Mexican Restaurants in Waltham, MA

For a city the size of Waltham, MA, I am always amazed, and, I might add, a little impressed that it boasts no less than five Mexican Restaurants within the confines of the city. They’ve got a variety of styles and degrees of authenticity to choose from, so whatever your particular Mexican restaurant hankering is leading you to, you should be able to find it in Waltham, MA.

Looking to relax in one of the larger, nouveau Mexican restaurants where you can chill out with a margarita and take in the smell of the fajitas cooking in the stone skillets at the next table? There are two excellent choices right on Moody Street, which leads you right through the center of town.

The Iguana Cantina is a popular Mexican restaurant with the hip crowd of downtown Waltham. A lively bar and full service restaurant with a long appetizer menu and the usual Mexican fare, the food is good and the atmosphere is casual. The food can take a little long to hit the table on a busy night, but the chips and salsa and margaritas can make the wait more than bearable.

Copy that for Margarita’s Mexican Restaurant & Watering Hole, a Mexican Restaurant chain with locations throughout New England. Just down the street from the Iguana Cantina, the Waltham, MA location of Margarita’s has a full service bar, a menu that spans several pages and a surprisingly expansive list of fajitas. They’ve got several grill options in addition to the usual Mexican restaurant staples. The food is consistent and reliably good, if not particularly inventive, and the wait staff are chipper.

For a Mexican restaurant on a smaller scale with a menu item selection that has more of a ring of authenticity to it, there are two very nice choices in Waltham, MA. Taqueria El Mariachi on Willow Street and Taqueria Mexico on Charles Street both boast menu with authentic Mexican cuisine. If you’re looking to break away from that chicken enchilada, steak burrito rut that you’ve found yourself in, you can certainly find something a little off the typical Americanized Mexican restaurant selection. The food at both is appetizing and well prepared. My leaning is slightly toward Taqueria Mexico for flavor, but Taqueria El Mariachi has a little more to offer in the ambiance department (if you consider something that looks like it might co-exist peacefully among the ramshackle houses of Tijuana ambiance, which I do).

And finally, there’s Buckaroos. Buckaroos is, well, a little bar on the side of the road on High Street. It really offers primarily American pub and grill fare, but they’ve got a whole list of Mexican menu options, and they consider themselves an American and Mexican restaurant, and who am I to say no? The Mexican items seemed to resemble most bar menu items, but the service was friendly, and the food wasn’t half bad at that.

Buckaroos
223 High St
Waltham MA
Phone: (781) 899-4505

Iguana Cantina
313 Moody St
Waltham MA
Phone: (781) 891-3039

Margarita’s Mexican Restaurant & Watering Hole
227 Moody St
Waltham MA
Phone: (781) 893-9990

Taqueria El Mariachi
196 Willow St
Waltham MA
Phone: (781) 642-7410

Taqueria Mexico
24 Charles St
Waltham MA
Phone: (781) 893-2205