The Best Places to Eat and Drink in Mexico

A buff Jesus doing pull-ups on a crucifix above the kitchen sets the tone for this cantina in Santa María la Ribera, and the menu follows suit. Empanadas share space with shrimp dumplings and fried chicken, small plates that roam freely across any tradition they please. The flan, improbably, is the thing people come back for. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and a room that earns its eccentricity rather than performing it.

A thatched, open-air seafood restaurant on the second floor in Puerto Morelos, where the ocean breeze does most of the interior decorating. The menu moves between traditional Mexican flavors and the occasional Provençal detour without making a fuss about it, and the ceviches and gorditas stuffed with roasted octopus are the kind of starters that quietly derail any plan to order light. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

The tostadas here are the same ones that made Sabina Bandera's mariscos cart, La Guerrerense, a culinary landmark across the street, so the full-service restaurant around the corner is a natural next step for anyone who wants to sit down. Seafood runs the menu, from cold preparations to a pozole loaded with hominy and avocado. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks when even the tortilla chips come with house-made salsa.

The name comes from Doña Mary herself, who earned the nickname "la gritona" (the yeller) for scolding anyone who holds up the line. This family-run taqueria on Madero earns a Michelin Bib Gourmand for doing the simple thing extremely well: flour or corn tortillas, both made fresh, filled and topped with onion, cilantro, and a choice of salsas. Order at the window, cross the street, pull up a plastic chair, and eat.

A bakery, an atoleria, and a full restaurant share one building in Centro Histórico, with comals turning out tetelas and tlayudas at street level and a shaded rooftop above. Olga Cabrera runs the whole thing, cooking Oaxacan dishes rooted in her childhood while putting the farmers who supply her front and center. Salsa comes made tableside, moles arrive fragrant and substantial, and the mountain views at lunch are free. The Michelin Guide gives it a Bib Gourmand.

Behind an entrance that reads more like a boutique hotel than a neighborhood restaurant, Xaok opens into a polished dining room and a patio that earns its keep. The kitchen pulls from Oaxacan pantry staples and nudges them outward: hoja santa puree alongside roasted broccoli, mole negro with confit pork. The drinks list runs to juice, coffee, and soda rather than cocktails or wine. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

A boutique pastelería in La Veleta where the conchas are made with French butter and the croissants are filled with frangipane. The chef behind it spent years in Michelin-starred kitchens under heavyweights like Gordon Ramsay and Pierre Gagnaire before deciding Tulum suited him better. The desserts sometimes look more like botanical specimens than pastries, vanilla beans and cacao fruits rendered in cream and chocolate with unsettling accuracy.

A street stand that went from local fixture to international talking point after visiting chefs and food tourists discovered it mid-Tulum-boom and proceeded to flood Instagram. The draw is Yucatecan cooking built around Maya recaudos, the spiced pastes that color and season cochinita pibil, relleno negro de pavo, and slow-roasted suckling pig. Pull up, order, eat standing.

Whitewashed brick and splashes of blue set the scene before you've seen a single menu. This is a Mediterranean restaurant in downtown San José del Cabo where the chef makes everything in house, from the pasta to the gelato, which in Los Cabos is less common than it sounds. The room runs with a level of polish that surprises people expecting a casual beach-town dinner. A Michelin Selected Restaurant.

The stained-glass bar runs clear, ruby, and emerald, a nod to the three "jewels" in the Bijou cocktail that gave this speakeasy its name. Bartenders here work from a Rubik's Cube menu, literally spinning the cube to unlock new flavor combinations each session, which sounds like a gimmick until you watch them pull it off. A 50 Best Discovery pick and a Spirited Awards regional honoree, it's the kind of place that earns its theatrics.

The More Room runs on cocktail mathematics: every drink from the adjoining café gets reimagined through actual formulae, so ordering here feels vaguely like a physics exam you want to take. This dimmer, livelier side of Less Is More is a sophisticated cocktail bar in Roma Norte, and for the arithmetically allergic, the menu section called Less Thinking More Drinking is a genuine diplomatic gesture. A regional honoree at the Spirited Awards two years running.

