Food & Cuisine in Los Cabos
Food info sections | Eating locally
To many, Los Cabos cuisine is one big melting pot and one of the world's most extensive and diverse destinations. In Los Cabos, different traditions and ingredients blend, and the rich flavours come from the fact that this cuisine is basically the offspring of a blend of Spanish-Moorish and native American foods, with influence from the Orient and Europe.
Los Cabos is known for its superb location and also for its fine dining options and laidback lifestyle. Older favourites now share pride of place with newer restaurants that have sprung up, offering more choices for gourmet fare and tempting visitors with their menus.
A flavoursome local meal at a Los Cabos restaurant is the ideal way to end a busy day touring or shopping in Los Cabos. Take a look at our Los Cabos Restaurant Guide below to find the best places to eat out in Los Cabos, as well as some local tips about the tasty Los Cabos cuisine. Our Mexico Restaurant Guide tells you more about the food and cuisine found throughout the country.
Food & Cuisine in Los Cabos
Cabo San Lucas is well known for its night life and many restaurants in Cabo San Lucas double as bars and nightclubs where it is always party time. In San José del Cabo however, the atmosphere is more muted as befits this area's more sedate air. Unhurried dinners accompanied by fine wine are more the norm here. The popular resorts in Cabo offer a variety of menus with delicacies cooked by chefs of international repute.
As Los Cabos is close to the ocean, it's not surprising that fresh seafood - lobster, shrimp, fresh fish and even manta rays - is plentiful and very popular as it is prepared in a number of exotic ways. From upscale Continental style restaurants, to stylish pan-Asian establishments and even at small, Mexican outlets, snapper, shrimp, fresh Dorado and octopus are on the menu, in different forms and exotic dishes.
For those who are not very keen on seafood, Los Cabos has a whole range of other dining options on offer, ranging from fine Italian fare to gourmet Mexican. For true blue Mexican cuisine, Los Cabos has no dearth of restaurants that offer the real deal - a culinary fusion of pre-Colombian and Spanish cuisines that goes back more than five hundred years in time and is known all over the world. Exotic herbs and spices, a plethora of fresh ingredients with spicy chillies thrown in form the base for extraordinary dishes with unforgettable flavours that will leave the senses craving for more.
As Los Cabos expands and grows, the gastronomic delights available only multiply further. Restaurants at Cabo and the Tourist Corridor offer not only authentic Mexican cuisine but also a multitude of other fare - European, American, Italian and pan-Asian dishes - accompanied by luxurious ambience and settings, so visitors will have no dearth of gourmet fare to choose from. Whether it is a formal or informal meal, eating out in Los Cabos is a delight to the palate and an indulgence of the senses - whether it is a simple fish taco that you prefer or a complete meal with all the trimmings.
The humble tortilla is one of the oldest Mexican dishes known, pre-dating even the Spanish conquest. Made of corn, filled with chicken, vegetables or fish and folded down into a taco, it has been on the daily diet of both the upper classes and the workforce in Mexico for ages and has metamorphosed from its plain form to exciting fast food. A trip to Los Cabos would be incomplete without a taste of this simple yet mouth watering Mexican street food.
Each taqueria or taco stand operates based on its own schedules. Taco stands normally start business early and close by evening. Taquerias, which operate in the evening, usually open for business around 6 p.m. and serve customers past midnight. Some taco stands are known to specialise in one or two varieties of tacos, but the bigger stands serve up a more varied menu of salsas, ranging from the traditional pico de gallo, to sweet-sour fruit salsas and tacos with varied fillings. Usually tacos are made of flour or corn tortillas and some stands offer freshly made tortillas that are whipped up even as you watch. Tacos made from warm tortillas are unmatched in taste and flavour.
With Los Cabos being a popular playing ground for the rich and famous, restaurants in Los Cabos do tend to be on the expensive side, even by American standards. Some eateries add a 15% service charge or even up to 18% to the bill automatically, while some restaurants charge extra for the use of credit cards. However, thanks to the easy availability of Mexican street food, eating out can suit all pockets. Even so, Los Cabos is more expensive than other tourist spots in Mexico. To discover off-beat, relatively inexpensive outlets with gourmet Mexican fare on the menu, you just have to go exploring a little way off the main tourist areas. The only thing to keep in mind is that such places may not accept credit cards.
