Restaurant Chains That Use The Highest Quality Beef In Their Tacos

When it comes to beef tacos, the best of the best are borderline heavenly. Think tender, juicy meat, richly seasoned and combined with the freshest veggies and creamiest cheese. Finding beef tacos this spectacular, however, is sometimes easier said than done. While there's certainly no shortage of restaurants offering Mexican and Tex-Mex cuisine in the U.S. — in fact, it's thought that 11% of all restaurants nationwide serve Mexican food as of January 2024 (according to the Pew Research Center, via data from SafeGraph) — it's surprising how many chains still dish out tacos made with low-quality beef.

Personally, we respect our stomachs (and wallets) far too much to waste time on subpar food. With that in mind, we've done the research to track down the restaurant chains that boast the highest standards of excellence for their beef. Weighing up criteria such as the grade of a restaurant's beef, how it's prepared, and what else goes into the meat, we put together a shortlist of the restaurants we think are currently using the highest quality beef in their tacos. Apologies in advance for the taco cravings, but at least you'll have a go-to list of 10 restaurant recommendations the next time you want to indulge.

Founded in California in 1990, Baja Fresh Mexican Grill lists tender steak as one of multiple protein options for its flagship Baja Taco. Just like every other ingredient used at Baja Fresh, the chain has exceptionally high standards for said steak. It prioritizes farm-fresh, unprocessed items for the majority of its menu, with zero freezers in its stores.

The steak specifically has an impressively short ingredients list. While you'd assume that beef is made of, well, beef, fast-food restaurants have a track record for squeezing other ingredients into their taco meat (even if some of the rumors about their contents are wrong, as was the case for Taco Bell). This is typically done for the sake of lowering costs or extending its shelf life.

There's nothing inherently wrong with using some preservatives and additives, but if you spot a long list of hard-to-pronounce ingredients, that's typically a sign that meat has been heavily processed. Fortunately, at Baja Fresh Mexican Grill, there's nothing alarming to report. The steak used in its tacos contains cubed beef with water, beef fat, rice starch, and natural flavors, plus seasonings such as salt, sugar, paprika, and onion powder. The only scientific-sounding ingredient included on the list is silicon dioxide, which makes up less than 2% of the beef. This is a common anti-caking agent, and while it sounds like something you'd find in a lab, it's actually a compound that occurs naturally in plants and animals (humans included).

Sharky's Woodfired Mexican Grill is a relatively small chain that's made a big impression. Its founder, Steve Paperno, opened the first Sharky's location in Sherman Oaks in 1992, driven by his vision of combining the flavors he savored while traveling around Mexico with his own passion for a healthy lifestyle. Needless to say, he brought that vision to life. Today, you can find Sharky's restaurants dotted throughout California (plus one location in Las Vegas), where it was named Best Mexican Cuisine by Los Angeles Daily News for five years in a row in the 2010s and has received particular praise for its fresh, high-quality fare.

Its tacos are no exception. Should customers select steak as their protein of choice, they'll be eating grass-fed meat that meets Sharky's strict quality standards. As per the Sharky's Woodfired Mexican Grill website, its steak is all 100% free-range and raised with zero antibiotics or added growth hormones. "We believe what's inside is what counts and follow that with our food too," the chain explains. The same standards are extended to other ingredients in your taco. For example, Sharky's Woodfired Mexican Grill's cheese and sour cream are both free of recombinant bovine growth hormone — which has proven controversial despite the relatively minimal research suggesting it impacts human health — while its baby greens, baby spinach, baby kale, romaine lettuce, and both black and pinto beans are all organic.

Tacos Gavilan (previously known as Tacos El Gavilan) is another California-born chain, having sold its first tacos out of a food truck in Los Angeles in 1992. Today you can order authentic Mexican cuisine from 14 family-owned Tacos Gavilan restaurants in the Golden State, all of which count asada (beef), cabeza (beef head), and lengua (beef tongue) as a protein option for their tacos.

Although Tacos Gavilan counts its original carne asada — for which it uses a unique seasoning from a family recipe — as its most popular taco option, you're in good hands for every kind of beef taco. All of the meat used at Tacos Gavilan is free of preservatives and prepared in the restaurant with seasonings and spices that are free of artificial flavors. Each taco is, like the rest of the menu, made fresh to order using never-frozen beef. This is a natural consequence of the chain's strict quality ethos. As Tacos Gavilan explains, "The small details make the biggest difference for customers, that's why no detours are taken in making the perfect taco that has the quality you can taste." If the string of glowing reviews is anything to go by, that latter part is definitely true for Tacos Gavilan's array of beef tacos.

