city centre. It reaches the threshold exactly, so its position at the top rests on a smaller pool of reviews than the venues just below it. That is worth knowing, not a reason to discount it.

The Mexican Restaurant, Cocktail Bar and Takeaway

Address: 248 Wilmslow Rd, Fallowfield, Manchester M14 6LD
Google rating: 4.8 from 252 reviews (as held in our directory, October 2026)
Opening hours (directory listing): not listed in our directory
Website: themexican.co.uk

This one sits on Wilmslow Road in Fallowfield, the student stretch south of the centre, and its name describes the format: a restaurant, a cocktail bar and a takeaway under one roof. Our directory does not hold opening hours for it, so check its own site before you go.

Wrap It In Trafford Park

Address: 392 Third Ave, Trafford Park, Stretford, Manchester M17 1JE
Google rating: 4.7 from 240 reviews (as held in our directory, October 2026)
Opening hours (directory listing): Mon–Thu 10:45–14:00 · Fri 10:45–22:00 · Sat–Sun closed
Website: wrap-it-in.co.uk

A Trafford Park venue, out by the industrial estate and the shopping centre rather than in town. Look at the listed hours closely: they are not the same every day, and some days close early.

Where Manchester's Mexican food actually is

The city label in our directory covers more ground than the city council does. Our Manchester listings include addresses in Urmston, Prestwich, Fallowfield, Rusholme, Trafford Park and Salford, so the ranking above is really a Greater Manchester list. In practice that splits into three areas.

• The city centre and the Northern Quarter. This is where the chains cluster around Piccadilly, the Arndale and Cross Street, and where the food halls host independent taco counters. It is the easiest area to reach by tram and the most crowded at weekends.
• The Wilmslow Road corridor. Rusholme's Curry Mile and Fallowfield beyond it carry several late-opening Mexican places aimed at students and the night-time trade.
• The outer boroughs. Urmston, Prestwich, Salford and Trafford Park each have one or two venues that serve their own neighbourhood. These are the places most likely to be missing from city-centre guides and most likely to have a loyal local following in their reviews.

For a street-by-street walk through all of them, including the food-hall counters and the grocery shops, see our area-by-area guide to Mexican restaurants in Manchester.

How to read a Google rating for a Mexican restaurant

Ratings are useful and they are also shaped by things that have little to do with the food. A few patterns are worth keeping in mind when you use the table.

• Chains get averaged across busy branches. A burrito chain's city-centre branch collects reviews from lunchtime office trade and late-night crowds alike. Its rating describes consistency more than ambition.
• Small independents swing. A neighbourhood kitchen with a few dozen reviews can move by a tenth of a star in a week. Read the newest reviews, not just the number.
• Takeaway-heavy venues are rated on delivery. Tacos travel badly. A place rated mostly by delivery customers may cook better than its score suggests when you eat in.
• The rating says nothing about style. A high score for a Tex-Mex burrito bar and a high score for a regional Mexican kitchen are both fair; they just answer different questions.

What to order once you are there

Mexican menus in Manchester tend to be built around a small set of dishes, and knowing a little about them helps you order well. Mexican cuisine as a whole was added to UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage in 2010, with maize, beans and chilli at its core and nixtamalisation, the cooking of maize with lime, as one of the techniques named. That is why the tortilla matters so much: ask whether the corn tortillas are made from nixtamalised masa, and the answer tells you a lot about the kitchen.

• Birria. A slow-cooked meat dish from Jalisco, traditionally goat, served in its own broth. The beef version eaten as tacos and dipped in consommé developed in Tijuana, and the cheesy quesabirria spread from there in the 2010s. If you want to cook it, our beef birria recipe and quesabirria recipe are written for British supermarkets.
• Al pastor. Marinated pork cooked on a vertical spit called a trompo. It descends from the shawarma brought to Mexico by Lebanese immigrants, which is why the spit looks familiar.
• Burritos. The format of most chain counters in the city centre. Large, filling and closer to northern Mexican and Californian traditions than to what most of Mexico eats day to day.

If the menu uses words you do not recognise, our taquería meat and cut glossary explains them, and the survey of UK taquerías shows how Manchester compares with the rest of the country.

Frequently asked questions

How was this ranking made?

We took every Mexican venue in our Manchester listings, kept those with a Google rating and at least fifty Google reviews, and sorted them by rating, using the number of reviews to break ties. The figures are those held in our directory in October 2026.

Why is a well-known restaurant missing?

Either it has fewer than fifty reviews in our data, or our directory does not yet hold a Google rating for it. Both groups are listed in the section on the cut-off, so nothing in our Manchester listings has been dropped silently.

Is this a list of where to get the most traditional Mexican food?

No. A Google rating measures how satisfied reviewers were, not how closely a kitchen follows any regional tradition. For that, look at how the tortillas are made and which region the menu says it cooks from.

Does the ranking include Salford and Trafford?

Yes, where those venues are filed under Manchester in our directory. The addresses in the table show exactly where each one is.

Where can I buy Mexican ingredients in Manchester?

Our shop directory lists the grocers and online shops we have mapped across the UK, and the restaurant directory has every venue mentioned here.

Sources

• UNESCO, Traditional Mexican cuisine: ancestral, ongoing community culture, the Michoacán paradigm (inscribed 2010): ich.unesco.org
• Wikipedia, Birria (origin in Jalisco, Tijuana-style beef birria, quesabirria): en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia, Al pastor (Lebanese shawarma, Puebla, the trompo): en.wikipedia.org