Quixote

On our list of the best special-occasion restaurants in San Diego.

This restaurant's rooms were assembled from a decommissioned Mexican church, its cobblestone floors, stained-glass windows and carved pews shipped in and reassembled inside the LaFayette Hotel, where hospitality group Consortium Holdings gutted the building after its Red Fox Room steakhouse closed following six decades on the corner. Chef José Cepeda's menu leans on Oaxacan tradition, with shareable entrées like a whole roasted branzino and a dry-aged ribeye built around the region's seven moles, plus smaller plates such as a duck carnitas memelita finished with black mole. Per the San Diego Reader, this may be the priciest Mexican food in the city.