Any excuse to go to Hugo’s is one you should take. This Montrose institution is the first place many Houstonians run to when looking to celebrate an anniversary, birthday, or go to a brunch with a mile-long buffet. It also helps that the space is a stunner—between the high ceilings and glistening chandeliers, the dining room may as well be a castle. If you’re at Hugo’s for dinner, get the chapulines served with pillowy tortillas, some slow-roasted barbacoa, and sweet churros for dessert.

Tatemó, an intimate (but totally unpretentious) Mexican tasting menu and brunch restaurant specializes in nixtamalizing heirloom varieties of Mexican corn in-house and making the tortillas by hand. Throughout the $125 six-plus courses during dinner, the food delivers beautiful simplicity: aromatic blue corn quesadillas, a tortilla draped in a blanket of nutty, rich mole, thick sopes obscured in a blanket of soft shaved cheese, and so on.

There is something about eating a plate of smoky fajita beef smothered in cheese and spicy salsa around 11pm, especially if it’s being enjoyed off the hood of your car in front of El Taconazo. The Mexican food truck on the northside may not have any tables or chairs, but it does have lengua quesadillas, al pastor tacos, and pepper-stewed charro beans with your choice of griddled meats.

This Mexico City-style spot in Montrose is best known for its lively brunches, usually replete with cocktails and mariachis. The colorful restaurant, filled with floor-to-ceiling illustrated murals, also serves a fantastic lunch and dinner menu nearly every day of the week, featuring some of Mexico City’s greatest hits. You can dive into crispy chicken flautas with salsa verde and earthy and nutty fried huitlacoche quesadillas. We can’t get enough of the empanadas de ate con queso for dessert.

Watching a seasoned taquero slice a trompo is a thing of beauty. Which is to say, the folks running the Tacos La Sultana taco truck in the East End really know what they’re doing. Tacos are served Monterrey-style, in which pork gets seasoned with nothing more than smoked paprika, and here, the meat slices are seared again alongside oil-warmed corn tortillas. The pork is juicy, with pockets of sweet, caramelized fat.

This beloved daytime taco spot in the East End has been a neighborhood favorite since 1977 due to their fluffy, fresh, and buttery handmade flour tortillas. Other than a brief pandemic hiatus, Villa Arcos has continuously supplied a never-ending line of construction workers, East End regulars, and politicians with egg-stuffed breakfast tacos (a.k.a.“Supers”), plates of machacado and eggs, and bowls of menudo.

Both the taco-obsessed and Houston’s growing legion of kombucha freaks can easily find a home at Cochinita & Co., the Mexican kitchen inside Kickin’ Kombucha’s East End cafe. Cochinita & Co. is named for the traditional Yucatan dish cochinita pibil, in which tender roast pork gets marinated in citrus and warm, peppery achiote. Each bite bursts with tangy, meaty goodness. It’s frankly kind of rude that more food doesn’t automatically regenerate on the plate.

Laredo Taqueria in Washington Heights automatically makes some of the best flour tortillas in town, and the daily line of people outside seem to agree. The handmade flour tortillas taste warm, pillowy soft, and rich, especially when enveloping fatty barbacoa, spicy pollo guisado, or breakfast eggs with crispy bacon or potato tacos. And yes, while you can order corn tortillas, those are made to order and that just slows down the line, and you don’t want to be that person.

When you walk into Tio Trompo in the Washington Corridor neighborhood, the first thing you’ll see (and smell) is the giant trompo rotating in all its glory. Inside, Tio Trompo is a modest spot, with floral tablecloths on the tables— and it’s a great place to watch a game on the TV with a sizzling pastor taco or with a taco arabe that tucks the spiced pork into a pillowy piece of pita bread. This casual spot also serves breakfast tacos all day.

For all the times you’ve desperately craved, like, 10 different kinds of ceviche, there’s La Cruderia, a mariscos and michelada spot in Bellaire. We appreciate the sheer number of ceviche options here, like the vegetal Ceviche Nayarita with lime-cooked white fish, carrots, and green tomato. Or the mouth-searing Ceviche Yucateco loaded with habanero. Throw in a cochinita torta or a few quesabirria tacos to balance the acid.

You might think stumbling upon a defleshed cow skull in a parking lot is a bad omen, but at Gerardo’s Drive In, a meat market and taqueria on the Northside, that just means the barbacoa is ready. Open on weekends only, Gerardo’s has been slow-steaming barbacoa since 1977. Order a few smoky and tender tacos at the counter to eat there, or snag a few pounds to-go. Gerardo’s will even sell you the entire cow’s head for around $100.

Doña Lena in Spring Branch serves some of the best birria in town. The ultra-colorful strip center spot stuffs chile-stewed beef into tacos, quesadillas, gorditas, machetes, tostadas—with a little extra consomé on the side for dunking—and bowls of ramen. The consomé tastes so fantastic, you should probably wear something you don’t mind getting stained, because you will want to devour every ounce of savory broth with wild abandon.

For those inevitable moments when you are hungry and also want to book a quick bus trip to Mexico, there’s Taqueria Monchy’s. The counter-service taco restaurant in the East End also doubles as a bus station counter and pickup point (a decision of pure genius), so you can take your homestyle rajas con queso and a sweet sandía agua fresca to go, if need be. Or you can stay and eat all day at the small booths inside.

Hidalgo is a mountainous state in the south-central part of Mexico that’s known for its rustic cooking style, which El Hidalguense, a restaurant in Spring Branch, exemplifies. Lamb is the barbacoa meat of choice here. Plates of tender, stewed lamb are served alongside bowls of consommé. There’s also roasted cabrito—goat drenched in earthy chile sauce—with fresh corn tortillas. And a must-have for breakfast is the huastecas.

Relentlessly adorable, Cucharita is a flower garden that magically shapeshifted into a Mexican City-style breakfast and lunch spot in Montrose. Cucharita, in both name and function, is the little sister extension of Cuchara, a Mexico City-style lunch and dinner bistro on the same block. Open from 7am to 3pm everyday, it’s a great option for a long, relaxing meal. Try the chilaquiles, which rotate weekly, or the huevos motuleños mixed with peas, ham, and salsa smothering fried plantains.

We appreciate that you can satiate just about any desire at La Llardas, the casual Mexican spot in Spring Branch that’s open from 8am to 10pm, and midnight on the weekends. Want to just get some desserts or agua fresca to go? You can do that. Interested in regaling your friends with karaoke over giant tortas and massive goblets of tepache? That is also an option. Or start your day with chilaquiles smothered in spicy green salsa and end it with cheesy quecas and rib steak huaraches.

This Mexico City-style taqueria at the back of Houston Farmers Market in The Heights makes so many different dishes the ordering process could be overwhelming. Thankfully, the dim-sum style menu helps you avoid decision paralysis. Ordering starts by numbering items on a double-sided menu and sliding it to the edge of the table for someone to grab. Hot plates of onion-smothered chopped wagyu sirloin and thin pineapple-laced pastor arrive almost immediately.