The name translates as "end your suffering," which sets the tone pretty well for a mezcal bar stocking more than 70 varieties. The founder is a documentary filmmaker and mezcal industry organizer, so this is less a bar than a small education in smoke. Pechuga, made with chicken breast and tasting nothing like it sounds, is worth asking about. Named a Discovery by The 50, it draws the kind of regulars who actually want to talk about what's in the glass.

Set inside the Puerta del Lobo vineyard, Vertical is a cocktail bar where the wine list is not actually the point. The drinks lean on Mexican gastronomy with genuine intent, and the kind of place that lists both a mango Negroni and a coconut lime clarified cocktail on the same menu is making an argument without saying a word. The 50 Best Discovery program has taken notice, as have the Spirited Awards.

A basement cocktail bar in Colonia Juárez where the staircase down feels like a commitment. Hanging plants, low light, and a shamanistic theme drawn from pre-Hispanic Mexico set the mood, and the drinks follow through with smoke and botanical ingredients that treat plants as something close to medicine. The 50 Discovery named it, and the crowd that fills it seems to know they've found something worth keeping quiet about.

A wood-fired oven anchors the simply furnished room in Hipódromo, and the certification from the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana hangs there to back it up. This is a Neapolitan pizzeria doing the classic soft-crust style, with a menu that wanders into pasta and dessert territory too. The team slips in a prosciutto-and-avocado pizza that somehow makes sense. Ranked 19th on 50 Top Pizza Latin America.

An open-air restaurant hidden inside a jungle resort up a dusty road, where overhead fans and misters keep both the guests and the greenery comfortable. The kitchen runs casual contemporary Mexican with Asian turns worked in, so the menu moves from guacamole garnished with flower petals to mango-dressed ceviche to al Pastor suckling pig. The setting does a lot of work, and the food seems to know it, arriving looking equally composed.

A Middle Eastern restaurant tucked down a cobblestone alley in Oaxaca, which tells you something about how creative this city has gotten. The menu is short and built for sharing, with the kitchen sourcing its ingredients from local farms, then turning them into falafel, lamb kebab, and baklava that have nothing to apologize for. The expat crowd that fills the room seems to treat it as a weekly ritual rather than a discovery.

The dining room inside Solaz resort opens toward the ocean with the kind of airiness that makes a hotel restaurant feel like it actually wants to be there. This is fine dining built around Baja ingredients and locally caught seafood, with octopus and bluefin tuna showing up in forms more considered than the poolside menu a few steps away. The churro with dark chocolate ice cream and tequila cream lands as a dessert, not an afterthought.

A surf town like Puerto Escondido doesn't usually invite serious kitchen ambition, but Almoraduz has been making Oaxacan cooking its whole project for years. The restaurant runs a la carte or a full tasting menu, with a kitchen that leans into local ingredients and technique without turning precious about either. Handsome wood tables, real greenery, and servers who actually know the menu round out a room that punches well above its beach-town surroundings.

The kitchen runs on burning logs that cooks move by hand, which tells you most of what you need to know. This open-air countryside restaurant south of Oaxaca City sits inside an expansive shed ringed by plants, pottery, and sweet woodsmoke. The menu is classically Oaxacan, memelas, enmoladas draped in mole, tlayudas packed with local cheese, with tableside salsas that improve everything they land on. Getting here will make you question your navigation skills at least once.

The smell of the grill reaches you before the restaurant does, which is a decent way to find anything tucked down a colorful Jalatlaco side street. This is a Mexican steakhouse leaning hard into the fire, with a broad menu that folds in some European touches. Plantain dumplings in mole negro and glazed short ribs that fall apart politely suggest the kitchen knows what it's doing well beyond the grill.

An old tree spreads across the open-air dining room at this Mexican restaurant in Brisas de Zicatela, sharing space with wood beams and a backlit bar that wouldn't look out of place in a design magazine. The cooking leans casual, tostadas and chile rellenos, but the salsas and sauces are made with enough conviction that you notice. The cocktail list is short and classic, and the bartenders treat it seriously.

The pink facade on Calle de Puebla gives away nothing except that someone here has good taste. Bella Aurora is an all-day Italian spot in Roma Norte, from the same team behind Rosetta and Lardo, and it runs from breakfast pastries through pasta lunches to full dinners without ever feeling like it's trying too hard. The room is green and airy, the crowd is local and unhurried, and the tiramisu is a reasonable argument for skipping the main course entirely.

