10 Amazing Restaurants in Cabo San Lucas Mexico

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Wondering what the best restaurants in Cabo San Lucas are?

This is a collection of the best places to go for fish tacos, street eats, and seriously good food.

This is about local food, Mexican restaurants, and Mexican-run businesses, and really good food.

For more Cabo tips, check out the Best Things to Do in Cabo San Lucas or head over to my YouTube channel for more tips.

I’ve been living in San Jose del Cabo and have spent quite a lot of time visiting nearby Cabo San Lucas, mostly to eat. There are so many great restaurants there and these are some of the best when it comes to local eats. Did I miss somewhere? Let me know in the comments so I can check it out when I’m next in town!

Traveling to Cabo San Lucas in 2022? Read my Cabo San Lucas safety article which gets updated every two weeks with the current Covid-19 situation there.

Take a Cabo San Lucas Food Tour

If you want to explore the best restaurants in Cabo San Lucas or even better, get away from the tourist zone and eat some seriously great traditional Mexican food, consider taking a local food tour. 

• Cookin’ Cabo: These guys runs some of the best food tours around Mexico (including Puerto Vallarta and San Jose del Cabo, too!). Issi is a fantastic guide and knows the city so well. It was a combination of history and culture of the town as well as seriously fantastic taco stops. Book that tour here.
• Avocabo Food Tour: Besides having a very clever name, this food tour is a fantastic option for checking out some of the best places to eat in Cabo San Lucas. They have seafood-specific food tours, taco tours, and a “local’s favorite” food tour of some of the town’s best restaurants. Check out the different tours and book here.

The Best Restaurants in Cabo San Lucas

These are some of the absolute best restaurants in Cabo San Lucas that you won’t want to miss out on. Whether you are staying at an all-inclusive or you’re self-catering at a condo nearby the marina, you’ll want to get out to check out some of these local spots.

1. Los Claros Tacos

Google Location

Hours: Daily 7am-9pm

These aren’t just the best tacos in the downtown area, these are perhaps the best fish tacos I’ve ever had (maybe even better than Puerto Vallarta). I would go out on a limb and say this is one of the best restaurants in Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo combined!

The fish tacos here are so fresh, so perfectly cooked, and the salad bar has the best selection of salsas and toppings.

My personal favorite taco here is the callo, or scallop. They cut them up into bite-sized pieces and grill them up on the barbecue. They have a very light char on the outside, but they are so tender and juicy inside. It pairs perfectly with their fresh corn tortillas and spicy pico de gallo. 

I also really love their smoked marlin, their “crunch” fish taco (breaded and fried), and their simple Baja-style fish taco. 

A Baja-style fish taco is lightly battered and then deep-fried. The batter is usually crispy on the outside and light and fluffy on the inside. Their fish taco ticks every box and the fish is still the star of the show. It’s not overpowered by the batter. 

2. Los Tacos May

Google Location

Hours: Daily 7am-5pm

Another incredible local taco spot is Tacos Mary. If you want to sample the best of what’s on offer as far as genuine and authentic Mexican food in Cabo, you have to get yourself to this little hole-in-the-wall spot.

The specialty here is cabeza taco, or cow head taco. It’s all of the most tender pieces of beef from the cow head that have been slow-cooked until they fall off the bone and melt in your mouth. 

I highly recommend trying at least one of the cabeza tacos if you have never had one before. If you have had cabeza before and enjoy it, well, you’ll love these.

If you’re feeling less adventurous, then try the barbacoa taco. This is slow-cooked meat in a nice tomato and dried-chile sauce. 

If you’re feeling even more adventurous than cabeza tacos, try the corazon, or heart taco. 

3. Tacos Gardenias

Google Location

Hours: Daily 9am-10pm

For a great fish taco spot and one of the best restaurants in Cabo San Lucas for fish tacos, head to Tacos Gardenias.

This is a nice spot for several reasons; it has a huge dining area and can accommodate bigger groups, it’s close to the beach, the staff are super friendly, the margaritas are strong, and of course, the tacos are fantastic.

I really loved their simple grilled fish tacos. The portions are generous and I felt more than full after three tacos. They also have Baja-style fish tacos, which most restaurants call pescado capeado on their menus.

4. Las Guacamayas

Google Location

Hours: Daily 11am-2am

This was my favorite restaurant in Cabo San Lucas for pastor tacos. 

If you’ve never had a pastor taco before, it is a pork taco that is seasoned with dried chiles and other spices (the recipe varies widely across the country). It is usually cooked on a spit, kind of like shawarma or kebab.

The chef then carves thin slices off the spit, puts them inside a taco, and usually tops it with a slice of pineapple. 

Las Guacamayas is doing a seriously great job of cooking the pastor meat. It’s seasoned well, it’s super juicy with a little crisp from the flame. The tortillas are fresh and the salsas offer the perfect amount of spice.

