The Fold: The Rankings After Five Tacos
We've eaten our way from Ann Arbor's west side to Southwest Detroit. Here's how they stack up.
Five tacos in. Time to rank them.
The Fold started as a search for the best taco in Ann Arbor. Five entries later, the search has left Ann Arbor entirely. The series includes a Scio Township taqueria, a Depot Town cantina, a Dexter strip mall, a Packard Street late-night counter, and a Southwest Detroit institution on Vernor Highway. They are not all playing the same game, and ranking them requires deciding what matters most: tradition, creativity, value, or the thing that happens in your mouth when the tortilla, the meat, and the salsa all do their jobs at once.
Here's how I'm calling it after five entries. This is a mid-series ranking. It will change.
1. Taqueria El Rey
4730 W Vernor Hwy, Detroit. The barbacoa at El Rey is the best single taco in the series. The beef is braised until it shreds without losing structure, seasoned with a warmth that builds across each bite. The al pastor has real char from a grill that runs hot, not from a flat-top where the meat steams. Together, those two tacos form the strongest one-two punch any entry in The Fold has produced.
El Rey also has the lowest prices in the series. Tacos run $2 to $3. The $11.50 whole chicken dinner is the best deal any entry has offered, taco or otherwise. The 45-minute drive from Ann Arbor is the only thing keeping this from being an uncontested first place. But the food is worth every minute on I-94. Read the full entry.
2. Tmaz Taqueria
3182 Packard St, Ann Arbor. The al pastor at Tmaz is the best in the series. The marinade has more depth and spice than any other version I have tried, and the edges of the pork go dark and slightly crisp in a way that the other entries cannot replicate. At $2.50 per taco when you buy two, the value undercuts everyone except El Rey.
Then there are the hours. Tmaz is open until 4 a.m., Monday through Saturday. No other entry in The Fold is open past 9 p.m. In a college town where late-night food options range from mediocre to regrettable, a taqueria serving excellent al pastor at 2 a.m. is not just convenient. It is essential. The tortillas are not as good as the ones at Dos Hermanos, but the marinade and the hours push Tmaz into second place. Read the full entry.
3. Dos Hermanos Express
25 Jackson Industrial Dr, Ann Arbor (Scio Township). The entry that started the series, and the one that still sets the standard for fundamentals. The tortillas at Dos Hermanos are house-made, pressed daily, and you can taste the corn. The al pastor has caramelized edges and a marinade that lets the pork taste like pork first. The salsa verde is bright, sharp, and has heat that arrives after the flavor.
Dos Hermanos is the taqueria I would send someone to if they had never eaten a great taco and needed to understand what the fuss was about. Everything is from scratch. Everything is under $4. The reason it sits at third instead of first is not that anything has slipped — it is that the entries above it brought something extra. El Rey brought fire and Detroit prices. Tmaz brought a deeper marinade and hours that no one else can touch. Read the full entry.
4. MAIZ Mexican Cantina
36 E Cross St, Ypsilanti. MAIZ is the creative outlier. The baked avocado taco — battered, golden, sitting on a corn tortilla with pico and crema — is the most distinctive thing in the series. No other entry would put it on the menu. Three textures in one taco, none of them fighting each other, and the whole thing holds together in a way that battered avocado usually does not.
The carnitas are solid. The elote is the best thing I have eaten at MAIZ. The hand-shaken margaritas with fresh-squeezed juice do not hurt. But when I evaluate MAIZ against the traditional taquerias in the series, it is playing a different game. The baked avocado is creative and well-executed, but it does not have the depth of flavor that the al pastor at Tmaz or the barbacoa at El Rey deliver. Read the full entry.
5. Chela's
7065 Dexter-Ann Arbor Rd, Dexter. Chela's earned its spot in the series on the strength of one thing: the birria tacos, served Fridays and Saturdays only. The tortillas are dipped in consomme and griddled until they crisp. The beef is braised, shredded, and rich with dried chiles. The consomme on the side is dark and salty and holds up on its own. This is birria done right, and it gave the series something it did not have.
The al pastor is good at around $3. The verde salsa is excellent. But the carne asada showed inconsistency across visits — juicy and well-seared one day, dry the next — and the birria is only available two days a week. Adrian Iraola's family history shows up in the food, and the Dexter corridor deserves representation in the series. But when I stack the full menu against the other four entries, Chela's lands fifth. The birria alone is worth the drive, especially on a Saturday. Read the full entry.
What I've Learned
Five tacos have clarified a few things. First: al pastor is the series benchmark. Every entry serves it, and the differences between them reveal more about what each kitchen values than any other single taco. Dos Hermanos lets the pork speak. Tmaz leans into the marinade. El Rey cooks over real fire. Chela's stays traditional. Comparing al pastor across five taquerias is the fastest way to understand what separates good from great.
Second: geography matters more than I expected. The series started in Scio Township and ended up on Vernor Highway, and the best tacos are at the edges of the map. Taqueria El Rey operates in a neighborhood where taco shops compete with each other on every block. That density creates a level of quality that the Washtenaw County entries, good as they are, cannot match. Dos Hermanos and Tmaz are excellent taquerias. On Vernor Highway, they would be solid options. That distinction is important.
Third: value and quality are running in the same direction. The cheapest entries in the series — El Rey and Tmaz — are also the two best. The most expensive taco in the series, the $4.50 baked avocado at MAIZ, is the most creative but not the most satisfying. In The Fold, a higher price has not yet correlated with a better taco.
This ranking will change. New entries will push existing ones up or down. The series has not yet covered a food truck, a late-night campus spot, or anything south of Vernor Highway. For now, El Rey holds the top spot, and the margin between second and third is a marinade and a set of hours.
Read the full Fold series: The Fold: Best Taco in Ann Arbor.