The patio faces the pool and the beach, and if your timing is right you catch the Baja sunset head-on. Benno is the hotel restaurant at Hotel San Cristóbal in Todos Santos, open from breakfast through dinner, with a menu that leans into the coast: ceviche, grilled local cheese, whatever fish came in that day. The churros arrive as small bites with dulce de leche and warm chocolate for dipping, which is a quietly clever call.

A terraced dining room with a church view is the setting for this wood-fired Oaxacan restaurant in the city center. The menu leans into local ingredients with a quiet Mediterranean undercurrent, and the grill does most of the heavy lifting. Proteins arrive with that particular smokiness you can only fake badly at home. The peanut mole draws the most conversation, and the poleo-infused crème brûlée signals that the kitchen knows when to leave a classic alone and when not to.

Tucked inside the Chablé Maroma resort after a walk through actual jungle, Bu'ul is a fine-dining restaurant built around the argument that corn, beans, and chiles need no European framework to anchor a serious menu. The kitchen leans into recado rojo, pipián verde, and Oaxacan chocolate with the confidence of a place that has nothing to prove to risotto. Mezcal pairs well with dessert, and the setting makes that feel completely reasonable.

The tables at this upscale seafood restaurant are cut from wood once used to haul boats, which tells you something about the kitchen's direction. Chef Alejandro Zarate transplants the honest, unfussy cooking of an Ensenada fish camp to Roma Norte, with a menu built for sharing: ceviches, aguachiles, tostadas, fish tacos, grilled octopus. High ceilings, iron beams, and a room full of people who knew to book ahead.

A light-flooded bistro on Calle Liverpool where the room manages to feel elegant and relaxed at the same time, which is harder than it sounds. The short menu rotates with the seasons and leans into contemporary Mexican cooking, so what lands on the table shifts but the approach stays consistent. Small enough that the kitchen clearly means every dish, and the kind of place that works equally well for a quiet date or a louder table of friends.

Tacos served on dried corn husks instead of plates is a reasonable signal that this Roma Norte taqueria is doing something different. The white-tiled counter runs with quiet efficiency, and everything is made to order, which you can watch happening if you linger before grabbing a seat outside. The menu pulls from Southeast Asia as readily as Mexico, folding hoisin, sriracha, and nam jim jaew into flour tortillas without making a fuss about it.

A floral mural climbs one wall and live greenery fills another at Aquiles, the all-day dining room inside this Roma Norte hotel. It skews contemporary Mexican, with dinner being the main event and a short, confident à la carte that moves from tortilla soup to braised short rib. The burger is exactly what a good hotel restaurant owes you. Weekends add breakfast and lunch to the mix.

A carved wood sign marks the start, and then you walk a jungle path to reach the open-air dining room beyond. This is a tasting-menu restaurant in Todos Santos where the menu changes with the lunar cycle, offered as à la carte or a full tasting. The cooking plays with surprise, pairing rich braises with unexpected textures and sauces that seem to come from another cuisine entirely. A place the Michelin Guide has noticed, quietly tucked into the Baja desert.

Perched at the Las Nubes winery, this open-air contemporary Mexican restaurant gives you sweeping valley views with sun shades overhead and café lights strung above the tables. The kitchen leans on local produce, seafood, and grilled meats, with the menu running either à la carte or as a tasting. Braised beef over plancha-crisped polenta and crab tacos with a vivid orange salsa give you a sense of where their heads are at.

A compact bistro steps from the National Museum of Anthropology, small enough that reservations feel less optional and more obligatory. The short menu roams internationally, grilled sardines edging Mediterranean, pasta going Italian, crêpes suzette tipping French, but Mexican ingredients run through all of it. Bar seats face the open kitchen for those who prefer their dinner with a side of controlled chaos.

Adrián Herrera has a big name in Mexican food circles, and this is decidedly not his flashy flagship. It's a laid-back neighborhood fonda where the cooking runs to homey stewed goat and encacahuatadas, the kind of food that doesn't need a pretty plate to make its case. The room is unpretentious, the drinks are good, and nobody's performing anything for anyone. Exactly the sort of lunch spot you'd hope a well-connected local would text you about.

