Michelin history was made last night in San Diego. Californios, chef Val Cantu’s San Francisco tasting menu destination, became the first Mexican restaurant in the world to earn three Michelin stars.
The French gastronomic guide revealed all the restaurants earning stars across the Golden State in a ceremony that also saw Sonoma’s Enclos by chef Brian Limoges rocket to three stars after only being open for around 18 months.
For Californios, it was a much longer journey to the top. Cantú, a Texas native who’d worked in kitchens from Uchi in Austin, Texas, to Sons & Daughters in San Francisco, had noticed the lack of Mexican fine dining and set out to change that. He spent time at Pujol in Mexico City and returned to San Francisco to host pop-ups starting in 2013. In 2015, the brick-and-mortar Californios was born in the City by the Bay, earning a Michelin star in its first year. A few years later, it became the first Mexican restaurant in America to earn a second Michelin star. In 2020, Cantú moved his restaurant to a larger space in San Francisco and reopened in 2021 to serve his 10-course menu. Last year, it came in at No. 51 on our rankings of the 100 Greatest American Restaurants of the 21st Century.
