As local Mexican businesses go, the Zafra and Carrera families are moguls. This year, they opened a taqueria, Carrera's, in Bushwick, a natural extension of their businesses, selling Mexican products to local bodegas and high end restaurants. It's a cozy respite on a gritty stretch of Flushing Avenue where trucks blast down the thoroughfare. More

Downtown Bakery has been serving Mexican food in the East Village for almost twenty years. If you haven't eaten their burritos, swollen with refried black beans and crumbly orange rice, or indulged in the hangover obliterating powers of their huevos rancheros, then you've at least walked under the blue and white awning that shoots over the sidewalk. Downtown Bakery began as an Italian establishment, but over the years it's become a staple taqueria in the East Village. More

The tamales from La Güera, a modest taqueria in Sunset Park, are fantastic renditions of a perfect, portable food. Tamales ($1.50) sit at the front in an Igloo cooler, all the easier peddle to pedestrians and still warm at midday. There are smoky mole tamales with dark black centers, cheese and green chili versions, and sweet pineapple-infused tamales that sometimes hold dried plums. But the phenomenal banana leaf-wrapped oaxaqueño tamales that are cause for celebration. More

The team behind Colonie in Brooklyn Heights have been wanting to open a Mexican restaurant for a while. "Mexican food is what we find ourselves eating on our days off," said co-owner Elise Rosenberg. Their new spot Gran Electrica has been open about a month now on Front Street in Dumbo, right next to Grimaldi's pizzeria. Instead of slinging pizza dough, they're pressing 400 to 500 corn tortillas a night. More

Like a grand marquee announcing the latest blockbuster, the multicolored sign "TORTAS" of Puebla Mini Market can be read two blocks away. Puebla Mini Market is an orderly shop in Sunset Park: part bodega, part torta cart, but first and foremost a juice stand. Most customers shoot past the juice stand and beeline for the back, where the famous double-sided plancha (basically a panini press) squashes overloaded sandwiches into tight, well-toasted packages. This unique sandwich shop was created by Don Pepe, the creator of thirty-three (and counting) styles of torta, which you can peruse from a well-lit photographed line-up overhead. More

In the Spanish lexicon, the word enchilada means much more than tortillas and cheese drowning in sauce. At Taqueria Cocoyoc, a taqueria in Bushwick, it's the racier goat that get the enchilada treatment. Goat meat may be unsettling to some, but it's not all game and funk. Here the barbacoa enchilada is tweaked with a rub of ground chiles and vinegar, cooked until soft, then torn into moist chunks and seared on the griddle. The marinade permeates the pieces of meat like good Texas barbecue, the sinews collapse, and the exterior shreds crisp and caramelize into amplified meatiness. More

You'll find fewer taquerias at the North end of Sunset Park, or where ambitious real estate agents call South Slope. Up here there are more funeral halls, delis, and pizzerias than taquerias, but there is El Tenampa, a 4th Avenue grocery doing it all right. More

Most taquerias hawking al pastor in New York skip the spit, but Taco Mix maintains the tradition. The magnificent column of meat—bookended by slow-roasting pineapple— is sliced into thin shavings for tacos. It has the ability to stop pedestrians dead in their tracks. More

Dwarfed by the Kingsbridge Armory, El Rancho Deli Grocery would be easy to skip over. A kitchen is buried deeper inside. I may have been drawn in by the barbocoa, but it was the huitlacoche quesadilla that won me over. More

Tehuitzingo is an unassuming little taqueria in the back a Hells Kitchen bodega, satisfying taco fixes for those in the clutch of Midtown West. Strings of chile pepper lights and Mexican flag-themed party favors drape from the ceiling.Have you ever wanted to watch green strobe lights dance over your tacos? If so, then Tehuitzingo is the place for you, even if the food can sometimes be lackluster. More