70 Best Restaurants in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Frascati is friendly and intimate while simultaneously sophisticated, with a lively soundtrack. Choose your pasta (several are house-made) and one of 12 toppings, including traditional sauces such as Bolognese, pesto, four-cheese, and pomodoro, or something chef-inspired like the Arturito, a sauce of fresh tomatoes, cream, chicken, and basil. The mixed seafood combo, served in an oversize martini glass, is a must-try. In addition to lightly battered and deep-fried denizens of the deep, the appetizer comes with batter-fried julienne zucchini and crispy fried parsley.

Chic, fancy, and delicious, Jardin Nebulosa seems to be out of place for its environment. Unusual dishes—many of Aztec origin—are made with mostly seasonal and locally harvested ingredients. Wash everything down with a craft beer.

This large, welcoming, thatched-roof eatery is open to the breezes of Playa Los Muertos and filled with wicker-covered chandeliers, art-glass fixtures, and lazily rotating ceiling fans. The menu meanders among international dishes with modern presentation: roasted stuffed chicken breast, pork loin, seared yellowfin tuna drizzled in cacao sauce. It's pricey, but the beachfront location and, in the evening, the low lights and romantic atmosphere, keep people coming back. Breakfast is popular with locals as well as visitors.

Porfirio's is a sophisticated restaurant that reinvents traditional Mexican cuisine by adding modern accents and flavors. The food is excellent and the atmosphere is even better, with on-site mariachis, sparklers, and all kinds of iconic Mexican characters.

Combine prime cuts from Sonora (Mexico's finest meat-producing state), a chef that has found the secret to grilling the perfect barbecue, and affordable rates, and you'll get this local favorite. The restaurant now has an indoor area with a/c, making it a comfortable place where to eat year round.

One of the most sophisticated restaurants in Puerto Vallarta and a favorite of meat lovers, Sonora Prime is a renowned chain that serves high-quality steaks, imported directly from the northern Mexican state of Sonora.

Wikari Beach Club is a cozy restaurant located on Quimixto Beach with great service and delicious food. You can spend the whole day at their beach club, enjoying access to all the services and cold cocktails served by very friendly staff. Their dishes are typical of Jalisco and Nayarit. Animals are welcome and Wi-Fi is available.

One of the best all-around restaurants in El Centro, this place offers great food and excellent service. The paella Valenciana has no equal in the Banderas Bay area, and if you come for the tapas then you can't miss the spicy garlic shrimp or the Galician-style octopus. The restaurant is air-conditioned in summer; the rest of the year the windows are taken off to let the breeze in.

Barramar Beach Club is both the best beach club in town and one of the very best restaurants in the whole Barra de Navidad–Melaque area. Locals come for the swimming pool and stay for the seafood.

If you want to try birria de chivo, a delicious goat or beef stew very popular in Jalisco, Birriería Robles is the place to go. With four different branches in Puerto Vallarta, the Robles family has based its success on keeping the menu simple and focusing on serving the best birria in town.  

An excellent traditional Mexican seafood restaurant, Boca del Mar is just steps from the sea. The food is extraordinary (you can also take it to go) but the service is even better.

This trendy but casual café also offers lunch and dinner, but it's the breakfast people come here for. Patrons love the enchiladas, huevos al gusto, pastries, and good coffee, though the pizzas and salads served later in the day and into the night are also tasty. It's one of the few places that has a/c during the summer months. Did we mention they also have Italian-style ice cream?

Originally a coffee-and-dessert stop and fashionable hangout for Mascotans, this snug little eatery serves big breakfasts and now main dishes at lunch and dinner, too. Sit on the small street-facing patio, in the small dining room, or facing the glass case featuring fantastic-looking cakes, pies, and tarts. You can get wine and beer as well as pizza, barbecue, spaghetti, and other Italian food.

Cande’s is the best dining option in the whole Mayto-Tehuamixtle area. It enjoys an enviable location overlooking Tehuamixtle Bay, just a few steps from the pier, and serves just-caught seafood. It pretends to have Wi-Fi and accept credit cards, but the reality is this place is too far away from civilization to get any kind of signal, and well, that’s its charm, isn’t it?

