The Cabo Restaurants I'd Send My Best Friend To

Cabo has hundreds of restaurants and the bell curve is wider than it looks. The bottom is bad — overpriced, indifferent, designed to feed a cruise crowd that won't be back. The middle is fine and forgettable. The top is genuinely world-class, sometimes for $40 a head and sometimes for $400, and not always in the order you'd expect.

I'm not getting paid by anyone, so this is the honest version of where I'd send my best friend if she had four dinners in Cabo and didn't want to waste any of them. I'm covering both Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo because they share the same metro and the food is the reason to go between them.

The taco shortlist

Before I get fancy, the taco list. Cabo's fish tacos are the reason most people leave swearing they'll go back, and they're also the cheapest meals on this whole guide.

• Tacos Gardenias in Cabo. Plastic tables, paper plates, shrimp tacos that ruin shrimp tacos for you everywhere else. Open lunch only. Cash.
• Mariscos El Toro Güero in San José. Aguachile, ceviche, marlin tostadas. Loud, busy, no reservations. Worth the wait.
• Tacos El Fogón in San José. Asado de res tacos that aren't trying to compete with the seafood. The corn tortillas are the move.
• Las Tres Vírgenes food truck in the corridor. The off-shoot of the high-end restaurant. Some of the best fish tacos in the area at a third of restaurant price.

Eat tacos for at least three of your meals. They're the food Baja is good at and the rest of the world isn't.

San José del Cabo: where I actually eat

San José is the better food town than Cabo San Lucas, full stop. More small chef-driven restaurants, more space, better service.

Las Tres Vírgenes

The romantic dinner. Set in a 1950s home in the historic district, with patio seating around a fire pit. The menu is Baja-inspired Mexican with seafood as the spine. Service is excellent. Reserve a week out in high season.

This is where I take anyone visiting for the first time who wants "a nice Mexican dinner" without ending up in a tourist-trap dining room. It's also where I'd go for an anniversary.

Flora Farms

The destination farm-to-table experience in the foothills above San José. You eat in an open-air dining room overlooking the working farm where most of what's on your plate was grown 200 feet away. There's also a market, a bar, a bakery, and a small shop.

Lunch beats dinner because of the light and because the dinner menu sometimes leans into international showmanship at the expense of the simpler farm dishes. Reserve. Hire a car or Uber — the road in is rough at night.

I've been here a dozen times. Still my favorite long-lunch in Baja.

Acre

A few minutes from Flora Farms, Acre is the cocktail-bar-turned-restaurant in a working orchard. Treehouse cocktails before dinner, mezcal program, eclectic Mexican-meets-Asian-meets-everything menu. The vibe outshines the food slightly, but the vibe is the point.

Go for sunset cocktails in the treehouse. Dinner is optional.

La Lupita Tacos & Mezcal

Casual courtyard taco-and-mezcal spot in the historic district, perfect for a low-key dinner that doesn't require a reservation 10 days out. Live music most nights. Walk-in friendly.

This is where I send people who tell me they're "tired of fancy."

Las Guacamayas

Locals' fish-taco institution on the east side of San José. Not in any guidebook, no English menu, no decor. The marlin tacos and the camarones aguachile are reason enough.

If a restaurant has parking attendants in white shirts, you're in the wrong place. Drive past it.

Cabo San Lucas: the worth-it places

Cabo San Lucas proper has fewer must-eats than San José but the ones that earn the trip really earn it.

Sunset Mona Lisa

Cliffside restaurant above the corridor with the unobstructed view back at El Arco. Italian-leaning Mediterranean menu, decent food, spectacular setting. The early seating in winter (around 5:30 PM) gets you the full sunset.

This is the "you're in Cabo, you should do one cliffside sunset dinner" answer. I broke it down in the first-timer's Cabo guide.

Edith's

Old-school Cabo institution with table-side Caesar salad, table-side guacamole, and a dramatic flame-grilled-fish-on-a-plank presentation. Touristy in the best sense — they know exactly what they are. Make the reservation, sit on the patio, order the catch of the day.

Cabo Wabo Cantina

I'll say it once: go for one drink. Take the photo. Leave. The food is overpriced bar food. The bar itself is fun for an hour.

Mi Casa

Bright-painted courtyard restaurant near Plaza Amelia Wilkes in downtown Cabo. Real Mexican home cooking — moles, chile rellenos, slow-braised meats. A counterpoint to all the seafood.

El Squid Roe

Not a food recommendation. This is the famously chaotic three-story bar where the bachelor parties end. Love it or hate it. The wings are bad. Don't eat there. Drink one beer if you're curious about what every cab driver in town will offer to take you to.

The corridor

The 20-mile stretch between Cabo San Lucas and San José is mostly resorts, but a few of the resort restaurants are worth the trip.

• Manta at the Cape, on the Pacific cliff. Sushi-meets-Peruvian. Sunset seating is the move.
• Comal at Chileno Bay Resort. Mexican fine dining with a wood-fire focus. Reservations required.
• Salvatore's at Hotel Esperanza. Italian, romantic, expensive. Worth it once.

I'd skip the rest of the corridor restaurants and drive 20 minutes either direction for something better.

Where I won't send people

A short list, said gently:

• Anywhere with a guy outside trying to wave you in
• Any "Mexican fiesta night" buffet at a corridor resort
• Cabo Wabo's restaurant menu (the bar is fine)
• The pricey "international" steakhouses on the marina that are using the same imported beef as a Texas chain
• Any sushi restaurant on the Cabo San Lucas marina

There's no rule against eating at any of them. Just don't make them the dinner you traveled for.

The single best meal I've had in Baja was a $4 plate of grilled mahi tacos from a roadside palapa on the East Cape Road. The most disappointing was a $200 dinner at a corridor resort that won't be named. The price tag and the meal don't correlate the way the marketing wants you to think.

A short list for a short trip

If you only have four nights, here's what I'd do:

1. Night 1: Las Tres Vírgenes in San José
2. Night 2: Sunset Mona Lisa cliffside
3. Night 3: La Lupita Tacos in San José (or Tacos Gardenias for lunch + a casual dinner)
4. Night 4: Flora Farms patio (lunch is better, but late dinner works in summer)

Plus three taco lunches across the trip. That's a Cabo food trip.

What about Todos Santos?

If you can spare a day, drive to Todos Santos. The restaurant scene per capita beats Cabo's, and the lunches at Hierbabuena and Jazamango are some of the best in Baja Sur. I covered that in the Todos Santos day trip post.

What I'd do differently

My first Cabo trip I ate at the resort half the time. The food was technically fine and instantly forgettable. By the third trip I had a rule: no resort dinners unless I was eating with someone who insisted. The eating got immediately better.

The other thing I'd change — I'd do more lunches. Cabo dinner gets a lot of attention but the daylight meals (Flora Farms, Hierbabuena, lunch at El Toro Güero) are more memorable. The light is better, the patios are full, and you don't have to drive home in the dark.

Final thoughts

Cabo eats well if you let it. The trick is treating the resort as a base for sleep and the rest of the area as a food map. Take the cab. Reserve the table. Don't eat where the timeshare guys recommend.

For the broader trip, start with the Baja travel guide.