17 Best Restaurants in Los Cabos, Mexico

In a relaxing garden filled with retro decor, waiters in mesh trucker hats and black T-shirts deliver remarkable urban Mexican cuisine with a dash of Grandma’s secret recipes. Under the shade of a mango tree, start with the trio of salsas infused with orange and chipotle, served with a basket of freshly fried tortilla chips. Local breakfast favorites are the French toast and Costa Azul (baked eggs with a Dijon cream sauce). Or go straight to the lunch menu, featuring the pork shoulder sandwich, jicama mango salad with citrus cream dressing, and a cheese-and-vegetable stuffed poblano sandwich. All pastries are crafted in-house, including the sinfully divine churros, served with sweet milk.

Many of the area's best restaurants source their coffee blends from Cabo Coffee Company. The café, just off the Plaza Amelia Wilkes town square, serves a wide array of espresso drinks made from organic beans grown in Oaxaca's cloud forest. The café is a popular meeting place for locals, who appreciate the comfortable couches and complimentary Wi-Fi, as well as the fresh pastries.

Although Los Cabos and Baja are not coffee-growing regions, the folks in the town of El Pescadero roast the finest beans from the Sierra Norte mountains in the Mexican state of Puebla. They turn them into the area's best gourmet coffee drinks, which may be enjoyed at tables in the adjoining garden. Baked goods and light fare headline the daily menu offerings, with more filling options—such as vegetarian frittatas—available for Sunday brunch. Other Sunday specials include live music and a farmers' market.

Bandido's has come a long way since opening nearly a decade ago with three plastic tables and a grill fixed under the hood of an old pickup truck. The unique truck-grill is still around, but the restaurant's latest alfresco setting suggests it may be transitioning from working-class pit stop into romantic burger joint. Red-and-white checkered tablecloths are scattered amid dozens of palm trees festooned with lanterns, and tropical breezes blow in past the nearby marina. Bandido's is very popular with locals, who crowd the place nightly for enormous half-pound burgers and barbecue ribs, ice-cold cervezas, and old-time rock and roll.

Fronted by miles of secluded East Cape beach, this casual seaside cantina (with cheap cervezas) gets rave reviews from locals who make the 10-minute drive out of San José del Cabo. The palapa restaurant serves reasonably priced seafood entrées, such as coconut shrimp; breakfast burritos; hefty build-your-own burgers; and house flan. Indeed, this custardlike dessert could easily be enough for two or three—try it with a shot of Kahlúa poured over the top. Also, Sunday breakfast is a big hit.

Not far from hotels, restaurants, and important downtown sights, this small café is a great place to recharge with a morning espresso, chai, or smoothie, along with great pastries. Wi-Fi is available here, so you can catch up on your email. Credit cards are accepted.

In addition to its great selection of beer and wines, as well as organic and frozen foods, healthy and low-calorie offerings, and cheese, this corner shop carries familiar products and brands from the United States. A second location has been added at The Shoppes at Palmilla.

This two-story palapa restaurant, named “The Drunken Sailor,” is always packed with locals and tourists alike. It’s no wonder: the location across from the marina is the perfect spot to watch the sunset while enjoying a ginger mint mojito or tamarind margarita. Several dishes feature unexpected Vietnamese and Costa Rican influences, such as the panko-crusted fish taco with ginger cream and the shrimp enchilada with coconut pineapple sauce and fried plantains. The shrimp burger on homemade bread comes with chili lime fries and pairs well with an ice cold michelada (salt-rimmed Mexican beer with lime, spices, and hot sauce). Timid palates must overcome any hesitation and try the best dessert in Los Cabos: the avocado-lime chocolate cream pie on graham cracker crust.

The scent of fresh-baked French baguettes and a picture-perfect display of croissants, éclairs, colorful candies, and ice creams greet you at this café-bistro just off San José del Cabo's main square. In the creperie area, the cook tucks delicate crepes around eggs and cheese, ground beef and onions, or shrimp and pesto. If you choose to eat in, salads, and other standard fare are offered. The patisserie has a well-designed drink menu of fine wines and tequilas and a full list of organic coffee and tea-based drinks.