Northern-style tacos in Roma Norte, served from a small kitchen with a few tables and a sidewalk counter for overflow. The barbacoa de res is the reason to show up, and ordering it dorado-style, shallow fried until the tortilla crisps up, is the move most regulars make without thinking twice. The kitchen chooses flour or corn depending on the filling, and the whole operation stays refreshingly unbothered by the neighborhood around it.

An upscale Oaxacan restaurant on Masaryk, where the luxury boutiques give way to mole negro and grasshoppers, which is not a pairing you'd expect but Polanco contains multitudes. The team behind the menu comes from Oaxaca itself, and the cooking roots everything in corn and chile, from breakfast through afternoon tlayudas. It's the kind of place that makes a cup of chocolate feel like the logical end to a serious meal.

The open kitchen here is basically a live seminar in masa, and nobody minds if you crowd the comal. This Oaxacan tortilleria in Reforma built its whole identity around heirloom corn, nixtamalized and stone-ground in house, then pressed and cooked into memelitas, tetelas, and quesadillas stuffed with melted cheese and hot salsa. Order a tascalate, the corn-and-chocolate drink, while you wait and watch. Casual, inexpensive, and entirely serious about corn.

The original Barrio Antiguo location of this Mexican grill and taqueria has a parrilla you can see from the patio, which sets expectations correctly. Tall ceilings, potted raised beds, and a full bar make it the kind of place where a table of four can spend an evening without really noticing the time. The plates run large, the arrachera tacos come on flour tortillas with a cheese crust, and the mezcal cocktails tend to multiply.

Pools of water run alongside the open dining room at this upscale Mexican restaurant inside the Riviera Maya EDITION hotel, giving the whole place the feeling of a very civilized swim break. The kitchen pulls ingredients from across Mexico and tilts familiar dishes sideways, pairing lamb with pistachio-and-cocoa-nib guacamole, for instance. Servers in crisp whites keep the spacious room running smoothly, cocktail bar humming at the center.

The Moroccan lamps and billowing curtains are easy to miss if you lose your nerve on the path down, but follow it and a full-on outdoor dining room appears, draped and glowing, with valley views behind it. This family-style Moroccan restaurant runs on tagines, and you pick your protein. The couscous with caramelized onions and golden raisins quietly argues for equal billing with whatever you chose.

Planted inside a working vineyard on the Valle de Guadalupe wine route, this Baja-Yucatan restaurant sits next to the El Cielo resort with floor-to-ceiling glass framing the valley. The room goes rustic-elegant: stone and brick walls, a soaring ceiling, and the kind of view that makes the wine taste better before you've even ordered. The kitchen bridges two Mexican regions, and the house pours come with course-by-course pairing suggestions.

An open-air farm-to-table restaurant just outside San José del Cabo, where the menu is organized not by courses but by garden, sea, roots, and live fire. The kitchen leans hard on local ingredients, and the bread alone, blue corn and whole wheat grilled over flame, signals the intent. The laidback garden setting makes it easy to order one more thing, which is probably the point.

A white stucco house with a terra-cotta roof in downtown Ensenada, Madre is a small, warm Mexican restaurant where two intimate dining rooms and a bar wrap around an open kitchen. The menu is short and focused, moving from coastal seafood starters into pasta and roasted meats finished with house-made mole. The kind of neighborhood place that makes you wish your neighborhood was in Baja.

The U-shaped bar counter and open kitchen give this Polanco restaurant a lively transparency, everything visible, nothing hidden behind a pass. The menu wanders freely, pairing local Mexican producers with global instincts, Lao-style sausage alongside house mole, pâté with madeleines, a long cheese list. Beige leather banquettes and lacquered tables fill the room with a calm that the food quietly contradicts. The Michelin Guide has it selected.

The open kitchen at this fine dining room in Roma Norte runs at a steady clip, turning out plates that wander confidently across borders: think charred mamey with foie gras, or yuzu beurre blanc over charcoal-cooked striped bass. The cooking is international but never unfocused, and the young team keeps the room warm without the stiffness that sometimes comes with white-tablecloth ambition. A good place to eat seriously without feeling like you're being graded.

