Mariscos San Pedro

-Grubbing in Chicago
Fiesta de Mariscos en Pilsen

There’s always Mexican restaurants opening in Chicago though so many of them are basically the same thing. But of late there’s been a handful of interesting and out of the ordinary openings. Mariscos San Pedro inside Pilsen’s Thalia Hall is the latest. The live music venue at the corner of 18th and Allport has teamed up with the Poilevey brothers of Le Bouchon, La Chingon and Obelix.

Recently Opened in Pilsen 

Mariscos San Pedro replaced Dusek’s in July and immediately started garnering buzz. Michael Nagrant of ‘The Hunger’ Substack called it “The Restaurant of Summer” which is fitting with its colorful space mixed with lots of light, friendly hospitality, and a chef driven menu of mariscos more commonly found in LA. I’ve always said Mexican food in Chicago is awesome but it doesn’t quite match LA due to a lack of seafood forward spots like Mariscos San Pedro. Slowly but surely we’re starting to see some Baja quality places so to say. We visited San Pedro a couple weeks ago on a warm and sunny early evening. We took a seat on the patio despite there being plenty of seating at the bar with lots of empty tables inside though they were all filled by the time we left (reservations are always suggested).

a peek inside 

The menu at San Pedro is flooded with seafood or mariscos as pronounced in Spanish. The menu is broken down into platters, ceviche (and aguachile), tostadas, tacos, hot seafood, whole fish and “Masa y Mas” which is everything from quesadillas to a plate of Nopales. Me being me I had to start with a couple of the seafood tacos including the classic Baja Fish taco and also a newfangled Taco Gobernador as they call them here. The fish taco was on point with a nice chunk of perfectly fried cod topped with aioli and slaw resting atop a made on site corn tortilla. The Gobernador was just as good although technically it’s more of a taco de costra con camaron or a cheese crust taco with shrimp. Gobernador tacos are typically like quesadillas as they melt a bunch of cheese mixed with shrimp and peppers but here they mix shrimp into a cheese crust and roll it all up as seen in the picture below.

Taco Gobernador at Mariscos Don Pedro 

Did you know the Caesar Salad was born in Baja Mexico? Caesar Cardini - a French - inspired Italian chef who immigrated to America before moving to Tijuana Mexico to escape prohibition is the man credited with its creation. Chefs in Baja and beyond have been cheffing up this classic salad alot of late. The kitchen at San Pedro starts out with little gem lettuce, boquerones, and Cotija cheese according to the menu. I also detected some crushed up tortilla chips with sweet corn and matchsticks of radish and it all blended together really well. This is a very good choice to start your meal with.

Ceasar Salad at Mariscos San Pedro 

The “Hot Seafood” section has four really interesting options including a wood fired shrimp dish that we ended up choosing over the mussels and frites, an Octopus Sonoran Hot Dog and the Scallops with corn and nduja. You get four large head on shrimps with each plate of the wood grilled shrimp. The shrimp itself was a bit limper than I like but this is pretty much always the case in Chicago and other land locked sections of the country. Though the aguacate salsa with chunks of pineapple sitting on the side was so good it made up for the limp texture and a lack of smoke flavor in the shrimp.

Wood Grilled Shrimp at Mariscos San Pedro 

All three of the whole fish selections sounded good but the pricing on whole fish has gotten out of control in my opinion. We ended up choosing the Dorade bc it was the most reasonable but it’s likely that I come back for the whole fried snapper which I noticed is broken down into individual fried chunks like some spots in Mexico do. I prefer it that way as it’s easier to eat and it's texturally better too. The dorade is wood grilled and served the same way as the fish at Mexico City’s Contramar Restaurant or Christmas style as it’s called out in New Mexico due to the red and green coloring from the sauces used to marinate each side of the butterflied fish. It comes with four thick made on site corn tortillas but you have to add rice and beans if you want those too. I really liked the salsa options included but thought the rice had a weird Uncle Ben’s texture to it. All in all it was a great summertime meal as there’s something about warm weather that makes me crave seafood and Mariscos San Pedro is already one of the city’s best seafood restaurants. Check it out while the weather is ripe.

Grilled Dorade 

Mariscos San Pedro
1227 W 18th St
Chicago, IL 60608
(312) 508-4700
Website