If you're looking for some entertainment to go along with your tacos or tortas (sandwiches), listen for the blaring Beatles' tunes at Gordo Lele's, then watch owner Javier Reynoso don his Beatles wig and sing along to "I Want to Hold Your Hand" or "Let It Be." The walls here are filled with Fab Four photos and album covers. Javier's tacos and tortas are made with loving care, and his fans can have two or three ham-and-cheese tortas for what would be the price of one anywhere else, plus an assortment of generously sized tacos.

This food-cart stall off Ensenada's bustling Calle Primera is the place where locals get a solid helping of the region's seafood. Established in 1960, La Guerrerense has been featured on international shows like Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. Popularity has led to the opening of a neighboring restaurant by the same name, but it's the original cart that keeps crowds ogling a small army of cooks cracking clams, shucking oysters, and piling the freshest fish onto tostadas. After you choose from the day's catch—shrimp, uni, clams, lobster, octopus—stand back and wait while your dish is prepared. Once it's ready, make your way through the throng of hungry patrons, and dress your plate from the selection of bottled salsas and condiments on display, which are also for sale. Most-loved is the salsa made with toasted peanuts, oil, garlic, and fresh chilies. Owned by Sabina and Luis Eduardo Oviedo, the spot is a mainstay on the Ensenada food scene, and not to be missed.

Massive globes of 15 types of margaritas and a Mexican guitarist singing American covers makes this a magnet for tourists, but it also draws locals. If you're looking for cheap and delicious Mexican food, you've come to the right place. Tacos stuffed with chorizo, marinated pork, and flank steak pervade the menu, though it's the quesadillas, with fillings like pumpkin flower, poblano pepper and onion, and pork skin that shine. Chilangas, or fried, folded-over quesadillas with melted cheese, also merit the trip, while the volcanoes (hard-shell taco cups filled with cheese and your choice of meat) are not to be missed. The outdoor-garden setting of Las Guacamayas is kitschy, with trees sprouting up from the floor, and Christmas lights strung from branch to branch. Painted murals run along the walls, and wooden chairs surround tables with plastic coverings.

Claiming to have "the best damn breakfast restaurant in the entire country," Mama's is a casual, lively, indoor-outdoor spot in Cabo San Lucas that serves bountiful plates of omelets and poached eggs with avocado and ham, and finger-licking fried potatoes. Mama's lives up to their claim of having the "World's Best French Toast"—a treasure stuffed with cream cheese, strawberries, mangoes, bananas, and pecans, and topped with orange liqueur.

Deliciously prepared chiles rellenos are the attraction at Miguel's. The sign out front says so, and so does a faded New York Times article, which proclaims them the best in all of Baja. If you're skeptical, owner Miguel Torres will be happy to show you a framed copy of the story. The hearty peppers come in cheese, shrimp, vegetarian, and other options, but the signature version is made with shrimp and scallops. Don't confuse this semi-outdoor place on the edge of town with Michael's, the Asian restaurant several blocks away near the church.

La Paz has plenty of great taco shacks, but none are better than the small stand owned by the González brothers, who serve hunks of fresh fish wrapped in corn tortillas and offer bowls of condiments with which to decorate your taco. The top quality draws sizable crowds.

Don't be fooled by the bare-bones atmosphere: Tacos Rossy serves some of the best tacos in San José. Fish tacos are the thing at this no-frills joint brimming with local families who munch on everything from peel-and-eat shrimp to ceviche and chocolate clams. Served breaded and fried, the shrimp, scallop, and fish (flounder) tacos here are cheap and delicious. Dress them up however you like at a condiment bar that offers avocados, chilies, cabbage slaw, onions, and an assortment of sauces from tomatillo to habanero.

By day it looks like a hole-in-the-wall, but when the sun goes down, the rummage-sale-meets-taco-stand atmosphere of this open-air local favorite truly comes to life. Get beyond the ghoulish silhouette logo—ahorcado means "hangman" in Spanish—and you'll find that the food is pretty good. One of the few area restaurants open late, it's packed until closing, usually around midnight. Old pots, baskets, antique irons, sombreros, and other tchotchkes hang from the walls and rafters. Quesadillas come with vegetarian fillers such as flor de calabaza (squash blossom), nopales (cactus), and rajas (poblano chilies), while meatier house specialties include beef tongue tacos in mustard sauce, cochinita pibil tacos, Cantonese-style beef rib tacos, and cuchiviriachis—a tostada filled with cheese and meat and roasted for a perfect melt. This is the place to get a chilled Corona for a handful of pesos.