Photo: Coba Taqueria / A Delicious Story
№ 01Hamerkwartier · Mexican · €€8.4
The reigning anchor of the scene: Gault&Millau listed, mezcal-forward, the reference point every newer kitchen here gets measured against.
Named for the Mayan city and parked in a shed on Schaafstraat behind Hotel de Goudfazant, Coba is where Amsterdam finally got serious about Mexican food. The menu shifts with the seasons but the method holds: proper tortillas, salsas with real heat, tacos and tostadas landing whenever they're ready, and a guacamole that comes with fried grasshoppers for the brave. Count on three to four plates each, around fifty-five euros before drinks, and let the mezcal list, one of the deepest in the city, do the steering. The room is dim, loud and cantina-cozy; Gault&Millau lists it, locals book it out, and the kitchen refuses to rush anything. Reserve ahead, budget a slow hour and a half, and start with whatever tostada is on that week. A taqueria in name, a genuinely serious restaurant in execution.
Order · Order the guacamole with chapulines, fried grasshoppers, and a mezcal cocktail alongside.
Photo: Oaxaca Amsterdam
№ 02Spuistraat · Oaxacan Mexican, mezcaleria · €€€8.1
A genuine Oaxacan kitchen and one of Europe's best mezcal rooms, hiding in a Spuistraat cantina.
Joan Bagur spent over two decades cooking in Mexico before he brought Oaxaca to a former tourist-trap address on the Spuistraat, and it shows in the details nobody fakes: chapulines when they are in season, five different salsas built fresh daily for the tableside guacamole, and chicatana ants flown in from the fields around Oaxaca City. The kitchen splits into a casual streetfood side and a full dining room running toward a ten-course tasting menu, so a solo diner grabbing tacos and a couple booking the whole table's tasting menu both get treated seriously. Behind it all sits a proper mezcaleria, 32 bottles curated with a mezcal maestro from Destilerías Tlacolula, doing serious work in a room styled like a classic Mexican cantina. The trio of oysters, done three ways with tuna, cucumber-lime sorbet and Hermosillo machaca, is the dish worth building a table around. Iberian cochinita pibil and the black mole chicken are the heavier hitters if you are staying for dinner. It is part of the Sagardi hospitality group, which explains the polish, but the cooking itself reads as personal, not corporate.
Order · Open daily 12:30-23:00, kitchen 12:30-15:00 and 18:00-22:00, mezcaleria until midnight; the lunch window is the easiest way into the tasting menu room without a wait.
Photo: Bacalar
№ 03Buiksloterham · Yucatan-leaning taqueria · €€€8.0
The Coba Taqueria team's other project, and Amsterdam Noord's tightest taco kitchen since 2019.
Bacalar sits behind an unmarked garage door on the Chrysantenstraat, sandwiched between car repair shops, which is exactly the kind of location that makes the first bite land harder. Chef Joachim de Buck runs the kitchen here the same way he runs Coba Taqueria across town: 100% organic corn tortillas pressed in house, salsas made fresh every service, and a menu that rewrites itself weekly depending on what the small producers he buys from actually have. The octopus taco is the one people cross town for, char on the edges and soft in the middle, but the tuna tostada and the rotating mole specials hold their own. The mezcal, sotol and raicilla list goes deep for a room this size, and natural wine drinkers are looked after too. Reviewers have called it the best tacos in the city since 2021 and the opinion has not moved much since. It is not cheap for a taqueria, tacos run toward nine euros each, but the sourcing shows in every plate. Open Thursday to Sunday only, so plan around it.
Order · Open Thursday through Sunday only (Thu 17:30-22:00, Fri 18:00-22:00, Sat-Sun 12:00-22:00); weekend lunch from noon is the quieter way in.
Photo: Cabron
№ 04Oude Pijp / Albert Cuyp · Mexican · €€7.8
Six-plus years of solid tacos and mezcal on the Albert Cuyp market, with its own stall for the walk-up crowd.
Cabron opened on the Albert Cuyp market in 2019 and has been quietly one of the most reliable Mexican kitchens in the city ever since, the kind of place that doesn't need a relaunch or a new chef every eighteen months to stay good. The room is cantina-style, vintage signage, a round communal table for groups, a proper bar for mezcal and cocktails. Tacos are the reason to come: carnitas with sweet potato puree and queso fresco, softshell crab with mango salsa, a battered cauliflower version that converts skeptics, each one built on a blue-corn tortilla and priced to order three or four per person. On busy market days a taco stand sets up right outside the door, selling straight to the street. A five-course taste menu runs certain nights for anyone who wants the kitchen to just decide. Once a month, Radio Cabron turns the whole place into a techno party without dropping the food. Consistency, not reinvention, is the whole pitch, and it works.
Order · Open Tuesday-Friday 18:00-23:00 and weekends 18:00-23:30, closed Monday. The five-course taste menu (€21.50) runs Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday only.
Photo: MADRE
№ 05Jordaan · Plant-based Mexican · €€7.7
Amsterdam's only fully plant-based Mexican kitchen, running tacos and mezcal out of a former Jordaan cinema.
