Mexican Restaurants in Iowa City, IA

Mexican in Iowa City at a glance

• Mexican is the 5th largest food category in Iowa City, after bars and coffee shops and cafes.
• Its 5.7% share compares with 7.6% across the 506 cities in this guide, close to the national pattern.
• Of the 21 listed below, 19 are independent and 2 belong to chains; 20 list a website.

Mexican Restaurants in Iowa City

• El Senor Cactus
  Restaurant · Mexican · 1534 S Gilbert St
• Estela's Fresh Mex
  Restaurant · Mexican · 184 E Burlington St
• Alebrije Restaurant
  Restaurant · Mexican · 401 S Linn St
• Cactus 3
  Restaurant · Mexican · 114 S Clinton St
• Chipotle Mexican Grill
  Restaurant · Mexican · Chain · 201 S Clinton St
• La Regia Taqueria
  Restaurant · Mexican · 436 Hwy 1 W
• Los Agaves Mexican Grill
  Restaurant · Mexican · Chain · 2208 N Dodge St
• Mexico Lindo Grill & Cantina
  Restaurant · Mexican · 1857 Lower Muscatine Rd
• Carlos O'Kelly's - Iowa City
  Restaurant · Mexican · 1406 S Gilbert St
• Cactus Mexican Grill & Cantina
  Restaurant · Mexican · 245 S Gilbert St
• Avocado Mexican Bar and Grille
  Restaurant · Mexican · 1857 Lower Muscatine Rd
• El Banditos
  Restaurant · Mexican · 327 E Market St
• El Dorado Mexican Restaurant
  Restaurant · Mexican · 1634 Sycamore St
• El Patrón Mexican Kitchen & Tequila Bar
  Restaurant · Mexican · 109 E College St
• La Reyna Restaurant
  Restaurant · Mexican · 1937 Keokuk St
• Taco Loco
  Restaurant · Mexican · 1755 Boyrum St
• Casa Azul Restaurante y Cantina Iowa City
  Restaurant · Mexican · 335 S Gilbert St
• Los Arcos Mexican Restaurant
  Restaurant · Mexican · 531 Highway 1 W
• Cactus 2 Restaurant & Cantina
  Restaurant · Mexican · 314 E Burlington St
• Puerto Vallarta
  Restaurant · Mexican · 1851 Madison Ave
• Mami's
  Restaurant · Mexican · 221 S Gilbert St

Mexican elsewhere in Iowa

Among the Iowa cities in this guide, the most mexican listings are in Des Moines (97), Cedar Rapids (46), Davenport (44), Sioux City (25) and Ankeny (24).

Run a mexican spot in Iowa City?

You share this list with 20 other mexican listings. The ones guests reorder from are the ones that are easy to order from directly. Servestack gives you your own ordering site with zero commission, and Studio designs the menu, flyers and posts to go with it. Run your numbers with the commission savings calculator.

Place data from the Overture Maps Foundation (overturemaps.org), which includes data from Meta, Microsoft and Foursquare, used under the CDLA Permissive 2.0 and Apache 2.0 licenses. Restaurants open, close and move; check with the restaurant before you go. Data refreshed 2026-10-11.