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Right Coast Taqueria
Right Coast Taqueria traces back to a friendship forged nearly three decades ago at the Houlihan's restaurant chain, where founders David Preisler and Richard Zoob met while working in full-service corporate restaurants. The two eventually decided to build something of their own — smaller, faster, and simpler than the corporate dining rooms where they'd spent their careers — opening the first Right Coast Taqueria in Deer Park in 2018 with a deliberately lean staff and a scratch kitchen built around a handful of core dishes done well. The restaurant markets itself directly as the "home of the birria taco," leaning into the dish's national popularity over the past several years with a version built entirely from scratch rather than shortcutting the notoriously labor-intensive braised-beef preparation. That birria taco has become the specific dish regulars point to when recommending Right Coast Taqueria to first-timers, alongside other specialty items like Mongolian beef tacos and pupusas that push the menu beyond a strictly traditional Mexican format into a broader, street-food-inspired range. Plans for a second location were already underway when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, forcing Preisler and Zoob to pause expansion at a moment when many restaurants were closing outright rather than merely delaying growth. That the taqueria not only survived the shutdown period but eventually resumed expanding — into Ronkonkoma and, later, East Setauket, where a grand opening was celebrated with local town officials in attendance — reflects real staying power for a concept built by two restaurant-industry veterans rather than first-time owners. The taqueria also runs a mobile kitchen operation out of its Holbrook footprint, extending the same scratch-cooked menu to catering and event work beyond its fixed locations — a growth pattern that mirrors how several of Long Island's newer, most successful counter-service concepts have chosen to expand carefully rather than overextending into too many storefronts too quickly. Preisler and Zoob's decades in corporate full-service dining before opening Right Coast Taqueria gave them a specific, informed reason to build something smaller and simpler instead — a lean staff, a tight core menu, and a scratch kitchen are all choices that push against the operational complexity of the big-format restaurants where the two men spent their earlier careers. That background is part of why the birria taco in particular gets the from-scratch treatment rather than a shortcut version: the founders had already seen, firsthand, what cutting corners on a labor-intensive dish looks like in a larger restaurant, and built their own concept specifically to avoid it. The East Setauket opening, celebrated with local town officials present, is itself a small but real marker of how the taqueria has been received as it's grown — town officials don't typically show up for openings that haven't already built some local goodwill. For a Long Island taco list, Right Coast Taqueria is the essential "home of the birria taco" entry — a scratch-kitchen taqueria built by two Houlihan's-trained restaurant veterans, whose Deer Park original has grown into a multi-location Long Island taco name anchored by a genuinely from-scratch birria taco.
VS
Little Mexico
Little Mexico has served Westbury from its Post Avenue storefront since 2007, built by a chef-owner who spent years working in Mexican kitchens — including a stint at a restaurant called Don Juan — before opening a place of his own. The restaurant leans specifically on fresh, hand-made corn tortillas rather than a flour-based, more Americanized approach, positioning itself as one of Nassau County's more consistently authentic Mexican kitchens rather than a Tex-Mex-leaning crowd-pleaser. Newsday critic Joan Reminick singled out Little Mexico in an April 2014 feature specifically ranking the best tacos on Long Island, describing it plainly as "an authentic Mexican eatery" — a distinction Reminick didn't hand out loosely across every Mexican restaurant she covered. The piece specifically called out the restaurant's tacos de lengua, soft corn tortillas piled with tender cubes of beef tongue, as a standout order — a dish that requires real technique and a customer base willing to order beyond the safer chicken-and-steak options most casual taco spots lean on. That commitment to traditional, less mainstream cuts and preparations runs through the rest of the menu, too: tacos arrive dressed simply, with chopped tomato, onion, cilantro, radish, and lime rather than the shredded cheese and sour cream toppings more common at Americanized taco counters. It's a format built to let the filling and the fresh tortilla carry the dish, rather than burying either under heavy toppings — the kind of restraint that tends to signal a kitchen cooking for people who already know what they're ordering rather than trying to make an unfamiliar cuisine feel safer for first-timers. Having operated continuously from the same Westbury address for nearly two decades, through a period when Long Island's Mexican food scene has grown considerably more crowded with both authentic and Tex-Mex-leaning competitors, is itself a meaningful signal — Little Mexico built its reputation before much of that competition existed and has kept its core identity intact rather than chasing trends that came later. Regulars who've been ordering the same tacos de lengua since the Newsday feature ran over a decade ago are effectively voting with a decade-plus of repeat business. For a Long Island taco list, Little Mexico is the essential "authentic, unshowy corn-tortilla taqueria" entry — hand-made tortillas, a genuine tacos de lengua, and nearly two decades in the same Westbury storefront, built by a chef who spent years in other people's Mexican kitchens before opening his own.
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