Cinema Paradiso played its last film on Westerstraat years ago, and Suzanne van Huuksloot walked in with an idea nobody else in the city had tried: modern Mexican cooking with nothing from an animal on the plate. Not a substitute menu, a proper one. Guacamole still gets built at the table, tostadas arrive stacked with charred pineapple and achiote-spiced potato, and the birria quesatacos use a slow-braised plant protein rich enough that most people don't clock it's vegan until you point it out. Chipotle mole cauliflower wings and mushroom carnitas tacos do the same trick from different angles. The old cinema now seats up to 120 under wood panelling, loud and full most nights of the week, with a mezcal-driven cocktail bar doing steady business before and after dinner. Weekend brunch has its own following. It is a narrow lane, plant-based Mexican, and Madre has it entirely to itself in Amsterdam, which would mean nothing if the food weren't this good.
Order · Kitchen runs Monday-Thursday 17:30-22:00, Friday to 22:30, weekends from 12:00 with brunch until 16:00. Taco Tuesday (two tacos, one margarita, €21.50) is the cheapest way in.
Photo: Lupe, via Your Little Black Book
№ 06Bos en Lommer · Mexican, shared plates · €€7.7
Los Pilones' founders trade twenty years of tourist crowds for a neighborhood taqueria in Bos en Lommer.
Pedro and Juan Mouneu spent two decades running Los Pilones in the city center, feeding a mostly tourist crowd the Mexican food Amsterdam associated with Mexico before Coba and Bacalar showed up and raised the bar. Lupe is their answer to that shift: smaller, further from the canals, built for the neighborhood rather than a coach party. The room skips the sombreros-and-cacti routine on purpose, staff greet you in Spanish, and the menu runs on shareable plates rather than one main course each. Weekdays it is cochinita pibil tacos, enchiladas de mole and a hibiscus margarita list; weekends it turns into a proper brunch, huevos rancheros and chilaquiles alongside Oaxacan cheese and fresh conchas sourced from local Mexican suppliers. Tortillas are corn-based and gluten-free by default, which the neighborhood's celiac regulars have noticed. It is not cheap for what is essentially a taqueria, tacos run around five euros each and a full dinner lands closer to thirty per person, but the room earns its following on consistency rather than any single showstopper dish.
Order · Open Tuesday-Friday 17:00-22:00, Saturday 12:00-22:00, Sunday 12:00-15:00 for brunch; closed Monday. Reserve for the weekend, the brunch crowd fills fast.
Photo: Copal, photo Studio Tentusscher
№ 07Grachtengordel · Modern Mexican · €€€7.6
Barely a year into its reinvention from Colima; ambitious and worth watching, but still building the track record its cooking deserves.
Copal used to be Colima, and Colima was, in its own owners' words, too much of a taco restaurant. So chef-owner Miguel Martin Gomez and his three partners closed the doors in late 2025 and reopened weeks later with a menu built around the resin the restaurant is named for, the incense Aztec priests burned as offering. The result reads more fine dining than taqueria: Wagyu croquetas, bluefin tuna tostadas, a 250-gram Holstein ribeye finished with chimichurri and warm tortillas, BBQ octopus, huitlacoche instead of a safer vegetable. Forty-three mezcals and tequilas back it up, alongside Mexican whisky and corn liqueur cocktails. Two chef menus give you the kitchen's edit for €42 or €55 a head. It is barely a year into this version of itself, replacing a restaurant Het Parool liked well enough, so treat it as promising and recently reinvented rather than a fixture with a decade of receipts. Book ahead; the room is small and the evening-only hours mean no walk-in safety net.
Order · Open Wednesday-Saturday 17:00-22:00 and Sunday 17:00-21:30, closed Monday-Tuesday; no lunch service despite what the website copy claims.
Photo: Fiona
№ 08Wallen · Mexican · €€€7.5
A Mexican dining room and cocktail bar on Warmoesstraat, menu built by chef Zahie Tellez, kitchen run night to night by Jef van Hout.
Fiona sits under a hostel on Warmoesstraat, which tells you nothing about what's happening in the kitchen. The menu was designed by Zahie Tellez, the Mexican television chef and cookbook author, but she is not back there cooking dinner: day-to-day service belongs to chef Jef van Hout, who came up through Bord'Eau and Le Restaurant before running his own place, The French Connection. That distinction matters and Fiona is upfront about it rather than trading on Tellez's name alone. The food leans classic: tuna ceviche in leche de tigre, slow-cooked octopus with wasabi mayo, spare ribs, a proper chile en nogada when it's in season, tacos and quesadillas for the less committed. The Tulum-meets-Mexico-City room gets loud after dark and the cocktail bar keeps going past dinner. It's a big, market-tested operation, over a thousand reviews and counting, more crowd-pleaser than personal statement, but the kitchen delivers on what it promises.
Order · Kitchen runs Monday-Thursday 17:00-00:00, weekends from 12:30. Taco Tuesday is two tacos and a cocktail for €24; the Sunday Club, second Sunday of the month, is a three-course €35 menu with a frozen margarita.