LOS TRES GALLOS: IS THIS TRADITIONAL MEXICAN RESTAURANT IN CABO SAN LUCAS A TOURIST TRAP OR A GEM?
The Cost -$35 per person
The Atmosphere – Los Tres Gallos is located in the downtown Cabo San Lucas area, a few blocks away from the city’s crazy bars and clubs. The restaurant’s seating is in an entirely open courtyard with colorful flags, bright colored walls, and rustic wooden tables and chairs with colorful textiles making for a charming place to enjoy a meal if the weather is nice. However, if it is cold or raining, you may want to choose another venue. The restaurant takes reservations and credit cards and is not formal so casual beach attire is perfectly fine though we wouldn’t recommend dining at Los Tres Gallos in a swimsuit.
Los Tres Gallos is an oft-recommended restaurant by hotels in the Cabo San Lucas area as well as websites like Eater and Goop and it has a 4.5-star rating on Google, Yelp, and Trip Advisor. To see what all the fuss was about, we decided to head to the restaurant, which serves traditional Mexican dishes, to see if it was truly a place to find delicious Mexican cuisine or a place to find tourists overpaying for average food and drink.
The Order – Mezcalita de Tamarindo, Crujientes del Mar, Cochinita Pibil, and Tampiqueña.
The Great – The best dish of the evening was the Crujientes del Mar, a seafood appetizer that came with three corn tostadas: one with fish ceviche, one with shrimp, and one with octopus. The shrimp tostada was the best of the three but all three were fresh and delicious and the appetizer was the best value of the meal at $10. I really enjoyed the homemade tostadas which were made from nixtamal, maize soaked in lime juice. This appetizer isn’t easy to share because it is just one tostada of each seafood item but it is definitely worth ordering.
The Good – The Tampiqueña, a traditional Mexican dish, consisted of a 12 oz. piece of thin skirt steak cooked in the tampiqueña style and served on an oval platter with some rice, refried black beans, guacamole, a small chile relleno, and a small enchilada. The meat was overcooked based on the medium rare order, but it was thankfully still pretty juicy and flavorful. While the value wasn’t there at $30, the steak was enjoyed.
The Okay – Cochinita Pibil is a wonderful pork dish from the Yucatán in which the meat, which is marinated, usually in orange juice and achiote seeds, is slow roasted and then served with tortillas and pickled onions. Los Tres Gallos’s version was made using traditional ingredients but somehow the pork meat did not soak up much of the marinade or its own juices and really lacked flavor. The dish also had a bitter aftertaste, potentially from the orange juice, that was not pleasant. This cochinita pibil was certainly not on the same level as one you would typically find in the Yucatán.
The Bad – It isn’t often that a food item ends up with this rating, but the Mezcalita de Tamarindo was a total miss. The drink tasted more like an iced tea than a mezcalita, or any cocktail for that matter. It was extremely watery and had more of a watered-down orange juice with lime flavor anything else. It was not drinkable or enjoyable. Avoid it.
The Verdict – While I did think that the Crujientes del Mar appetizer was really nice, I was underwhelmed by the rest of the meal at Los Tres Gallos. The restaurant very clearly caters to tourists and their menu prices are evidence of that. If you are looking for a restaurant with a nice outdoor setting, Los Tres Gallos is a good option but if you are looking for a great meal that is worth the money, choose another restaurant.
Los Tres Gallos
Leona Vicario esquina 20 de Noviembre S/N, Centro, 23469 Cabo San Lucas, B.C.S., Mexico