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Ruta Oaxaca Mexican Cuisine
Ruta Oaxaca — the name translates to "Road to Oaxaca" — was founded by brothers Jose and Pedro Castillo alongside chef brothers Carlos and Felipe Arellano, all four of whom got their start in the restaurant industry as dishwashers more than two decades before opening their own place together. Jose Castillo began working in restaurants at just 14 years old, and that long climb through the industry, rather than formal culinary training, is what eventually put the group in a position to open a restaurant built entirely around honoring the Arellano brothers' home state in southern Mexico. The original location opened in Astoria on January 3, 2021 — squarely in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, a genuinely risky moment to launch any new sit-down restaurant. It found enough of an audience that the group expanded onto Long Island less than fifteen months later, opening a Patchogue location in March 2022, followed by a third outpost in Woodbury's East 495 plaza. The Patchogue restaurant now anchors the brand's presence on the Island. The Arellano brothers, who were born and raised in Oaxaca, lead a kitchen built around genuinely specific regional technique rather than a generalized "Mexican restaurant" menu: four distinct types of mole, handmade corn tortillas pressed to order, and a drinks program stretching to more than 50 ancestral mezcales and over 100 tequila varieties. That's an unusually deep spirits list for a Long Island restaurant of any cuisine, let alone a taco-focused one, and it signals a kitchen treating Oaxacan food as a full culinary tradition worth representing seriously rather than a shorthand for generic tacos and burritos. Continued growth has followed that early Long Island success — the group has publicly discussed plans for additional locations across both Long Island and New York City, expansion built on the strength of the original Astoria concept's pandemic-era survival and the Patchogue location's reception since 2022. That trajectory, from four dishwashers to a multi-location regional group in under five years, is a genuinely fast rise for a restaurant built around a specific regional Mexican tradition rather than a more broadly familiar format. That all four founders started as dishwashers is worth taking seriously as a credential rather than a humble-origin footnote — it means Jose, Pedro, Carlos, and Felipe learned the restaurant business from the ground up across two decades before ever controlling a menu themselves, which is part of why the Patchogue location's execution of specifically Oaxacan technique, rather than a more generalized Mexican-restaurant approach, reads as earned rather than aspirational. For a Long Island taco list, Ruta Oaxaca is the essential "specific regional tradition, seriously executed" entry — handmade corn tortillas and four kinds of mole from Oaxacan-born chefs, backed by a mezcal and tequila list deep enough to match the kitchen's own regional specificity.
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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