A two-story restaurant in central Oaxaca where the ground floor shakes potent cocktails and the upstairs runs a seafood tasting menu out of an open kitchen. The team leans into local ingredients like chintextle and hoja santa but isn't playing it safe with them. Servers are warm and read the room well, which helps when a dish arrives and you're not quite sure what you're looking at.

A Japanese restaurant in the heart of San José del Cabo where the fish comes from the waters off La Paz and Ensenada rather than a distant airport freight hub. The room goes Mexican minimalist, calm enough to let you actually think about what you're eating. You can choose teppanyaki, omakase, or à la carte, so the evening moves at whatever pace suits you. The nigiri starts traditional and quietly gets more ambitious as it goes, which is a sensible way to earn your trust.

Most restaurants along this stretch of Baja coast fix their gaze entirely on the sea, so Ophelia reads as a quiet act of defiance. The Mediterranean menu roams from pasta and pizza to roasted quail and lamb shank, with the ocean showing up in mole-braised fish and roasted octopus. The room is casual, wood-ceilinged, and unfussy, the kind of place where you linger over a carafe of wine without anyone rushing you out.

The oyster bar takes the center of a high-ceilinged room built on the bones of an old sugar mill, and everything else in this Todos Santos seafood restaurant arranges itself around it. The chef, a Sonoran native, leans into Baja waters for the oysters, served with mignonette and a ponzu that suggests he's thought about this more than most. A back patio catches the view when you're ready to let the meal slow down.

The wall of windows faces the ocean, which makes it easy to linger over dinner until the sun finishes its shift. This hotel dining room along the Baja coast leans into Ensenada's seafood traditions while working in a creative angle, like blue-corn empanadas stuffed with lobster seasoned chorizo-style. Grilled quail with a sun-dried chili and beer sauce shows the kitchen ranging inland toward Valle de Guadalupe without losing its footing.

Prix-fixe Mexican dining where the menu stays a secret until the plate lands in front of you, because the kitchen builds around whatever local product showed up that day. The team behind Restaurante Amores runs a tight, personal operation that feels more like dinner at someone's house than a restaurant, assuming that house is in Tecate and the cooking is very good. A short list of courses, a few choices, no ingredient essays on paper.

The underground stone oven doing the heavy lifting on barbacoa is the main event at this Oaxacan spot in San Felipe del Agua, where the menu runs from birria to jabali served across tlayudas, quesadillas, and tetelas. Weekly sharing specials keep the table busy, and the meal closes on cafe de olla with a concha piled with whipped cream and strawberries, which is a better ending than it has any right to be.

Handmade Toluca-style chorizo and sausages are the whole point at this tiny taqueria near the Mercado de San Juan in the Centro Histórico. A handful of red stools fill up fast, so arriving late means eating standing at the counter, which plenty of regulars do without complaint. The obispo, a thick pork sausage seared to a light crisp, and the tamarind chorizo are the ones to order, then pile on salsa, cilantro, and onions.

Half a block off the Zócalo, a line spills onto the sidewalk for tacos de canasta, the steamed, basket-carried style that Mexico City has perfected forever. Tokens at the door track your order, cash is the only currency accepted, and the dining room inside is bigger than the street would suggest. The menu runs to four fillings, the price is almost nothing, and the salsa, pickles, and guacamole spread at the counter is the move everyone makes.

A family taqueria across from a cemetery, which locals have long called "tacos del muerto" with the cheerful fatalism only a third-generation operation earns. The tortillas, flour or corn, hit the plancha with oil until they blister and crisp at the edges. The fillings run from picadillo with potato and ground beef to pork shank stewed in red chile, with the taco de cabeza, chopped beef head meat, as the signature order for anyone paying attention.

The metal roof and concrete floor aren't an aesthetic choice; the building used to be a fish canning warehouse, and the taqueria leans into that history without apologizing for it. Order seafood tacos at the rear counter, grab a metal chair, and load up at the communal salsa table. The menu runs deep on ocean-forward options, from chicharrón de pescado to camarón al chipotle. A Michelin Selected spot that costs about as much as it looks like it will.

