Los Magueyes Mexican Restaurant

Los Magueyes Mexican Restaurant operates a Wildwood location at 346 Shopping Center Drive, an address confirmed by the US Census Bureau’s geocoder to fall within Wildwood’s incorporated city limits in Sumter County. According to the restaurant’s own website, Los Magueyes is a small Central Florida group with six locations in total, spanning Ocala, Wildwood, Inverness, Crystal River, Beverly Hills and Belleview. That puts it well below the scale of a regional or national chain while still reflecting a business that has grown past a single storefront, a pattern common among successful independent restaurant families in this part of the state. The Wildwood location’s own page describes the menu as authentic Mexican dishes including tacos, fajitas, quesadillas, enchiladas and seafood options, with dine-in, takeout, delivery and catering all offered.

Wildwood anchors the western edge of Sumter County, where Interstate 75, Florida’s Turnpike, State Road 44 and US Route 301 all converge, a fact locals point to when they call it the Crossroads of Florida. Census figures show the city more than doubling in population since 2010, from 6,709 residents to 15,730 by 2020, with growth tied closely to the neighboring Villages retirement community. The result is a local dining scene that mixes older Main Street storefronts with newer restaurants that have opened to serve residents along the busier commercial corridors on the city’s north and east sides.

A six-location Mexican restaurant group headquartered in the Ocala and Sumter County area is a meaningfully different kind of business from the national Mexican and Tex-Mex chains with locations in every state, and its inclusion in Wildwood’s restaurant scene gives residents a full-service, sit-down Mexican dining option distinct from Casa Agave Mexican Grill, the other Mexican restaurant confirmed inside city limits over on South Main Street. The stated emphasis on seafood alongside standard Mexican dishes like tacos and fajitas also broadens the menu beyond a narrower taco-and-burrito format, which can appeal to diners looking for a fuller restaurant meal rather than a quick counter-service lunch.

Because Los Magueyes shares its Shopping Center Drive street address with Rita’s Oyster Bar in older directory records, anyone visiting for the first time should use the restaurant’s own confirmed phone number, 352-461-0577, or its website to get exact directions to the current storefront within the shopping plaza. The restaurant’s established, multi-location footprint and its own working website with posted hours make it one of the more thoroughly documented independent restaurants on this list, even though an exact founding year for the overall Los Magueyes group was not stated on the pages reviewed for this listing.