December 2025

This is one of several restaurants in Nobu Los Cabos, a high-end resort on the Mexican Baja California peninsula. We are here for a week and haven’t yet had dinner at the main restaurant Nobu. It’s not clear whether world-famous Japanese chef Nobu Matsuhisha runs the minor restaurants here. I hope not. This chef has dozens of hotels and  restaurants all over the world in partnership with Robert De Niro of all people. The cuisine generally is a Japanese-Peruvian combination. The resort is huge and quite lovely. The food is so far not in the same league.

Finding our way to the steakhouse, it’s about 25% full at 6:30 PM. There is pumping rock music and a high gambrel ceiling with a large coiled spring-shaped decoration above. The dominant colour is black with non-representative shapes projected on the walls. It feels like somebody trying to mimic a 60s psychedelic ambience got badly sidetracked. After we sit down an anxious Mexican man gives us the menu and tells us the corkage for our cheap US pinot noir is US$70. We agreed to this after looking at the wine list which is okay but more than triple retail.

We’re hungry. Several steaks are pointed out, and we decide on a tomato tart for Robin and bone marrow for me to start and then a shared ribeye with bearnaise.

The starters were both lukewarm, Robin’s tomato tart was an only slightly flavoured vegetable puff pastry with raw tomatoes on top. The bone marrow was a low point in a generally barely off-the-ground trajectory: an 8 cm ceramic cube with a grill on top giving off smoke, topped by an obviously cleaned bone cut in half lengthwise filled with a mixture of a meaty substance and chopped raw vegetables. There was no garlic and the whole thing needed salt. The steak was tough but flavorful and cooked to medium rare with a reasonable bearnaise.

There were complementary amuse-geules and “chef’s special” sweets of similar quality to the rest of the meal. The price was about $270 Canadian pre-tip including the absurd corkage

One of the reasons we came here was friends told us “the restaurant” was really unbelievable and as I dictate this we are looking forward to dinner there for our anniversary tomorrow night. God forbid it’s like this steakhouse.

Stay tuned for my leery review of the vaunted Nobu, and if you ever decide to spend time in Nobu Los Cabos (the resort is expensive but quite beautiful and staff very accommodating and friendly) steer clear of the weird steakhouse.

Food 6.8 service 6.2 ambience 4.3 value 5.2 peace and quiet 6.5.