Food

What to eat

This is the Pacific side of Baja, so seafood leads. The dish to plan around is the Baja fish taco: battered white fish on a corn tortilla with shredded cabbage, crema and a squeeze of lime, built up with the salsas at the counter. After that, work through shrimp tacos, ceviche, aguachile (raw shrimp cured in lime and chile, hotter and soupier than ceviche), and the local chocolate clams, almeja chocolata, served raw with lime or grilled. Whatever the pangas landed at Punta Lobos that morning is your best bet on any given day.

Baja California Sur’s farm belt runs right through here, so the produce is genuinely good: mangoes, tomatoes, greens and local cheeses turn up on the more ambitious menus, alongside regional wine from the Valle de Guadalupe up in the north of the peninsula on the better lists. This mix of desert-farm produce and just-landed seafood is what earned Todos Santos its food reputation.

Where to eat, by type

Evening taco carts and taquerías (breakfast and dinner). The best-value, most honest eating in town. The pop-up carts and small taquerías on the edges of the center, off the gallery blocks, do fish, al pastor and carne asada tacos for a couple of dollars each (approximate), cash only, and they’re usually better than the sit-down versions. Fish tacos are a daytime-into-evening thing; the al pastor and asada carts fire up after dark. Order two fish tacos and a bacon-wrapped Sonoran hot dog if the cart runs them.

Small fondas for the midday comida (lunch). For a set lunch the way locals eat it, the little comedores off the tourist streets do a comida corrida, soup plus a main plus agua fresca, for roughly 90 to 140 pesos (approximate). This runs at midday and winds down by mid-afternoon. Whatever the day’s guisado is, order that.

Downtown farm-to-table and modern Mexican (dinner). Todos Santos has a real, concentrated fine-ish dining scene around Calle Legazpi and the historic center, and the cooking is genuinely good, seafood, seasonal produce, an organic bent. It’s also the priciest eating in the area, with menus often quoted in dollars and a dinner-with-drinks bill that lands near Cabo resort numbers (approximate). Worth one splurge, not worth every meal. Ask to be charged in pesos to dodge a bad card-machine exchange rate.

Cafés and bakeries (breakfast). The town does good coffee and baked goods, a legacy of the expat crowd. A solid, affordable way to start the day before the heat and the day-trippers land.

Rough prices

• Tacos from a stand: a couple of dollars each (approximate).
• Comida corrida at a fonda: roughly 90 to 140 pesos (approximate).
• Casual sit-down lunch: mid-range and up (approximate).
• Downtown dinner with drinks: expect resort-adjacent prices (approximate).

Exact prices shift and we verify them separately, so treat these as ballpark.

Order this, not that

Skip the pricey downtown fish plate on your first night and eat the fish taco from the cart instead, then spend your one splurge on the seasonal-produce cooking downtown, which is where the dollar prices actually earn their keep. And when you can, buy fish straight off the beach at Punta Lobos in the afternoon, covered in where locals go, for the freshest and cheapest seafood around.