10 best Mexican restaurants on Long Island 

Consider this your annual State of Mexican food on Long Island. We're still seeing the market dominated by Tex-Mex and its sister to the west, Cal-Mex. Restaurants of every caliber tend to sport similar dishes like San Francisco Mission-style burritos and those messy/delicious beef birria tacos. (Read Newsday's separate list of Long Island's best tacos here.)

But lately Long Island had an influx of regional gourmet spots, which take Mexican food to spendy new heights. NYC chef Julian Medina opened the stately El Verano in Southampton. The snazzy Ixchel in East Setauket specializes in pre-Colombian cuisine. And a pair of Miami-based restaurateurs have gone big with Ondas by Fuego, a kosher Mexican steakhouse that feels surprisingly natural. So far, the vibe and signature dishes tend to channel buzzy areas like the Yucatan, Mexico City and Oaxaca. 

And then there are the mom-and-pop shops, run by immigrants from Puebla, as well as small towns and underrepresented regions across Mexico. These neighborhood haunts are still serving a little bit of everything to satisfy a diverse clientele, so the menus always seem to have tortas and enchiladas Suizas. But if you look closely there's also street food such as sandal-shaped huaraches and stuffed corn masa tlacoyos from Central Mexico. Weekend diners are rewarded with the heady tripe soup menudo, and deep red pork pozole to cure the hangover. There's even a Mexican diner that specializes in slow-cooked barbacoa from Hidalgo.

Newsday's food critics visited Mexican restaurants of all stripes and geography. Here are 10 places worth the trip, and the dinero. 

With Erica Marcus and Marie Elena Martinez