Where locals go

Away from the gallery strip

The downtown restaurants are good but priced for visitors and paid in dollars. Residents, both Mexican families and long-term expats, eat where the tourists thin out: the taquerías and small fondas on the edges of the center and out along Highway 19, where a full plate costs a fraction of a Legazpi-street dinner. Here’s what a friend who lives here would actually point you toward.

Evening taco carts

The pop-up taco and hot-dog carts that set up after dark on the town’s quieter corners, off the main gallery blocks, are where locals really eat. Fish tacos, al pastor and carne asada, a couple of dollars each (approximate), cash only, and usually better than the sit-down versions downtown. They appear in the evening and pack up when the meat runs out, so go on the earlier side of dinner rather than late. Order the fish taco with all the salsas and a Sonoran-style bacon-wrapped hot dog if the cart does them.

Punta Lobos in the afternoon

When the fishing pangas land on the beach south of town in early-to-mid afternoon, locals come down to buy fish straight off the sand, dorado, snapper, whatever ran that day. It’s a working scene, not a show put on for anyone. Bring a cooler and cash, and ask the price before they clean it for you. This is the freshest, cheapest seafood you’ll get anywhere near Todos Santos.

Mercado and the small fondas

For a cheap sit-down lunch the way residents do it, look for the little fondas and comedores off the tourist blocks doing a comida corrida, a set lunch of soup, a main and a drink, roughly 90 to 140 pesos (approximate). Midday is when these run; they wind down by mid-afternoon. Whatever the day’s guisado is, that’s what to order.

Pescadero, just south

The smaller farming-and-surf town of El Pescadero, 10 to 15 minutes down Highway 19, is where a lot of residents go for cheaper produce, roadside fruit and vegetable stands, and a quieter beer away from the polish. It’s less curated than Todos Santos, and that’s the whole point. Weekends bring more of a local crowd to the Cerritos beach bars nearby. Stop at the roadside stands for mangoes and organic produce from the local farms.

The tienditas and the tortillería

Small daily rhythm that visitors skip: buy your tortillas hot from a tortillería, grab beer and basics from the corner tienditas rather than a downtown market, and you’re shopping the way the town actually does, at a fraction of the tourist-facing prices.

What a friend who lives here would tell you: eat the tacos, buy the fish at the beach, shop Pescadero for produce, and save the dollar-menu gallery-district dinner for one splurge rather than every night.