Velvet Taco doesn't sell your standard tacos. With locations in eight states and counting, the restaurant chain debuted in Dallas in 2011 with the promise of breaking through the boundaries of Tex-Mex cuisine. Instead, it experiments with quirky flavor combinations (think Chicken & Waffle, Beer Battered Cauliflower, and Nashville Hot Tofu) and the same ingredients and practices used in fine dining. While you can still find beef tacos at its restaurants just like any other taco chain, these come in the form of elevated varieties such as Slow-Roasted Angus Brisket, Grilled Steak, and Kobe Smash Burger.

One thing that every beef taco has in common at Velvet Taco is the quality. The chain prides itself on only using the freshest ingredients possible, which means you're in good hands no matter what you order. The proof is in the ingredients lists. For example, its Slow-Roasted Angus Brisket Taco — which has been singled out as a favorite with customers — contains a beef brisket cooked with nothing more than ingredients you can likely find in your kitchen at this very moment, including brown sugar, red pepper, lime juice, and kosher salt. Simple, yet effective. The meat found in its Kobe Smash Burger Taco is as straightforward as it gets, containing just beef, salt, and pepper. Meanwhile, the wildest things you'll find on the list of components for the meat in the Grilled Steak Taco are Miller Lite beer, pineapple juice, cottonseed oil, and Worcestershire sauce in the marinade.

Does Chipotle really need an introduction? Since 1993, the fast-casual chain has grown at breakneck speed, winning over customers with a simple ethos that how food is grown and prepared plays a huge role in how it tastes. While some people feel like Chipotle has dipped in quality in recent years, the chain still places a big focus on sourcing fresh, first-rate ingredients for its menu. It's also famously committed to avoiding antibiotics in its meat, beef included. In 2024, Chipotle was the only American restaurant chain to score an A+ in a report published by Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT) assessing the effectiveness of its antibiotic policies in preventing antibiotic-resistant superbugs. It was also praised for adhering to Beef Quality Assurance guidelines.

As well as keeping a close eye on antibiotic usage, Chipotle only uses responsibly raised steak and barbacoa. It primarily takes the latter cuts from the shoulder due to the fact that the area contains an ample amount of fat to stay moist when braised. Both kinds of beef go through meticulous steps to retain their moisture in general. Chipotle cooks the meat sous vide — the term for when you vacuum-seal the meat and cook it in a water bath — then marinates it and either cooks it on the grill or braises it at a low temperature. The entire process involves much more complex culinary prowess than you would expect from a chain of this size, but it pays off with extra tasty tacos.

TacoTime (a totally separate entity from TacoTime Northwest, which operates restaurants exclusively in Western Washington) has been a major player in the taco game since 1960. Its founder, Ron Fraedrick, spent a long time perfecting the chain's spice blend, mixing all the different components together in a 55-gallon barrel that he rolled around a parking lot. We're fairly confident that parking lot excursions don't play a key role in prepping this blend today, but the chain still puts a strong focus on nailing the quality of its offerings. This covers the beef used in its tacos, which is exclusively lean ground beef that is always fresh, never frozen.

As is usually the case, this ground beef isn't tossed into each taco plain. That also means that its ingredients list contains more than just straight-up beef, but it isn't riddled with a long list of additives or preservatives, either. As per TacoTime's nutritional breakdown, it contains beef, water, TacoTime spice (which uses the likes of granulated garlic, minced onion, cumin, black pepper, and textured soy protein), and tomato paste. In other words, nothing you wouldn't be able to track down in a grocery store.

Forget the "burrito" part of the name for a second because what really matters here is the fact that Dank Burrito's food is, well, "dank." The chain, which boasts locations in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida, only serves dishes made with the freshest ingredients possible. It preps each ingredient by hand on a daily basis, setting itself apart from its fast food competitors by using techniques similar to those typically found in fine dining.

When it comes to tacos, Dank Burrito's beef varieties include Plain Jane Beef, Carne Asada, and Cheesesteak. Given the chain's aversion to pre-made and frozen ingredients, it's safe to say that this quality ethos extends to its beef, too. In the words of Dank Burrito itself, it only uses components that are "fresh-to-death." As well as brining, rubbing, and smoking its meat in-store, it's also committed to sourcing its ingredients from the closest suppliers possible. Dank indeed.

