If you’ve spent any time in Los Cabos, you already know La Lupita. The original is open-air — no roof, just Baja sky — and has been one of the most reliably packed restaurants in Cabo San Lucas for years, earning recognition from Condé Nast Traveler, GOOP, and Marie Claire along the way. The concept built its reputation on al pastor done right, a mezcal program taken seriously, and the kind of room energy that makes a two-hour dinner feel like thirty minutes. It opened its first United States location on May 23 at 1201 Oak Lawn Avenue in the Design District, and Dallas is the right city to receive it.
The partners behind the U.S. expansion are David Camhi and Christian Fuentes, who founded the original in Cabo, alongside Carlos Ramirez, CEO of La Lupita USA, and Duro Hospitality — Chas Martin’s group, the people behind Mister Charles, The Charles, Sister, and El Carlos Elegante. That combination of a proven Mexican concept and one of Dallas’s sharpest hospitality operators tells you something about how seriously this was put together.
The space is the former El Bolero, with 30-foot ceilings and enough room to run lunch and dinner service simultaneously without either feeling rushed. The original Cabo location functioned without a roof. Dallas gets one — a concession to the Texas summer that everyone involved seems to have made peace with.
The menu is built around hand-pressed tortillas made from a specific Oaxacan corn imported directly from Mexico. The chef is, by his own team’s description, a maniac about corn. He has a corn tattoo on his arm. That level of attention to a single ingredient tends to show up in the finished product, and La Lupita’s tortillas have been a point of distinction in every market the restaurant has entered.
The al pastor is the flagship. The Golden Pastor is the one to start with — it uses a griddled cheese shell crisped like a taco shell instead of a tortilla, with the pastor filling inside. It’s the dish that regular Cabo visitors tend to mention first and the one that converts people who thought they didn’t need another taco in their life. Beyond the pastor, the menu runs wagyu tacos, grasshopper tacos for the more adventurous end of the table, and a rotating cast of chef-curated options. The mole takes three days to prepare. The kitchen is importing spices and ingredients that aren’t available domestically — not as a marketing point, but because the recipes require them.
The mezcal program is the other half of the equation. La Lupita is as much a mezcalerÃa as a taquerÃa, and the cocktail list reflects that — mezcal-forward builds, agave-driven options, the kind of bar program that pairs with food rather than competing with it. The room will run live music, which is part of how the original in Cabo operates and part of what the Duro team knows how to execute.
Dallas is the first of what Ramirez says could be up to 20 U.S. locations over time, with Scottsdale next, followed by Austin, Houston, and San Antonio. The choice to launch here first wasn’t incidental — the Design District has the density, the demographic, and the appetite for exactly this kind of concept, and the partnership with Duro gives it local credibility from day one.
La Lupita Taco y Mezcal is at 1201 Oak Lawn Avenue in the Dallas Design District. Lunch and dinner daily. Follow @lalupita_usa on Instagram for hours and updates.
