El Restaurante & Rooftop at Hotel El Ganzo

Hotel El Ganzo is an arts-minded boutique hotel at La Playita, the old fishing beach on the east side of San José del Cabo, beside the Puerto Los Cabos marina. Its ground-floor restaurant and its rooftop are both open to non-guests, and they suit different moods. The restaurant does breakfast, lunch and a proper dinner; the rooftop is a daytime pool bar with an infinity pool, marina views and a large mosaic mural by Omar Rodríguez-Graham called The Shudder of the Mountains.

Chef José Luis Hinostroza, who grew up on the Tijuana and San Diego border and spent seven years cooking in Europe, runs a farm-to-table Baja-Med menu. From the current dinner menu, the dishes we'd go for are the catch-of-the-day crudo in fermented tomatillo aguachile, the Bloody Mary shrimp aguachile, pescado a la talla with green curry and the clam and shrimp linguine. Meat eaters get a pastor-style smoked chicken and a 500-gram rib eye. On the rooftop, go for the shrimp tostada with XO sauce and the amaranth tempura tacos.

Timing matters here. The rooftop runs daily from 10 AM to 7 PM, is walk-in only, and has a DJ on Saturday and Sunday afternoons from 1 PM. If you want the pool, there's a day pass at MX$1,600, of which MX$1,400 is credit for food and drinks, so it works out cheaper than it sounds. For dinner, Wednesday is the night to book: Gipsy Nights brings flamenco from 7 PM to 9 PM. Fridays have a DJ from 8 PM to 11 PM.

It's about 40 minutes by car or taxi from Villa 1, and we'd only make that drive for a weekend rooftop day pass or a Wednesday flamenco dinner; on an ordinary weeknight there are equally good dinners closer to home. Combine it with a morning at the Puerto Los Cabos marina or a walk on La Playita beach. It's more polished and more expensive than the seafood spots on the same road, and the crowd is design-hotel rather than spring break. Reserve dinner by email or WhatsApp through the hotel.