Where Britain Actually Has Mexican Food: an Honest Map of 381 Venues and 244 Shops

This is the page where we say what our British directory does not cover. It holds 381 active Mexican venues and 244 shops stocking Mexican products — the second-largest market in our data after Mexico itself, and the largest in Europe. It is also distributed in a way that means most of Britain is not in it.

The shape of it: London, then everywhere else

City	Restaurants	With a Google rating	Taquerías	Shops
London	117	24	26	40
Manchester	18	9	5	3
Edinburgh	17	10	3	7
Glasgow	16	9	1	11
Birmingham	14	9	2	1
Liverpool	14	9	2	6
Belfast	14	6	4	2
Leeds	12	5	3	8
Bristol	10	3	2	6
Sheffield	9	5	1	4
Newcastle	7	3	3	2
Cardiff	7	1	2	2
Nottingham	7	2	4	4
Brighton	6	1	3	8
Croydon	6	5	0	5
Cambridge	5	2	0	11
Dundee	5	3	0	3

London holds 31 per cent of Britain's mapped Mexican restaurants and 16 per cent of its shops. The next largest city has 18. Below the seventeen cities above, 41 towns and cities have one or two venues each — Swansea, Watford, Coventry, Aberdeen, Canterbury, Paisley, Cheltenham, Folkestone, Kendal, Milton Keynes, Bradford, Derby, Plymouth, Hull, Preston, Blackpool and others.

The 44 per cent problem

Here is the measurement limit that shapes every ratings-based guide on this site, and we would rather lead with it than footnote it. Only 167 of the UK's 381 venues carry a Google rating in our directory — 44 per cent. In Australia the figure is 100 per cent, in Canada 98, in Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, France and Brazil 100.

And the gap is not random. The 381 split into two populations that barely overlap:

• 238 venues classified as general "Mexican", of which 167 carry a Google rating, 105 a description and 160 a price tier.
• 143 venues classified as taquería, cantina, Tex-Mex, fusion or other, of which every single one has a description and a price tier, and not one has a Google rating.

So in Britain, the venues we know most about are the ones with no stars, and the ones with stars are the ones we can say least about. Any "best rated in Manchester" list is drawn from nine venues out of eighteen; in Cardiff it would be one out of seven; in Brighton one out of six. We have written the city guides accordingly — Nottingham and Brighton are built on type and description rather than rating, and the London ratings guide prints the 93 unrated venues alongside the 24 rated ones.

Where we cannot write a ratings guide at all

Specifically, and so nobody has to guess: a "highest rated according to Google" article is not supportable for Cardiff (one rated venue of seven), Brighton (one of six), Bristol (three of ten), Bath (none of three), York (none of three), Oxford (one of four), Southampton (one of four) or Nottingham (two of seven, one with nine reviews). Manchester, with nine of eighteen, is borderline and already has a guide built another way.

That is a limitation of our data, not a comment on those cities, and the fix is more mapping rather than more adjectives.

The cities that shop better than they eat

Britain inverts the pattern we see everywhere else in the world, and this is the most interesting finding on the page. In Australia, 156 restaurants are served by 47 shops. In the UK, 381 restaurants are served by 244 shops — and in several cities the shops outnumber the restaurants outright:

• Cambridge — 11 shops, 5 restaurants.
• Glasgow — 11 shops, 16 restaurants, the best big-city ratio in Britain.
• Brighton — 8 shops, 6 restaurants.
• Bournemouth, Bolton, Stockport — 6 shops each, 3 restaurants each.
• Luton and Swansea — 6 shops each, 2 restaurants each.
• Coventry — 10 shops, 1 restaurant.
• Harrogate, Watford, Croydon — 5 shops each.

And five places in our data have shops but no mapped Mexican restaurant at all: Wolverhampton (3), Swindon (3), Solihull (2), Crawley (1) and Theale (1). If you live there, your kitchen is the Mexican food in your town — which, given the shopping, is a perfectly good arrangement.

Why does Britain have this retail layer when Australia does not? Latin American migration into British cities, a dense independent-grocer culture, and proximity: a wholesaler in London can post to Inverness overnight, which is not true of Perth and Darwin. The full shopping picture is in London's shops and the Manchester and Birmingham Latin markets guide.

The mail-order network, which is the real national coverage

Seventeen entries in our UK store directory are online-only, and between them they cover the entire country better than any high street. They include importers trading since 1987 and 2006, an online grocer claiming more than 400 Mexican lines, a wholesaler listing over 1,000 products, a retailer that makes fresh nixtamalised corn tortillas daily in London from Mexican field corn, and three Mexican bakeries posting pan dulce — conchas, besos, pan de muerto — across the UK.

That last category is worth dwelling on: a vegan Mexican bakery doing monthly postal delivery is infrastructure that does not exist in most countries in our data, including Australia and Canada. If you are in one of the 41 one-venue towns, this is your answer, and the online shops guide is the place to start.

Where Britain has nothing at all

Cities and regions with no mapped Mexican venue or shop in our directory include Carlisle, Lancaster, Barnsley, Doncaster's wider borough, Grimsby, Scunthorpe, Mansfield, Chesterfield, Shrewsbury, Hereford, Taunton, Barnstaple, Penzance, Inverness, Perth, Stirling, Dumfries, Ayr, Omagh, Enniskillen, Bangor in Wales and most of mid-Wales. We are not claiming there is no taco in Inverness. We are saying our directory has no entry, which is a different and more honest statement.

How the UK compares

For scale: Mexico 3,420 venues, the UK 381, Spain 816, the United States 630, Canada 219, Australia 156, Germany 140, the Netherlands 139, Brazil 122, Italy 110, France 79. Britain is the second-biggest market in our directory and comfortably the biggest in Europe.

What it is not is the best-documented. That is Australia, where every mapped venue carries a rating. Britain's directory is wider, richer in written description, strong on type and price tier — and missing stars on more than half its entries. Both of those are true at once, and a guide that only told you the first half would be selling you the map as the territory.

Frequently asked questions

How many Mexican restaurants are there in the UK?

We have 381 active venues mapped, plus 244 shops. London holds 117 of the restaurants.

Why do so few have ratings?

Only 44 per cent of UK venues carry a Google rating in our directory, and the gap falls entirely on the type-classified listings: no taquería, cantina, Tex-Mex or fusion venue in Britain has one.

Which UK city has the most Mexican shops?

London with 40, then Glasgow and Cambridge with 11 each and Coventry with 10. Coventry has ten shops and one restaurant.

My town is not listed. Is there really nothing?

It means our directory has no entry. Add what you know through the suggestion form, and in the meantime the store directory includes the online grocers that deliver nationwide.