Mexican Restaurants in Brighton: Six Venues, Eight Shops and Two Award Winners

Brighton is the rare English city where you can shop for Mexican ingredients more easily than you can eat out: eight mapped shops against six mapped restaurants. Outside Cambridge and Glasgow, almost nowhere in the UK inverts that ratio.

It was also on our audit's list of cities with no guide on this site. Here is one, with its constraint declared at the top: only one of the six venues carries a Google rating. So this is built on what the directory actually holds for Brighton — type, Google's price tier, published hours and a written description for every single venue — rather than on stars we do not have.

The six venues

Price tiers are Google's £ to ££££ scale, as recorded in our directory. Three of the six are classified as taquerías, all three at the £ tier.

North Laine is the centre of it

La Choza at 36 Gloucester Road has been in the North Laine since 2012, which makes it one of the longest-running independent Mexican kitchens anywhere in our UK data outside London. Its listing describes "affordable, healthy, tasty slow-cooked Mexican street food" and records a BRAVO Awards win in the Eat Well For Less category. Slow-cooked is the operative phrase: it is a braise-led menu rather than a grill-led one.

Three hundred metres away at the Open Market on Marshalls Row, Casazul took first place in the BRAVO Awards' Good to Go category, and its listing describes "simple, quality tacos and loaded tortillas in the historic Brighton Open Market". Two award-winning independents in adjacent streets is a genuine cluster, and it is walkable from Brighton station in under ten minutes.

Carlito Burrito at 12 York Place completes the independent trio with the most specific claim in the whole set: "homemade tacos daily and chillies imported directly from Mexico". Importing your own chillies rather than buying a ground blend is the kind of detail that costs money and shows up on the plate, and very few UK venues bother.

The two chains, and the one venue with a rating

Wahaca at 160-161 North Street is the national Mexican chain's seaside site, at ££, and Tortilla is sixty-five doors up the same street at number 95, at £. Both are perfectly honest about what they are: Wahaca's listing says "fresh Mexican street food, tacos and margaritas", Tortilla's says "California-style Mexican burritos, tacos and bowls", which is an accurate description of a Mission burrito and not a Mexican one.

The only Brighton venue carrying a Google rating is Halisco at 64 Preston Street: 4.4 from 907 reviews. Google's own summary calls it a "hip taqueria with Mexican street eats and small plates paired with tequilas, mezcals and margaritas", and 907 reviews is a deep enough pool to mean something: on the south coast only Mexifun in Southampton, with 1,032, has been reviewed more often. Preston Street runs down to the seafront west of the Grand, which makes it the obvious choice if you are already by the beach.

Eight shops: the thing Brighton genuinely does better

Brighton has eight mapped shops stocking Mexican products, which for a city of 280,000 is better supplied than Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield or Newcastle. Only London (40), Glasgow (11), Cambridge (11) and Coventry (10) have more in our UK data.

That matters more than another restaurant would. A city with eight shops can support home cooks who buy dried chillies whole, masa harina by the kilo and tomatillos when they appear, and the North Laine's independent-grocer culture is exactly the retail environment where that works. The current listings are in our UK store directory.

What to look for, in order of how much difference it makes: whole dried chillies (ancho, guajillo, pasilla) rather than chilli powder; nixtamalised corn tortillas rather than wheat wraps; Mexican oregano, which is a different plant from Mediterranean oregano; and tinned chipotles in adobo, which are the single most useful thing on any UK Mexican shelf. The reasoning is in the swaps guide and how to read a tortilla label.

Where Brighton sits nationally

Six venues puts Brighton just below Cardiff, Nottingham and Newcastle in our UK directory, and ahead of around forty British towns and cities that have one or two. Its type mix leans heavily towards taquerías (three of six) and entirely towards the cheap end: four of the six sit at Google's £ tier and none above ££. There is no £££ Mexican restaurant in Brighton, which in a city with Brighton's restaurant scene is a slightly surprising gap.

The national breakdown, including the cities with nothing at all, is in our coverage guide; the full taquería list is here, and the £-tier list here.

Practical notes

Three of the six are counter-service and will not take a booking. Casazul keeps Open Market hours rather than restaurant hours, which means daytime. Halisco on Preston Street is the one to book on a summer Saturday, because it is the one with 907 reviews and a seafront postcode. And in Brighton specifically, check hours in winter: a seaside city's trading pattern between November and March is not the one published in August.

We have not eaten at any of these venues. Our directory is mapped, not reviewed: addresses, types and price tiers come from the venues' own listings, the single rating comes from Google, and the award claims quoted above are the venues' own. If we have missed a Brighton or Hove venue, tell us.

Frequently asked questions

How many Mexican restaurants are there in Brighton?

Six in our directory: three taquerías, two general Mexican and one Tex-Mex. Eight shops stocking Mexican products are also mapped in the city.

Which is the best-rated?

Halisco on Preston Street is the only one with a Google rating: 4.4 from 907 reviews. The others carry no rating in our data, which is not a judgement on them.

Which Brighton Mexican places have won awards?

La Choza and Casazul both record BRAVO Awards wins on their listings, in the Eat Well For Less and Good to Go categories respectively. Those are the venues' own claims, not ours.