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Of the limited subset of cities on your list Santa Fe wins by default, because it is the only one in New Mexico, which has good Mexican food even by Mexican standards. In San Francisco, Regalito Rosticeria on 18th @ Mission is actually very very good. Houston and San Antonio each have more than any one person's lifetime quota of deliciousness but they are more Texan than Mexican, not that there is anything wrong with that. If you are the kind of benighted connoisseur who thinks that a burrito is food go to Burritos Moyagua in Zacatecas or any of the major roads anywhere near it and shed a tear for your wasted years with "Mission-style" garbage. Truth be told the Mexican food in Mexico is getting a lot worse post Nafta and it won't be long before some hippy American assholes have caught up, in all likelihood it will be the southwest first.

Houston? What you have there is Tex-Mex. Chicago? I think not. I have lived in both cities. San Diego, CA which is 15 miles north of the Mexican border by far, has the best Mexican in the US. Old Town is dedicated to offering you one Mexican restaurant after another in addition to all the other Mexican restaurants and taco stands located around the city. Real Mexican food is found there.

Watsonville, CA!

This is a poorly worded question. There is quite a bit of difference between Mexican and Tex-Mex.

LA and Houston have the two largest Mexican populations and will have the best and most representative regional Mexican food. Houston does have an edge here because:

1) Mexican food is not segregated to one part of the city, as it is in LA. Houston is a working city without zoning, where people live and eat right next to one another. Try to find passable Mexican food in Beverly Hills, on the other hand.

2) Houston has Hugo Ortega (who bests even Rick Bayless if you ask me) and Hugo's, one of the best upscale Mexican restaurants in the country. LA doesn't even come close in this category.

Now, if you are looking for Tex-Mex, it's a completely different story. Houston and San Antonio have both originated very distinctive brands of Tex-Mex food, and I have trouble choosing one over the other.

Skirt steak has been cooked around Texas since 1930's, but fajitas in their current incarnation took off in Houston. Today you find them all over the world, but Houston is without a doubt a fajita city.

Similarly, San Antonio have signature dishes that you rarely find faithfully replicated anywhere else. Puffy tacos, cheese enchiladas, thick and doughy flour tortillas. All unique to San Antonio and in a different world when it comes to Tex-Mex.

So to sum up, Houston is the best city for Mexican food, with a tie between Houston and San Antonio for Tex-Mex.

I know I'm going to start a riot here (after reading the above comments), but San Antonio should not even be on this list. There are several decent taco joints, but that really is the extent of it. Most of the "Mexican" food here is really lacking, and other than a handful of recent arrivals (the aforementioned Picante Grill, as well as Cascabel's, and Guajillo's), there is almost no real Mexican food. We specialize in Texican, characterized by flour tortillas and chili gravy. Taco trucks have started to arrive in San Antonio in the last couple of years, so perhaps things are on an upward trend.

On the other hand, Chicago has phenomenal Mexican food all over the place, and a long weekend in Santa Fe last year was among my greatest runs of consistently amazing food (90% of it Mexican or New Mexican) ever.

(Full disclosure: My recent life: San Antonio 6 years -- Chicago 6 years -- San Antonio 2 years.)

Hey Lambowner - the "jump" is when you read an article that starts on the main page of the blog and is continued with full details on another page that's reached by clicking on a hyperlink in the first page. When you click on that link to read the full details you "jump to the other page.

I lack the experience to say where the best Mexican food is but it's sure as heck not in NY city or NY state. And I think that although having a large Mexican population does raise the chances of having good Mexican food available... adjacency to the border is an even stronger factor.