Manta

Manta is the cliff-top dining room of The Cape, A Thompson Hotel. Opened in 2015 on the Misiones del Cabo cliff face, designed by Mexico City architects Sordo Madaleno. And runs the pan-Pacific cuisine concept of chef Enrique Olvera, the celebrated Pujol Mexico City chef whose 2017 Pujol was named the best restaurant in Latin America (World's 50 Best). Manta runs as a chef's-cousin to Pujol's flagship cooking.

The cuisine is pan-Pacific Mexican. Drawing on Mexican Pacific seafood, Japanese technique, and Peruvian-Pacific pairings. Signatures include the famous 'Pujol mole madre'. Olvera's nine-month-aged mole that runs continuously across the Pujol-Manta restaurants; a Mazatlán-shrimp aguachile with passionfruit and biquinho pepper; a slow-cooked Baja-coast yellowtail with cassava and yuzu; a hand-rolled tapioca pasta with Pacific snapper; a Mexican-Pacific chocolate course.

The wine list runs to 600 references with deep Mexican Valle de Guadalupe coverage and a respectable American-Pacific section. The cocktail bar runs a serious mezcal and Mexican-spirits programme.

The dining room and cliff-top terrace together hold ninety covers; the kitchen times the dessert course with the sunset. The terrace is the experience: cliff-top, with a direct view of the Pacific surf below.

Manta is the close-a-deal room in Cabo when the brief is contemporary rather than institutional. The Olvera pedigree settles the credibility question; the cliff-top terrace gives the dinner a setting that no city restaurant can match. Book the corner four-top on the cliff terrace.