Jazamango

Jazamango is the Todos Santos restaurant of Javier Plascencia, the Tijuana chef most associated with modern Baja cooking, and it's the name most people search first when planning a Todos Santos lunch. It sits on the plaza of the Tres Santos development, on the edge of town, with an orchard and garden around it, a wood oven at the center of the kitchen and its own bakery. It's open Wednesday to Monday from 1 PM to 9 PM and closed on Tuesdays.

Order from the fire: wood-grilled chocolate clams (a Baja specialty), grilled bone marrow, shrimp adobada tacos and the Jazamango pizza are our picks. For a group, the zarandeado kampachi, a whole fish split and grilled in the Nayarit style, is the table centerpiece, and the six-hour braised short rib is the heavy hitter. On Sundays there's a barbacoa day with lamb barbacoa, which is a good reason to time a Todos Santos trip for the weekend.

It's a destination-level restaurant with prices to match: the kampachi and short rib are well over MX$1,000 each on the current menu, though tacos and pizza keep a lunch reasonable. Lunch is the better call than dinner if you're driving from Cabo San Lucas, because you can eat in daylight, walk the town and the galleries afterwards and be back on the highway before dark.

Todos Santos is about an hour and 10 minutes from Villa 1, and Jazamango is worth building the day around, with a stop at the beach at Cerritos or Punta Lobos on the way. Book through CoverManager on the restaurant's website, especially for Sundays. If your group prefers seafood and a livelier room, Oystera in the center of town is the alternative.