“Mexican seafood does not get any better than San Damián.” I felt somewhat surprised to hear my friend Bill Esparza, one of the most respected Mexican food writers in the country, make this proclamation recently — about a Los Angeles restaurant. But why
should I be? San Damián is the latest from Enrique Olvera, the celebrated chef behind Pujol and other restaurants across Mexico as well as Damián in Los Angeles’s Arts District. When I brought Esparza along to shoot a video at San Damián within a few weeks of its opening, the minimalist 60-seat space in Venice’s Abbot Kinney and its tight menu of tostadas, ceviches, and grilled fish were still pretty unsung. But Bill’s comment snapped something into focus for me:
We’re living in a golden era of Mexican seafood in Los Angeles.
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Esparza and I have had our adventures eating seafood in Mexico. He showed me the glories of Ensenada’s La Guerrerense in the late aughts, arguably the most impressive seafood stand in the world. Last year, I had a revelatory lunch in Popotla, in Baja California, gorging on uni cocteles and Martian spider crab tossed in garlic sauce. And in Los Angeles, we’ve scoured Compton backyards for superb pescado zarandeado and picked clean plates of raw shellfish in strip malls.
Baja California, due south of our city, provides an abundance of bluefin tuna, sea urchin, lobster, crab, clams, and abalone. Jonathan Gold covered Los Angeles’s passion for Mexican seafood going back to the days of Mariscos Chente and Mariscos Jalisco. For decades, chefs here have offered thoughtful takes on tostadas, cocteles, and ceviches balancing the freshness of the seafood with distinctly Mexican seasonings. Vibrant aguachiles. Octopus tostadas laced with dangerously spicy salsa. Achiote-painted grilled snook.
Esparza thinks mariscos have gotten a boost stateside thanks to the popularity of Contramar, chef Gabriela Cámara’s influential Mexico City restaurant; Cámara opened a Contramar outpost earlier this year in Las Vegas’s Fontainebleau. Tourism to Baja California and its Valle de Guadalupe has introduced American diners to more innovative approaches to mariscos.
A number of new players have really leveled up restaurants here in Los Angeles, too. The most noteworthy, Holbox, from chef Gilberto Cetina, earned a Michelin star in 2023 for serving an inventive set of Yucatan-inflected tostadas, grilled seafood, and tacos for ultra-reasonable prices (making it certainly the most affordable Michelin-starred restaurant in the U.S.). At a tasting last week, Cetina wowed me with a Dungeness crab taco with salsa macha-infused crab butter and scallop ceviche served right out of an emptied Santa Barbara uni shell picked that morning. Cetina credits the groundwork laid by chefs Wes Avila and Ray Garcia, whose respective restaurants Guerilla Tacos and Broken Spanish taught Angelenos to zag with inventive Mexican American flavors on a tortilla. Cetina took that approach and applied it to seafood: “They made me realize that our cuisine is worthy of sea urchin and Hokkaido scallops — high-quality ingredients. We’re blessed because of all the quality seafood across the [California] coast, from the Bay Area to Baja.”
In 2025, chef Francisco Leal — formerly of Del Mar Ostioneria, which received the Eater Award in 2023 for Best New Food Truck — took to the streets of Vernon, set up covered benches and a sidewalk kitchen, and called it Mariscos Chiltepin. His specialty there is Sinaloan barra fría (raw bar) — callos de hacha (scallop-like pen shell clams); tender surf clams; sweet, meaty chocolata clams; chiltepin-and-ghost-pepper-laced aguachile using gorgeous Mexican white shrimp.
Also last year, Downey’s Muelle 8, helmed by master Sinaloan chef Luis Cortez, moved into an East Los Angeles food truck serving surf-and-turf tacos filled with grilled chiles, shrimp, and beef; and Nobu-level sashimi plates employing pristine tuna, red onions, avocado, and salsa negra. The move to East Los Angeles takes it into the city’s hotbed of street seafood, including the legendary Mariscos Jalisco (which itself expanded to La Cienega Boulevard, greatly broadening its audience). Mariscos El Tambo, which Esparza first covered for Eater Los Angeles, moved out of its backyard and into a permanent restaurant in Compton just a few weeks ago. Rialto-based Mariscos Los Corchos, which flirted with a Smorgasburg gig and start-stopped a permanent location, just announced it’s working out of the same lot as Sonoran carne asada specialist Tacos Royale in Silver Lake.
At San Damián, chef Jesus “Chuy” Cervantes worked with his mentor Olvera to create dishes like minced bluefin tuna tostadas seasoned with shiro dashi and fried leeks (in perhaps a subtle nod to Contramar’s iconic tostada), and queen clams with chopped cucumbers over a nugget of sushi rice. A drizzle of nutty, spicy salsa macha takes that clam ceviche to the next level. The kanpachi al pastor, dusted with adobo seasoning and served on paper-thin corn tortillas with a smear of pineapple butter, is the perfect nod to Los Angeles’s love of tacos al pastor, but in fish form.
When you’re getting inventive and fine dining–level seafood on the street, at a food hall, or in a swanky Westside neighborhood, it’s clear Mexican seafood has no bounds in Los Angeles. Chefs like Cetina, Leal, and Cervantes take dishes they know well and morph them into a distinct Angeleno style. We’re at the point where mariscos have become a hallmark of the city’s diverse dining culture, and every bite of aguachile, pescado zarandeado, and salsa-laced ceviche convinces me Angelenos are eating some of the most luxurious seafood on earth.
