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Swell Taco
Swell Taco opened in Babylon Village in 2012, started by siblings Steve and Brooke Jankow, who both grew up in California eating what they've described simply as really good Mexican food — and then spent years on Long Island missing it. Rather than settling for a compromise version of the West Coast tacos and burritos they'd grown up on, the Jankows built their own restaurant around that specific California-Mexican style, importing a genuinely different regional sensibility to Long Island's taco scene. That California through-line shows up in more than just the menu — Swell Taco's whole identity leans into a beachy, surfer-inflected atmosphere that stands out in a Babylon Village dining scene otherwise dominated by more traditional Italian and American spots. It's a vibrant, casual room built for the kind of easy, unfussy meal the Jankows grew up with, rather than a formal sit-down Mexican restaurant experience. The menu centers on marinated steak tacos, fried mahi-mahi fish tacos, and beer-battered shrimp tacos alongside quesadillas, burritos, and sides — a lineup that leans closer to Baja and Southern California taco traditions than to the more corn-tortilla-forward, interior-Mexican style found at some of the Island's other taco spots. Free chips and green salsa on arrival is a small but telling touch, the kind of casual hospitality gesture that's standard at California taquerias and less common at more formal East Coast Mexican restaurants. Swell Taco's self-description as Long Island's best taco and burrito bar is obviously a marketing line, but it reflects real staying power — the restaurant has operated continuously in the same Deer Park Avenue storefront for well over a decade, building a following specifically among Long Islanders looking for the fish-taco, fried-and-battered California style rather than a more traditional street-taco format. That specific regional identity — Cali surf culture transplanted wholesale to a Babylon storefront — is something few other Long Island taco spots have attempted with the same consistency. Siblings running a restaurant together long-term is itself a meaningful structural detail — Steve and Brooke Jankow have kept ownership and daily decision-making within the same two-person partnership since 2012 rather than bringing in outside investors to accelerate growth, which has kept Swell Taco's menu anchored to the specific California dishes they grew up on rather than drifting toward a more generic, broadly appealing Mexican-restaurant format as it might have under different ownership pressures. For a Long Island taco list, Swell Taco is the essential "California taco culture, transplanted whole" entry — fried mahi-mahi and beer-battered shrimp tacos served in a beachy, surfer-vibe Babylon Village room, built by California-raised siblings who opened the restaurant specifically because they couldn't find that style of Mexican food anywhere else on Long Island.
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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.
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