Hierbabuena Restaurante – Devoted to Local and Organic

 

While Los Cabos is not want for great restaurants (it’s easy to frequent the busy towns of Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo), for those who venture out, the pay-off is discovery of a diverse and passionate dining culture. I had been hearing glowing reports about a restaurant located in the small town of Pescadero near Todos Santos.  After a day at Cerritos Beach, we headed for Hierbabuena Restaurante which is set in a beautiful and bountiful organic garden where almost all of the ingredients are sourced for creative and healthy dishes. Beyond the modern outdoor façade, an airy rustic space awaits.  It has a casual feeling as there are no walls or windows and it is cooled by Pacific Ocean breezes. The seasonal menus shines a spotlight on what’s fresh right now and you can expect crisp, fresh salads, seared vegetables, locally caught wild fish, organic chicken, steak, brick-oven pizza and traditional Mexican dishes.  What they don’t grow, they source from their local neighbors, independent farmers, where there is an abundance of organic produce such melons, strawberries, figs, guava and sapote.   Menu

The garden is brimming with vegetables and flowers that flourish under the watchful eye of the owner, Marcos Ramirez, who brings his culinary and gardening skills to Hierbabuena from years in Napa Valley.  He was raised in his mother’s Mexico City market restaurant where he was influenced by an array of fresh products from all over Mexico.  At 15, he went to work as a dishwasher and throughout his young life, he experienced nearly every position in the restaurant business and was introduced to many different types of cuisines.  This led to his ultimate goal of being a restaurateur.

There is a full bar that is separate from the dining area where fruit and herbs such as mint, basil, rosemary and cilantro are muddled, infused and simply snipped for pretty and fragrant garnishes.

Marcos proudly offers Mexican wines from Ensenada, Guadalupe Valley and Guanajuato but he also includes wine from Italy and Spain.  Marco’s project for next season is to do a wine tasting one day a week with all Mexican wines – Mexican terroir – which are concentrated and complex, full-bodied and aromatic, generally with a higher alcohol content than European wines. The northern end of the Baja California peninsula is, in fact, one of the New World’s oldest wine-growing areas. Jesuit priests cultivated vines here in the 18th century, and the first commercial winery, Bodegas de Santo Tomas, opened in 1888.

Hierbabuena Restaurante is a celebration of the very finest of our regional food products. Marcos takes the concept of “farm-to-table” seriously, working with the freshest ingredients from his gardens and the nearby farms to design the seasonal menus.

Directions:  Turn just past the Pemex/Oxxo on the road to Rancho Pescadero. Hierbabuena is about 2/3 of the way to the beach from the highway.

Open from 12:00 noon until 9:00 pm – Closed Tuesdays

Closed month of September