Plastic chairs, a warehouse room, and a grill doing all the talking: this no-frills roadside taqueria runs a beautifully short menu where you pick your meat (beef asada, adobada pork, or tripa if you're feeling bold) and your vessel, then watch it come together in front of you. The salsas are lively and the toppings are fresh, and the late hours mean it's ready when you stagger in after a long day in the sun.

A tucked-away tasting menu spot just south of the Mercado de La Merced, small enough that a handful of tables fills the room. There's no printed menu; the chef draws from Oaxaca's Mixteca region and turns indigenous preparations into something precise and colorful. Book through Facebook before you go, and bring cash, because this is not the kind of place that takes surprises lightly, and neither should you.

The jungle grows right up to the dining room at this open-air contemporary restaurant set along the Tulum coast road. Chef Norman Fenton runs an à la carte menu alongside tasting options, leaning on local seafood and Yucatecan ingredients without making a fuss about it. The setting does most of the talking, all lush canopy and warm wood, and the food is happy to let it.

The smoke hits you before the menu does, which is the whole point at this wood-fired steakhouse on the Maroma coast. Celebrity chef Curtis Stone's name is on the door; the charcoal oven and wood-fired grill do the actual talking, turning out local seafood and well-marbled steaks with a confident simplicity. The sides are serious enough to order twice. Flip-flops are technically fine, though the room skews dressier than the beach you just left.

Sunlight drops through an open roof onto a courtyard strung with pottery, textiles, and paintings by local artists, which sets the mood before anything reaches the table. This is a sit-down Oaxacan restaurant in the heart of Centro, the kind of place that takes regional cooking seriously without taking itself too seriously. The menu leans into traditional flavors, tamales with mole negro, garnachas, crispy plantains stuffed with queso and crema.

A trattoria-style Italian restaurant in the middle of Aguascalientes doing the full run: wood-fired pizza, handmade pasta, and a tiramisu that earns its place on the menu. The pizza dough is well-leavened and topped with Neapolitan classics, while a few pies nod to local ingredients without making a fuss about it. The room feels warm and lived-in, which is the whole point. It ranked 39th on 50 Top Pizza Latin America.

The name comes from the lightning bolt that, in Aztec myth, struck an agave plant and cooked it into the first pulque. That creation story shapes the whole program at this cocktail bar in Roma Norte, where the drinks lean heavily on Mexican spirits, mezcal and its relatives, built into cocktails that are meant to carry a narrative. Small sharing plates keep things going, but the spirits are the point.

Superette is a relaxed creperie on the quieter, residential side of Condesa, where the neo-colonial architecture does more showing off than anyone inside. Buckwheat galettes come with a hard apple cider, and the classic with ham, egg, and comté is the one to order. It's one of the cheaper places in the neighborhood to sit down for a proper bite, so the stroll over costs you almost nothing.

Taquería Orinoco is a late-night taco counter in Hipódromo, which is to say it does its best work after the nearby bars have finished with you. The tacos de chicharrón come soft in the middle and seared at the edge, a texture most pork rinds never get to experience. The al pastor draws the loudest opinions, and the cheap, quick, standing-up format means nobody lingers to argue them past 2 a.m.

A pizza shop in a small beach town north of Puerto Vallarta, Marcelo leans into urban design and vivid color in a way that feels more Mexico City than sleepy Nayarit coast. The dough gets serious attention, and the menu runs classics alongside more creative combinations, with natural wine available if you're pairing. The tiramisu is made in-house. Named among 50 Top Pizza Latin America's Excellent Pizzerias.

The wood-fired oven is the whole argument here: it runs the room, flavors the air, and produces Neapolitan-style pies with that high, leopard-spotted crust that collapses into something soft in the middle. This Italian restaurant and pizzeria in Querétaro's centro draws locals and travelers alike, with a menu that stretches past pizza into pasta and appetizers that lean on classic recipes without overcomplicating them. Save room for whatever spoon dessert they're running.

A bright yellow banner and a beach umbrella on Avenida Satélite mark this street taco stand, where the specialty is tacos de canasta, steamed until the tortillas go slick and translucent with the fillings' oils. Chaya and egg, red mole with chicken, chicharron prensado, all arriving in that particular sweaty, fragrant glow that only steaming produces. Order five and a fresh juice and call it a midmorning plan.