Holbox (https://www.holboxla.com/) is the first actual Michelin-starred restaurant I’ve ever dined at, although I have visited several Michelin Bib Gourmand award winners and Recommended restaurants here in Orlando. It specializes in Mexican seafood dishes, and in all my research on Los Angeles restaurants, it is one of the most popular and highly recommended destinations for Angelenos and tourists alike. However, even though the food is crafted and plated with elegance and style, tasting as beautiful as it looked, it is a humble stall inside Mercado La Paloma, a Mexican food hall in South Los Angeles, surrounded by five more casual food stalls — at the time of this writing, four other Mexican restaurants and one Thai place.
Because you can either eat at the counter or communal tables, I would say Holbox is casual and accessible too, which makes it kind of a novelty for a Michelin-starred restaurant, and extremely unique. They offer an eight-course tasting menu that surely sells out weeks in advance, but I shared a magnificent feast with a good friend on a work trip to L.A. back in November, just sitting at the counter and ordering off the regular menu. I’m so glad we got to experience Holbox for ourselves, after reading so much hype and love online.
(By the way, Holbox is pronounced “OL-bosh,” like the “ol’ swimmin’ hole.” Maybe that wasn’t the best example.)
This was my sparkling lemonade, and we shared these fresh tortilla chips and salsa. Since my friend and I take eating seriously, we almost skipped the chips until I realized they are only $1. How could we say no to $1 chips? That would be worth it anywhere, and especially at the legendary Holbox. They were good chips — so light and thin and crispy! — and the salsa was magnificent.
All four of these fresh hot sauces were stellar: Chile Kut with roasted habanero, Habanero, Arbol-Guajillo, and Chile Morita. The roasted habanero had an almost creamy consistency, and the Arbol-Guajillo and Chile Morita were deliciously smoky. I wish they sold them in jars like these, but I would not have been able to bring them home with me on the plane anyway.
This beautiful, intricate creation was my tuna tartare tostada, with Baja bluefin tartare, Sinaloa-style salsa negra, pickled carrots and onions, dollops of pureed avocado, and fresh cilantro on a thin and crispy fried corn tortilla (like an open-faced taco). 
And my friend got this smoked kanpachi tostada, kanpachi being a type of fish. His tostada also included Hokkaido scallops, shrimp, the aforementioned arbol-guajillo hot sauce, dollops of avocado, and cilantro. 
Since I am obsessed with smoked fish, I got this house-smoked kanpachi taco for myself, with queso chihuahua, salsa cruda, avocado, and peanut chili oil on a fresh blue corn tortilla. Every bite was fabulous.
You can see the smoked fish interior better in this shot:
In the photo below, the taco on the top is the Baja fish taco, with crispy battered local Vermillion rockfish, crema, mayonnaise, salsa roja, and pico de gallo. I got a perfect bite of the fried rockfish, and it might have been my first time trying that fish (a second new fish on a trip to L.A., after discovering sand dabs at H.M.S. Bounty!).
On the bottom is the pan-seared Hokkaido diver scallop taco, with three scallops, chile x’catic sauce, caramelized onions, tomato, and marinated fennel on the same blue corn tortilla. I got a scallop, and it was as perfect as a scallop can be.
Finally, we shared the filete al carbon, a mesquite-grilled filet of branzino served over cilantro rice with black beans, more of that x’catic sauce, avocado, and pico de gallo, with rolled-up tortillas in that foil off to the left side.
I think we settled on this dish because they were out of something that interested us both more, but it did not disappoint, despite seeming a little more ordinary than the other creations.
Every time I hang out with this friend of mine, we always fit in an epic meal. We enjoyed Langer’s Delicatessen, Pann’s, and Genghis Cohen on three of my previous L.A. trips, as well as a few other L.A. restaurants (including a famous, iconic Hollywood classic) and an awe-inspiring indigenous restaurant in Portland, Oregon, that I have yet to review. He’s a stand-up guy, a great professor, and a fellow adventurous diner, so I am always happy to catch up with him when I’m on the other coast. Holbox was one of our greatest discoveries to date, and if you don’t want to take my word for it, that tire company loved it enough to give it a coveted Star.
The Saboscrivner 