La Roca — Restaurant in Baja California Sur

This is a beautiful restaurant located on beautiful grounds, unfortunately the meal was less than desirable. I can tell when a chef/cook is a smoker. Darn it. Every one of our orders were overly salted. And I only remember until after the fact, not to order braises as they usually evaporate down while being hot held for hours, this intensifying the salt content. I was so excited about all our choices too. Just unfortunate that this happened. Maybe an off night? Maybe they weren’t happy that I ordered an appetizer as my entree? We got, “the sigh” after ordering. Except, years of experience tells me otherwise. Sorry to have to write a review like this. But, La Roca did not deliver the hype tonight. addendum: to be fair, we tried again for Sunday brunch. My three stars stands. Poached eggs should be runny on a Benedict and these were overcooked. It may be a technique in Mexico to brûlée the Hollandaise, but it overcooked the egg and needs to be done with a lot more finesse. The barbacoa was flavorful, but the huge portion was served with tortillas and a teaspoon of chopped onion and a pinch of cilantro chiffonade. We had 75% left over after using the 6 tortillas provided. We would have liked more acoutrements for creating tacos as this plate was uninspiring. Also, the options given for breakfast were pretty standard what South America thinks North America wants to eat. I'd like to see more creativity when it comes to the offerings. The daytime views were spectacular, however. That, alone is worth dining here. Perhaps they are still experiencing staffing hardships due to the social distancing and travel restrictions? Might be time to tighten up the menu and sort out some of the technical issues. I look forward to trying again after the kinks are worked out. There is promise here.

Tried them again. Still a heavy umami/fish sauce/agrodolce vein imbued throughout every dish. To me, it’s overpowering and distracts from the flavors of the natural ingredients. Too gimmicky for my tastes, but it was a very sought after reservation at the resort and as much as I could tell, people were...

Such a special setting, a couple-dozen feet from the Pacific and great, attentive service. But it’s the food that is the star (with a caveat).

We ate there twice – breakfast and a nice dinner. I had the machaca, which is a northern-Mexican specialty, with unique dried and then reconstituted beef + a poblano chile and eggs – was excellent. There were a couple of other Mexican dishes to chose from too.

For dinner, I had a great, great catch of the day, prepared Veracruz style, with sautéed veggies (probably a poblano too) and the characteristic salty olives. A nice side of nana’s traditional Mexican rice.

The rub is that I had to special order the Veracruz style (which the kitchen was very nice to provide). Except for Tenderloin tacos, the dinner menu had NO Mexican dishes. It’s great that they have Asian shrimp (which my wife had and was excellent) and prime rib etc. but we’re in Mexico, and would hope that they would offer at least one or two legit Mexican menu items from the country’s crazy-deep well of dishes.

I would say the Pescado Veracruz that I was served is a perfect candidate for a regular spot on the menu.

That issue aside, we love this place and will be going back on our...

We celebrated my wife's birthday at Grand Solmar this week. The staff at LaRoca went overboard. Dani helped so much to arrange a happy birthday message on the beach for my wife. She is so personable and accommodating and helpful. Also Ricardo Hernandez restaurant manager arranged to have a birthday cake sent up to our room. So special. On top of all that the entire staff did a great job. Especially looking out for my gluten free request. Dani also arranged for me to have a special meal at breakfast that used to be on the menu 6 months ago. It was my favorite. Once again...