116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Curious Iowa: Why does Cedar Rapids have so many Mexican restaurants?
Millennials play key role in growth as Central American cuisine diversifies
Mar. 10, 2025 5:30 am, Updated: Mar. 10, 2025 7:25 am
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It’s a question that never seems to get worn out in Cedar Rapids.
When a restaurant closes or a new building is constructed in the City of Five Seasons, residents can count on local foodies in social media groups to speculate what kind of restaurant will fill the space. Virtually every time, there’s one punch line guaranteed to get laugh reactions: “another Mexican restaurant.”
This week’s Curious Iowa -- a series from The Gazette that answers readers’ questions about the state -- finally examines the evergreen inquiry that has persisted for years: “Why does Cedar Rapids have so many Mexican restaurants?”
How many are in Cedar Rapids?
The city of Cedar Rapids has a total of 38 Mexican or Mexican-fusion restaurants, according to the most recent records from Linn County Public Health.
The vast majority of those are locally owned, but 10 locations from chains like Abelardo’s, Panchero’s and Taco Bell are included in the number.
Data from a Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance study reported by The Gazette in 2022 reflected the strong local ownership of this category. After American restaurants, Mexican food was the most populous category of locally owned places — bigger than pizza, and more than Italian, Chinese and Indian restaurants combined.
Why does Cedar Rapids have ‘so many’ Mexican restaurants?
The prevalence of Mexican food in the city may be a matter of perception.
Among roughly 475 establishments inspected to serve food, Mexican restaurants make up about 8 percent of the restaurant population.
That’s slightly lower than the national average, according to a Pew Research Center study, which last year estimated 11 percent of all restaurants across the country serve Mexican food.
Most counties across the country have at least one Mexican restaurant, but some parts have a higher share than others. In New Mexico, Mexican restaurants account for 22 percent of all restaurants. Other border states reflect similar shares: 20 percent in Texas, 18 percent in Arizona and 17 percent in California.
Are they all the same?
No — not by a long shot. In recent years, Mexican restaurants have branched out to serve diverse regional cuisines across the country of 130 million people.
While Mexican restaurants stand out from each other in many different ways, they tend to get lumped into a category seen as homogenous. It’s one of the biggest misconceptions Phoebe Rios, owner of Rio Burritos, has worked to dispel since she started serving her food in 2002.
“One of the things that upsets me is when I see how upset people are that a new Mexican restaurant opened,” Rios said. “Why are people so upset about Mexican options we have, when nobody talks about how many burger joints we have here, or how many pubs we have?”
Raised in Chicago by family from northern Mexico, Rios was steeped in the traditions of cities like Matamoros and Tamaulipas with her grandmother’s cooking.
At home, breakfast meant homemade flour tortillas rather than corn tortillas — a preference unique to northern Mexico — alongside eggs, beans and fresh salsa. On a good day, she would have tamales for breakfast, each one burnt on its outer husk to give it a smokey flavor.
When she started her first Cedar Rapids restaurant 23 years ago, her average customer’s idea of Mexican food was Carlos O’Kelly’s or Taco Bell. Today, she strives to impart the diversity of Mexican cuisine at her restaurant.
“Even though we have Mexican staples, there’s a lot of variances,” she said. “We definitely know we’re different, and that’s OK.”
She said many Mexican restaurant owners are from the central state of Guanajuato, next door to the country’s capital, Mexico City. But she’s not interested in copying them.
Today, her restaurant focuses on street food, which she enjoys most in her visits to Mexico. At her restaurant in northeast Cedar Rapids, she has taught people how to make just a couple of the more than 500 tamale variations across Mexico.
“We want to do our own thing and bring what we know and have loved many years in our family,” Rios said.
Restaurants are growing more diverse
Iowa restaurants representing cuisine south of the border are growing more and more diverse.
“Just because there’s a lot of Mexican restaurants doesn’t mean you’re only getting one type of food,” said Jessica Dunker, president and CEO of the Iowa Restaurant Association. “If you dig in and look at the regions, you realize there’s as much variety as you might consider between California and Creole cuisine.”
The explosion in diversity is a trend that started to grow in Iowa about 10 years ago, she said.
In Cedar Rapids, some like Mi Lindo Vallarta and La Terraza have a penchant for seafood from cities like Puerto Vallarta.
Others, such as the former La Chamba, offer a focus on western cities.
La Piedad’s salsas are fire-roasted instead of boiled. The city’s food uses different chilies, tomatoes and peppers than typical Mexican cuisine, causing a normally dark red Chile Colorado, for example, to appear bright and almost orange.
The state of Guerrero uses different seasonings, with a preference for pan roasting them and a strong penchant for epazote in a mix of fresh herbs, rather than dried.
Birria tacos took the Cedar Rapids scene by storm with numerous openings, closures and menu additions as chefs and restaurants competed with their interpretation of the trendy food from 2020 to 2024.
It’s not just Mexican, thanks to Millennials
Growth has moved beyond Mexican restaurants. Iowa’s Latino restaurant scene has branched out to El Salvador, Guatemala, Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru and other countries.
Last year, the growth in Des Moines led Dunker and a group of Iowa restaurant owners to start the Iowa Latino Hospitality Council. The growing business group wanted to help the public think differently about Latino restaurants.
“They were rarely invited to be part of traditional restaurant weeks, even though a lot of them had price points that would make sense for them to be included in a restaurant week,” Dunker explained. “What they’re trying to do is elevate the understanding of Latino cuisine.”
She said the dining habits of Millennials have largely shaped the broader palate of restaurants, as the generation with a propensity for exploration has come into more disposable income.
Dishes like fajitas, tacos and burritos are no longer exotic or novel to them.
“Millennials grew up with tacos at home and churros as something that was fun,” Dunker said. “They don’t just want Mexican food, they want a regional cuisine. They don’t just want Asian food, they want Thai or Burmese.”
Why they’re here to stay
In Cedar Rapids, about one-third of the city’s 38 Mexican restaurants have been in business since at least 2014. The average life cycle for many restaurants, particularly trendy concepts, is about 10 years.
Among the oldest Mexican restaurants here are Hacienda Las Glorias, Casa Las Glorias, El Super Burrito, El Paraiso and Cancun Mexican Grill and Bar.
The models used in Mexican restaurants tend to help them fare better against economic headwinds than the average restaurant.
Their large menus tend to share a small number of ingredients, cutting costs. Plus, many are run by families that pass the business down for generations — a model more prevalent in Latino restaurants than in other independent American concepts.
Rios says the large and mature base of Mexican restaurants proves it’s a category here to stay.
“It says (diners) love Mexican food, and we’re not all the same. People know what they like, and people like Mexican food,” she said.
But the trends also underscore a deeper realization: by sharing the culture they came from, restaurant owners from other countries have found secure entry to the American middle class. Cedar Rapids’ restaurant scene has become a melting pot that transformed something once foreign into something domestic.
“Mexican food is just American food now, in a lot of ways,” Dunker said.
Gazette Social Video Producer Bailey Cichon contributed to this report.
Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.
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