The other thing they make that I love is the papa rellena or stuffed potato. It’s a glorified baked potato, but it’s a very popular dish around this region of Mexico. Usually topped with carne asada, or barbecued steak, and cheese. You then put it inside a tortilla and make your own tacos. It’s insanely delicious, especially if you’ve been enjoying a few beers at Cabo Wabo.

For more information about pastor tacos, be sure to check out my full guide to authentic Mexican food

5. La Esquina Choyera

Google Location

Want a great Mexican breakfast spot? Go where the locals go, La Esquina Choyera.

Choyera is the nickname for people who are from Baja California Sur (there is some disagreement about whether it was just people from Los Cabos or from other parts of Baja, but now it is used to refer mostly to everyone in the state). La Esquina simply means corner. 

Some of the traditional plates that you’ll find here are chilaquiles, machaca, and huevos rancheros. Come hungry, the portions are generous.

6. Taqueria El Paisa

Google Location

Hours: Open 24 hours

Another fantastic taco spot, El Paisa is a chain around Mexico. That being said, every chain is not created equal.

While I love the pastor tacos at El Paisa in San Jose del Cabo, I think that the carne asada at this El Paisa in Cabo San Lucas is absolutely amazing.

You can’t go wrong with any of the options on the menu. All of the tacos are cooked to order, there’s plenty of seating available, so you never have to wait too long even on a busy night. I highly recommend having your tacos in corn tortillas here, they are so fresh. They are hand making them and cooking them to order.

7. Mariscos Paseo del Centenario 

Google Location

Hours: Daily 10:30am-7pm, closed Wednesdays

If you only visit one restaurant on this list, it should be this one. This is without a doubt the best restaurant in Cabo San Lucas. Indeed it may very well be one of the best restaurants in all of Baja California Sur (I haven’t tried them all, but I have sampled a lot of them and this one is #1).

It’s all about ceviche here, so if you don’t like your fish raw or lightly cured, then this probably isn’t the spot for you.

They have close to two-dozen ceviche options to choose from with a heavy emphasis on tuna and shrimp.

The family who run the restaurant are from Mazatlan, the home of aguachile, so you’ll find several of those on a menu. Aguachile is a ceviche that is made with shrimp and the sauce always has some type of chile, usually serrano. However, they do one here with chiltepin chile, one of my favorite types of chile and it is exceptional.

The dish that I order without fail every time I come here is the ceviche El Faro (the lighthouse). It is thinly sliced tuna on a bed of avocado topped with slow-cooked red onion and slices of serrano chile in a soy-based salsa. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.

8. Mi Casa

Google Location

Hours: Daily 12-4pm, and 5-10pm

For a traditional Mexican meal and one of the best restaurants in Cabo San Lucas, head to Mi Casa.

If you haven’t explored other parts of Mexico yet (what are you waiting for, it’s full of amazing places!), then this is a great place to get a taste of the different regions of the country.

They have a tasting menu which has a nice selection of different dishes. For 380 Pesos (about $17 USD) you can order as many dishes from the tasting menu as your belly can handle. I believe this is only a lunch deal.

I highly recommend the cochinita pibil tacos (pork marinated in achiote). The spare rib tacos are also outrageously delicious. 

They also have a nice selection of vegetarian and vegan options. So it’s a good restaurant choice if you have a group with different food requirements who all want to eat delicious traditional Mexican food.

9. Mariscos El Toro Güero

Google Location

Hours: Daily 11am-6pm

El Toro Güero is an institution in Baja Sur. There are a few locations around the region and they all live up to the reputation.

If you want a really fantastic seafood meal, this is one of the best restaurants in Cabo San Lucas. 

This isn’t the place to head for tacos, but rather to experience how mariscos or seafood dishes are enjoyed in Mexico. 

There are shrimp cocktails, ceviches, coconut shrimp, fried whole fish, and so many more mouthwateringly good dishes on the menu here. I’ve been to a few of their different locations and ordered so many of their dishes and I have never had a bad meal.

If you like spicy food, try their aguachile (like a spicy shrimp ceviche). I also love their shrimp in the el diablo sauce.

10. Molino Del Rey

Ok, this isn’t a restaurant, but it’s a food pilgrimage that you should make if you love Mexican food and want to enjoy something a little bit different.

It’s a local tortillería, but it’s super traditional and one of few left in this region who are actually doing the entire process of cooking, cooling, milling and making tortillas using Mexican corn. Most highly processed tortillas these days are made with yellow GMO corn from the US.

Head here to learn a little bit about how to make your own tortillas. Ask about his chocolate as well. He cooked and grinds his own cacao beans and makes some of the best chocolate bars I’ve ever tasted.

The last thing to try on a visit to Molino Del Rey is the Chilate. Chilate is a traditional Mexican drink from the state of Guerrero (talk to most people living in Cabo and you’ll discover a huge number of Guerrerenses here). It’s made of cacao, rice, cinnamon, and sugar and it is the most refreshingly delicious drink on a hot day in Cabo.

See Some of the Best Restaurants in Cabo San Lucas