The 8 Best San Miguel de Allende Restaurants For Families
San Miguel de Allende is fast becoming one of the foodie capitals of Mexico. Since becoming named a UNESCO world heritage site in 2008, and being featured on Condé Nast as best city two years in a row, throngs of tourists flock to the city to tour San Miguel de Allende and enjoy the amazing San Miguel de Allende restaurants. You can pretty much find any type of cuisine in the world in this town!
One of the ways we like to get to know a city like a local is through its food. We’ve been enjoying eating Peruvian food, Italian food, and even Japanese food while here in San Miguel de Allende. And of course, since we are in Mexico, we are trying to get our fill of Mexican food while we are here.
Another way we like to get to know a city is by taking walking tours. We recently partnered with Taste of San Miguel, who leads San Miguel de Allende tours through food. It was a fun (and tasty!) way to get to know San Miguel de Allende!
This post was updated on May 25, 2020.
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Tour San Miguel de Allende restaurants with Taste of San Miguel
Taste of San Miguel was created to provide visitors a chance to tour San Miguel de Allende from an off-the-beaten-path perspective. They were one of the first companies to offer culinary tours of San Miguel de Allende restaurants.
There are five San Miguel de Allende tours that Taste of San Miguel offers. Take a look at these tours to book for your trip:
Each tour runs between two and a half to four hours long, and is priced between $45-$80 per person. All of them are walking tours, so be sure to wear comfortable walking shoes as you visit all the San Miguel de Allende restaurants on the tour. You can also arrange to privately tour San Miguel de Allende. Private culinary tours start at $45 per person.
The San Miguel de Allende tours are led by knowledgeable guides who infuse stories of the city’s history into the food experience. For families with kids, this is a great way to introduce kids to new flavors and encourage them to become adventurous and avid travelers in the future.
Our guide for the Downtown San Miguel Tour was Vail, an American who has lived in San Miguel de Allende for over 20 years!
Read more posts to get to know the city of San Miguel de Allende better.
Our favorite San Miguel de Allende restaurants
During our time in San Miguel de Allende (both this time and back in November), we’ve enjoyed visiting all the San Miguel de Allende restaurants. The city truly has a range of international and local cuisine. And the prices of San Miguel de Allende restaurants range from cheap to expensive.
Our Lonely Planet Mexico guide book has some good suggestions for restaurants to visit. But to be honest, the best places were the ones we found through our own exploration, and through our tour with Taste of San Miguel.
Our family has a wide variety of tastes. We love street food AND we love upscale restaurants.
And one of the things we love about Mexico is its vast diversity in cuisine. Here are some of our favorite San Miguel de Allende restaurants we’ve visited, both on our own and on the Taste of San Miguel tour.
1. Peruvian cuisine at La Parada
We stumbled upon this Peruvian restaurant back in November, but visited again during our food tour. In Peru, La Parada is one of the largest markets in Lima. But in Mexico, la parada means bus stop, so the whole restaurant has a bus theme.
Since the chef is Le Cordon Bleu-trained, the food is upscale. We had a Chilean sea bass ceviche, (raw fish marinated in lime juice) that was topped with corn and toasted coconuts. Delicious!
2. Sample multiple San Miguel de Allende restaurants at once at Mercado Del Carmen
As the name might suggests, Mercado Del Carmen is actually a handful of San Miguel de Allende restaurants all in one. A market of restaurants, so to speak.
We like going here because there really is something for everyone. You can sample Mexican tacos, Peruvian cuisine, Japanese sushi, or just order upscale hamburgers. The open area seating gives kids some room to run around if they need to, and you can occasionally hear live music.
3. A taste of the Yucatan peninsula at La Casa Del Diezmo
We didn’t have a chance to visit the Yucatan peninsula while we were here in Mexico. Fortunately, during our tour with Taste of San Miguel, we stopped at La Casa Del Diezmo to sample their tacos.
We love the location of La Casa Del Diezmo, set in the courtyard of a traditional Mexican colonial building. The space is filled with gardens, and gives off an intimate and romantic feel.
4. Tamales at Cafe De La Parroquia
Another of the San Miguel de Allende restaurants that we had been meaning to visit was Cafe De La Parroquia, set in the same building as BajioGo, a transport company which we’ve used often while in San Miguel de Allende.
We stopped at La Parroquia during our Taste of San Miguel tour to sample their tamales, cornmeal stuffed with filling and steamed in corn husks. We tried their cheese tamales and their chicken with green salsa tamales. In Mexican cuisine, tamales date back to pre-Hispanic times. Our guide informed us that they have been around for 7,000 years!
5. Tacos at Sabroso Taqueria
Our family is in love with tacos. In six months of living in Mexico, we still haven’t gotten sick of them! While we normally will seek out street taco stands, we do enjoy eating upscale tacos as well.
We like Sabroso Taqueria because they have a variety of tacos to choose from, including vegetarian tacos. I love their nopal (cactus) tacos and their cauliflower tacos, but you can also choose from jamaica (hibiscus flower), plantains, and chickpeas. There are also beef and pork tacos, for non-vegetarians.
6. La Cocina, also known as Cafe Del Viajero
One of the other San Miguel de Allende restaurants that we stopped at during our tour was La Cocina. According to our guide, the restaurant was originally called The Traveler’s Cafe. However, due to a large street side window looking into the kitchen of the restaurants, locals often referred to the restaurant as La Cocina.
During our tour, we sampled chicken enmoladas, chicken enchiladas smothered in mole. I love the complexity of mole, a sauce which can contain as little as 15 ingredients to as many as 70 ingredients.
7. Lunch at Cafe Eluney
Down the street from our Airbnb, on Refugio Norte in the San Antonio neighborhood, is a small cafe called Cafe Eluney. Only open for breakfast and lunch, they serve the best mushroom quesadillas and tortas that I’ve ever tasted!
The cafe has an upstairs room with games, couches, and pillows, and a rooftop terrace. Cafe Eluney also serves coffee and specialty juices.
8. Fondas of Mercado Artesanias
Whenever we can, we like to eat where the locals eat. When we were in San Miguel de Allende in November, we stayed near the Mercado Artesanias. Besides finding a variety of artisanal goods at the market, you can also find fresh produce and small family-run food stalls, called fondas.
Our favorite dish to order at the fondas are gorditas, thick corn tortillas stuffed with beans and either meat or nopales. The prices are very cheap. We could feed our family of four for around $150 pesos!
Interested in more activities to do with kids while you travel? Take a look at these family bonding ideas.
Tasty and fun San Miguel de Allende tours
There is so much that families can enjoy about San Miguel de Allende, especially it’s culinary scene! I’ve been impressed by many of the San Miguel de Allende restaurants I’ve visited.
If you’re planning to stay in San Miguel de Allende for an extended period of time, then you’ll have plenty of opportunities to try out many of the restaurants in the city. But if you’re only here for a short time, I highly recommend taking the San Miguel de Allende tours with Taste of San Miguel. You’ll learn a lot about San Miguel de Allende’s history, AND leave with a full belly!
Have you had a chance to tour San Miguel de Allende through its food? Share your experiences in the comments!
Disclosure: This is a sponsored post. We received a free tour of San Miguel de Allende restaurants from Taste of San Miguel, in exchange for writing this post. However, the opinions expressed in this blog post are completely my own.
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