Mi Cocina is primarily a Texas-based chain, with just one restaurant located outside the Lone Star State in Tulsa, Oklahoma. While it's locally famous for its Mambo Taxi — its iconic margarita-sangria hybrid – it's also made a name for itself with irresistible tacos. For a time, these were also sold through an individual concept called Taco Diner. However, the last of these locations shuttered in January 2024, leaving Mi Cocina the only place to pick up beefy favorites like its Tacos "De Brisket" and De Ribeye.

It's the former that arguably deserves the title of Mi Cocina's flagship taco, having racked up some of the restaurant's most glowing reviews. Unsurprisingly, a lot of effort goes into nailing that kind of rave-worthy quality. Not only does Mi Cocina only use the freshest ingredients and prep its dishes by hand with traditional Mexican cooking techniques, but it also slowly roasts its brisket beef for eight hours to maximize flavor. Meanwhile, the Tex-Mex chains Tacos De Ribeye only use Certified Angus Beef, which basically means it's reached a certain standard of weight, marbling, color, texture, and firmness.

Taco Bueno is one of multiple Southern fast food chains that should be on your radar if it isn't already. It may have bounced between owners over the decades, but its constant focus has always been fresh Tex-Mex cuisine. Customers can find the restaurant — which "King of the Hill" fans may recognize from its frequent name drops in the show — whipping up authentic recipes in Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. On the topic of beef tacos specifically, Taco Bueno's seasoned ground beef is available in four different varieties: an Original Crispy Taco, Soft Taco, The Muchaco (a heftier taco that swaps out the traditional shell for a thick pita bread), and the Big Freak'n Taco (which, as the name suggests, is just a supersized taco).

No matter which variety you choose, the ground beef is of the same impressive quality. Taco Bueno is big on using real ingredients (it promises that everything used on its menu is easy to pronounce) and prepares all of its recipes fresh in-store. This means that Taco Bueno only uses fresh, not frozen, beef, which it then mixes with a handful of straightforward additions, such as water, tomato paste, and garlic powder. The sole scientific-sounding ingredient of the bunch is citric acid, which is often added to foods as a preservative in its synthetic form.

You're never too far from your next taco in California, with the state containing 22% of the country's Mexican restaurants, according to the Pew Research Center. Carlsbad-based Rubio's Coastal Grill found a way to stand out from the crowd by becoming the first restaurant in the U.S. to sell fish tacos, according to its founder, Ralph Rubio, after he became inspired during a spring break trip to San Felipe, Mexico. Famous though the Original Fish Taco may be today, it's not the only dish worth trying at its restaurants. Whether you're visiting a Rubio's location in California, Arizona, or Nevada, you can rest assured that its beef options receive just as much TLC in the kitchen.

Both its Classic Steak Taco and Grilled Gourmet USDA Choice Steak Taco use lean, 100% USDA-approved beef. By its very definition, a USDA Choice steak needs to be high quality to earn this grade, delivering tender, juicy, and flavorful meat. Rubio's also doesn't use artificial ingredients for the steak in its tacos. Generally speaking, it doesn't use artificial flavors or sweeteners (except in select drinks, desserts, and condiments), added MSG or high-fructose corn syrup, or partially hydrogenated oils, with Rubio's being another that prides itself on not using ingredients that are "too difficult to pronounce." It may have fallen on hard times recently, having become one of many restaurant chains to file for bankruptcy in 2024, but one thing that's never been in doubt is the quality of Rubio's food.

In a world overflowing with tacos, it's only natural that some are a cut above the rest. To find the beef tacos that fall into the former category, we dived deep into the offerings of multiple restaurant chains in the U.S., keeping an eye out for certain details that typically signpost the highest quality beef.

While the most basic indicator of a good beef taco is a plethora of good reviews, we looked for those that were also supported by solid ingredients. Not to state the obvious, but the beef was, of course, the most important factor. The highest quality beef is typically USDA-graded, so any chain that mentioned that on its website inched itself into our good books. We also prioritized the chains that use fresh, not frozen, beef.

Another green flag was if a chain didn't combine its beef with numerous additives and preservatives. While it's borderline impossible to find a restaurant where the beef tacos contain solely beef (and they'd most likely taste extremely bland if you did), a lengthy list of complicated-sounding ingredients is often a surefire sign that meat has been heavily processed, therefore hard to justify as high quality.