Between LA and Las Vegas, a restaurant star hides inside a random hotel
The Quality Inn in Barstow is only feet from the 15 freeway that runs between Southern California and Las Vegas, but it’s miles away from being the usual roadside motel. That’s thanks to Los Domingos, the hotel’s iconoclastic restaurant and bar. While little known to travelers and anyone living outside High Desert, the restaurant has become a staple for the area thanks to its mixtape of a menu that drops timeless classics next to modern bangers.
The whole place is a scene. In the parking lot outside, wind high off the Mojave, one can hear “Feliz cumpleaños” lilting in the air. The hotel lobby is often packed. Wine bottles in a glass case beckon guests through a shotgun hallway. Huge Corona, Pacifico, Tecate and Budweiser paraphernalia deck the walls like taxidermy hog heads in a Viking lodge. Customers close out and say, “See you in the morning” to their servers as they toss their napkins on the table like flags of victory.
Sun hits the Spanish-tiled roof of Los Domingos restaurant in Barstow, Calif., on Oct. 3, 2024.
Great restaurants in unexpected places are a time-honored California tradition. In Los Angeles, Indian sports bar hit Pijja Palace has earned national recognition from the first floor of a Quality Inn; a few miles away, purposefully chaotic (and newly closed) dinner destination Poltergeist haunted the inside of an arcade.
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In sleepy Barstow, population 25,000, Los Domingos brings a new meaning to that trope.
For over 40 years, Los Domingos has been more a culinary Six Flags than the typical continental breakfast slapped across the lobby counter. In fact, it’s the only dual full-service restaurant and hotel in town, and one of the few non-fast food joints for miles, with a larger-than-life menu that rethinks the meaning of the term California cuisine.
A light midday crowd dines on big-plate Mexican........
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