How many taco shops does San Diego really have? We checked the county’s records

It’s National Taco Day, which in San Diego is a little like declaring National Ocean Day in Hawaii. Sure, we’ll celebrate. We were going to have tacos anyway.

But how many taco shops does this county actually have? And why does a burger chain born here sell hundreds of millions of tacos a year? We went digging through county permit records and a few old newspaper clippings so you’d have something to talk about while you wait in line.

First, a quick date check

If your calendar app says National Taco Day was Sunday, it’s living in the past. For years the unofficial holiday sat on Oct. 4. In 2024, National Day Calendar moved it to the first Tuesday of October, so it now lands on Taco Tuesday every single year. That’s the kind of policy change we can all support.

Speaking of Taco Tuesday: for more than 40 years, the Wyoming-based chain Taco John’s held a trademark on the phrase. Taco Bell went to federal regulators to pry it loose, and in 2023 Taco John’s gave it up. So yes, your neighborhood shop can legally say it now. Most of them were saying it anyway.

So how many taco shops are there, really?

Every San Diegan has heard some version of “there’s a taco shop on every corner.” We wanted an actual number, so we went to the people who’d know: the county inspectors.

The County of San Diego’s Department of Environmental Health and Quality permits and inspects retail food businesses across the county and publishes its list of permitted food facilities on the county’s open data portal. When we searched that list on Oct. 5, 2026, here’s what turned up among current permits:

• 446 food businesses with “taco” somewhere in the name. That includes 354 restaurants and 61 mobile food units (that’s county-speak for taco trucks), plus a few caterers and food processors.
• 41 with “taquería” in the name.
• 71 with a “-berto’s” name, like Roberto’s, Rigoberto’s and Alberto’s.
• Put all three together and remove duplicates, and you get about 494 taco-named food businesses countywide.

For perspective, that’s out of 8,290 permitted restaurants in the county.

Now, the honest caveat: a name search undercounts. Plenty of great taco spots don’t say “taco” anywhere on the sign. They go by “Mexican Food,” a family name or something your cousin swears by. So the broader yardstick is a 2024 Pew Research Center analysis of 2023 restaurant data, which counted 1,712 Mexican restaurants in San Diego County. That’s the third most of any county in the country, behind only Los Angeles County and Harris County, Texas (Houston). It works out to about five Mexican restaurants for every 10,000 residents.

About 4 in 10 taco-named businesses in the county are in the city of San Diego. Chula Vista is a strong No. 2.

Where are they? The city of San Diego leads with 178 permits carrying “taco” in the name, followed by Chula Vista with 60. Oceanside (24), Vista (22) and San Marcos (21) round out the top five. The chains are in there too: the county list shows 46 Taco Bell permits and 21 Del Taco permits. That still leaves well over 350 taco-named spots that aren’t one of those two.

More fun facts to drop at the taco line

The best-selling taco might come from a burger chain

Jack in the Box was founded in San Diego in 1951 and is still headquartered here. Its cheap, deep-fried tacos have been on the menu since the 1950s, and a 2017 Wall Street Journal report found the chain was selling about 554 million of them a year. Nobody can fully explain the appeal. Everybody has eaten one at 1 a.m.

The California burrito is ours, too

Carne asada, french fries, cheese and salsa rolled into one flour tortilla? That one’s a San Diego original from the 1980s. The San Diego Tourism Authority credits local shops including Lolita’s Mexican Food in Bonita and Santana’s Mexican Grill in El Cajon with helping create it. Not technically a taco, but it’s family.

One of the classics has been around since 1933

Las Cuatro Milpas has been making tortillas in Barrio Logan since 1933. That’s older than the Golden Gate Bridge. After 92 years on Logan Avenue, the original location closed, and the family reopened on May 12, 2026, a few blocks away inside the Mercado del Barrio on National Avenue. The lines came right back.

The word “taco” may have started as a mining term

One popular theory traces the word to 18th-century Mexican silver mines, where miners wrapped gunpowder charges in paper and called them “tacos.” The rolled-up lunch looked a lot like the explosive. The explosive was less delicious.

The taco itself is ancient

Long before any of this, Indigenous people in the Valley of Mexico were wrapping small fish in fresh corn tortillas. Turns out the taco has been a good idea for a very long time.

Making a whole month of it? See our picks for Kids Free October and more great October events, plus our guide to Halloween in San Diego.