Don Manuel's

Over seven years in the resort kitchen

The taco tasting begins as a question of sequence. Manuel Huerta, Chef at Don Manuel's in Pedregal, Los Cabos, sets modern Mexican gastronomy into a room built for both ceremony and ease. He has worked across the culinary operations at Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos Pedregal for over seven years, shaping an eclectic, seasonal menu at the property rather than treating the restaurant as a separate stage.

Huerta was born and raised in Guanajuato, with influences from León, and his earlier work at Grand Velas Riviera Maya sharpened the service rhythm expected in a luxury kitchen. At Don Manuel's, that background shows in pacing more than display: how a plate moves from the pass, how a familiar dish holds its structure, how regional flavor keeps its edge when dressed for a white tablecloth. His current post asks for steadiness as much as invention. The restaurant gives him a Mexican frame, Baja ingredients, and a guest room looking toward the water; the discipline is to keep those elements aligned without letting one overpower the others.

TRAVESÍA and the taco as method

The signature work here is TRAVESÍA at Su Cocina, a nine-course tasting menu centered on the taco. The format matters because it gives the kitchen a tight grammar: tortilla, filling, heat, acidity, sauce, garnish, then the next variation. Don Manuel's uses that structure to move through coastal oysters, blue prawns, lamb shank barbacoa, and wagyu cheeks, linking regional ingredients to a form that can carry both street memory and fine-dining control.

The broader menu keeps that same tension between home cooking and a sharpened pass. Pan-seared sea bass arrives with a black-garlic-hibiscus-glazed tamal; roasted free-range chicken pibil brings the long logic of marinade and heat; soft shell crab risotto folds a seasonal seafood dish into a texture more often associated with another kitchen tradition. Fresh fish, meat, vegetables, and fruit from Los Cabos and the surrounding region sit at the center of the program. Huerta's task is not to make them look foreign to themselves. He keeps the hand visible through charred habanero sauces, mojo de ajo, moles, hibiscus reductions, and the clean timing that lets seafood hold.

Lantern light across the room

The room works in a warmer register than the plates suggest. Natural stucco walls, white tablecloths, hanging lanterns, cacti, and a wide patio place the meal inside a hacienda-style setting rather than a sealed dining room. At night, light moves across the patio while local performers bring music into service. The sound stays conversational, which matters in a restaurant where family-style sharing and tasting-menu pacing can sit at the same table.

From the pass, the ocean backdrop is not decoration so much as pressure. It asks the kitchen to answer the place it occupies. Baja seafood, Guanajuato memory, and the resort's service discipline meet in dishes that still read as Mexican before they read as polished. The TRAVESÍA taco, built course by course at Su Cocina, remains.