Where the Tomahawk Meets the Tide

The great steakhouses tend to be urban creatures: dark wood, low light, a bartender with two decades behind the bar. Latitude 23.5 Steak House trades all of that for the sound of the waves. Set within Villa La Valencia Beach Resort & Spa Los Cabos, it keeps the essentials of the genre (premium cuts, serious technique, a considered wine list) and adds a sea breeze.

The Tomahawk

The dish that turns heads is the Angus Tomahawk, a bone-in ribeye with the long rib bone left intact, often more than five inches of it. That bone gives the cut its axe-like silhouette and its name. Heavily marbled and meant for sharing, it arrives with a certain theater; neighboring tables tend to look up.

Chef Guadalupe Tapia Lazos keeps her approach restrained. “With a premium cut like this, the goal is to respect the quality of the meat and allow its natural characteristics to remain at the center of the dish,” she says. Raised in Puerto Vallarta, she studied gastronomy at the Universidad Tecnológica de Bahía de Banderas. Her cooking draws on Mexican, French and Italian haute cuisine, and all three show in how her kitchen treats its ingredients.

The pairing

The wine program belongs to Víctor Medina, the resort’s food and beverage manager and sommelier. He holds a Wine Diploma from the Gallo Wine Academy and a Sommelier Diploma from ONSOM, has studied with the Court of Master Sommeliers, and is a certified tequila expert.

For the Tomahawk, he pours Hacienda de Encinillas, a Mexican red. It is dark garnet with a violet rim. The nose opens on ripe dark fruit, then chocolate, tobacco and vanilla. The palate is supple, with soft tannins, restrained oak and a long finish.

Medina starts with the cut, not the cellar, and weighs its intensity, texture and fat before he chooses a bottle. “The meat has generous marbling and a very rich flavor, so it needs a wine with enough structure and character to complement it without overpowering it,” he says. The tannins cut through the richness, while the dark fruit and chocolate meet the deeper flavors of the beef. In the kitchen, Tapia treats the wine as one more ingredient: it adds balance and nuance, and the beef stays the star.

Worth the trip

A classic steakhouse dinner with salt in the air and the sun going down over the water is its own argument. The evening slows, another bottle appears, and the bone goes back to the kitchen picked clean.