Celebrating Cinco de Mayo seems to become a bigger deal every year in the United States. Although the shared Mexican-American holiday's U.S. roots extend as far back as the 1940s in California, it did not gain the kind of nationwide relevance it enjoys today until beer companies began taking advantage of its marketing potential in the 1980s. Although many of us are still under the false impression that we're celebrating Mexico's Independence Day (actually September 16th), the truth is there's no such thing as a bad excuse to eat chips and salsa and drink margaritas so dispensing with historical accuracy and focusing on having a great time is fine by everyone.

 

Luckily most cities come well-equipped with Mexican Restaurants, so finding a spot to celebrate the Battle of Puebla is typically muy facil. We went out and found the cities that have the absolute maximum potential for Cinco de Mayo celebrations. We'd love to measure this in terms of most concurrent chips being crunched or Coronas being sipped, but that data is incomplete. (We would never accurately report our own chip intake statistics.) However, with the help of data from Factual.com and Yelp, we can at least narrow in on the top 10 US cities ranked by number of Mexican Restaurants, and Holy Guacamole that should be good enough.

 

If you're looking for a place to live and you're a big, big Cinco de Mayo fan, this is the list for you! Ole!