Economy Tacos gain popularity among inflation-hit diners in Japan

Tacos are seeing a surge in popularity in Japan, with more restaurants serving Mexican-style corn tortillas as diners look for relatively affordable meals and chefs take advantage of what they see as a fairly easy business to enter. At Tortilla Club Tortilleria in Tokyo's Shibuya district, customers on a recent afternoon spoke enthusiastically about the food. One man in his 30s said he had come to enjoy tacos while living in California. He said the pork's flavour stood out, and that he liked the tortillas' slight firmness.

His wife said taco restaurants had become noticeably more common in Japan. She added that many people now order tacos for delivery to eat casually at home with friends. The shop was also attracting customers from Central America, where the dish originated. An office worker from El Salvador, who has lived in Japan for five years, said he had not eaten many tacos in Japan before, but the ones served there tasted similar to those back home. The number of taco-focused restaurants has risen sharply in recent years. According to the restaurant review platform Tabelog, Japan had 502 restaurants serving mainly tacos as of 31 March. That is 2.3 times the number recorded three years ago, and seven times higher than a decade earlier.

The taco, one of Mexico's best-known dishes, took an unusual route to Japan, arriving in the form of Tex-Mex food -- Mexican cuisine influenced by Texan tastes -- in Okinawa during the U.S. occupation. Tex-Mex-style tacos are often made with wheat-flour tortillas and filled with ground beef, tomatoes, and cheese. Restaurants serving Tex-Mex tacos started emerging in Tokyo in the 1980s, and this style remained the mainstream in Japan for nearly 40 years, according to Koichiro Yoshikawa, a self-described "taco navigator" who does Mexican cuisine food tours and runs the Tacos Mercado restaurant in Tokyo. More recently, the soft, flavorful corn tortillas found in Mexico have been gaining ground, with simply seasoned toppings that bring out the taste of the ingredients.

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Tacos also gained ground among home cooks last year, as rising food prices pushed some consumers to seek alternatives to rice-based meals. The price of rice climbed sharply, with 5 kilograms selling for more than ¥4,000 ($25) in some cases. Against that backdrop, tortillas began attracting more attention as a cheaper and more flexible option. Sales of flour tortillas under Topvalu, Aeon's private-label brand, rose roughly 70% in volume in fiscal 2025 compared with the previous year. The tortillas sell for around ¥50 each.

Aeon has been promoting them as an alternative to meals centred on increasingly expensive rice or fish. Searches for tacos have also been increasing on the Japanese recipe video site Kurashiru. The word most commonly associated with "tacos" is "simple," suggesting that convenience and ease of preparation are part of their appeal.

Paywall alert:

A taco restaurant has recently opened near my local station and seems to be doing well. Unfortunately, there's not a single meat-free option (which would be very easy to provide), so I've not been in.

There were only a handful of places serving Mexican back in the 90s. Not even a Taco Bell in sight in those days.