This steak house also serves grilled chicken and seafood. Under a roof but open on all sides and with an incredible view, it's highly recommended by visitors and locals. In fact, it’s a popular place for locals’ reunions and family parties.

Typical food of the countryside—enchiladas, tamales, pozole, beefsteak with beans and tortillas, and so on—is served in an equally typical family home that has been expanded to welcome guests. Straw-bottom chairs are comfortable enough, and the oilcloths shiny and new. The small bar is at the back behind the large, open kitchen. It's open for breakfast, too.

Fine Italian food can be found at any of the three locations of this well-known local business. Casual attire is expected, with the location in Nuevo Vallarta being somewhat fancier and ideal for either romantic dinners or family reunions.

This restaurant is an institution among locals and visitors who know that there's more than just all-inclusive hotels in Nuevo Vallarta. Eddie’s Place is one of the few expat meeting points in the area. Go for the company, stay for the food.

Locals come here for weekend brunch. They serve truly authentic huevos rancheros and all those delicious dishes that make traditional Mexican cuisine so hard to resist. They host live music on certain days.

El Barracuda is that cool restaurant we all dream to have one day when we retire by the beach: casual and relaxed, with some tables right on the beach and others on top of a nice deck overlooking the Banderas Bay. They specialize in the kind of seafood you can find in Mexican markets, but you can also find great steaks and even some veggie options.

It's on a noisy street corner, but the seriously good food and generous portions make this a local favorite. The molcajete—a sizzling black pot of tender flank steak, grilled green onion, and soft white cheese in a delicious homemade sauce of dried red peppers—is served with a big plate of guacamole, refried beans, and made-at-the-moment corn or flour tortillas. If you're into simpler fare, the unadorned grilled fish fillet is fresh and delicious.

This Bucerías branch of El Brujo is located right on the beach but with the same food and generous portions as the original location in Puerto Vallarta. The molcajete—a sizzling black pot of tender flank steak, grilled green onion, and soft white cheese in a delicious homemade sauce of dried red peppers—is served with a big plate of guacamole, refried beans, and made-at-the-moment corn or flour tortillas. Try the breaded scallops, stuffed fish with shrimp and creamy huitlacoche (black corn fungus) sauce, or a grilled skirt steak with mushrooms and bell peppers bathed in tomato sauce. If you're into simpler fare, the unadorned grilled fish fillet is fresh and delicious, too.

The ambience at this patio restaurant facing the boats and the marina is casual and festive; the crowd hums with contentment while other restaurants nearby seemingly have been drained of clientele. There is live music (mainly mariachi) most days.

"The Blacksmith" will win no awards for cuisine (or, for that matter, decoration), but it's often filled with families of pilgrims, and the locals recommend it, too. The menu offers mainly meat dishes, including burgers with fries, plus antojitos, gorditas, and sopes (all cornmeal-based, fried concoctions stuffed with meat or beans and, in the case of the latter, topped with beans and salsa), pozole, and quesadillas. The tortillas are made fresh at the back of the restaurant. Half orders are available, and there's a bar serving national booze and beer.

El Patio de Mario serves traditional Mexican food in a clean, calm environment with a gorgeous open patio and friendly staff. Forget what you know about Mexican food; come here and try their birria or menudo, exquisite soups of pre-Hispanic origins. Open for breakfast or lunch, it also sells raicilla to go.

For an informal bite on any given evening, there's nothing like Food Park PV. Here you'll find a variety of snacks, beer, live music, and good vibes, all in a refreshing outdoor atmosphere.

Ivy climbs blond, hacienda-style columns, and chandeliers bathe in a romantic light in the second-floor dining room of this stunningly restored boutique hotel and restaurant. The chef has a restrained hand when it comes to salt and spices; recipes are straightforward yet neither bland nor boring.

A mix between a sports bar and a restaurant, the food here is legendary. Big burgers, ribs, hot dogs, and of course Mexican seafood all come in generous portions. You'll often find Juan himself having fun with patrons and checking to make sure you're enjoying your meal.

Viennese entrées dominate the menu, which is modified each year when the restaurant participates in PV's culinary festival. The adjacent café has sandwiches, excellent desserts, and 20 specialty coffees—all of which are also available at the main restaurant. To avoid the stream of street peddlers off the patio, eat in the charming, European-style dining room.