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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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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.
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