Back in 1988, a one-time candy store was transformed into one of the first nightclubs in Cabo San Lucas, which also happened to serve some of the Land’s End city’s most underrated food. The visionaries behind this establishment, known ever since as El Squid Roe, were Carlos Anderson and Billy La Garde.
Anderson, of course, was one of Mexico’s most famous and influential restaurateurs, having created Carlos’n Charlie’s, Señor Frog’s and other popular restaurant and bar chains under the Grupo Anderson umbrella before he died in a plane crash in Jalisco in 1990. He knew La Garde from Puerto Vallarta and had proposed that they open a new place somewhere in partnership. La Garde suggested Cabo San Lucas.
A few short years later, Billy’s son, the young Diego La Garde, was sipping Shirley Temples and slurping oysters at El Squid Roe’s bar, looking like a kid who owned the place. If he didn’t already, he soon would, along with his father. Unlike other brands in the Grupo Anderson collection, El Squid Roe has always remained licensed but independently operated.
It has also been phenomenally successful, drawing everyone from vacationers and Spring Breakers to a who’s who of visiting celebrities during its four-plus decades as the standard bearer of the Los Cabos party scene — a history I recently sat down with Diego La Garde in El Squid Roe to discuss.
El Squid Roe began as a family-owned business, correct?
Yes, it’s still family-run and owned. We’ve been in business for 37 years. My father, Billy La Garde, is the one who opened it back in the day. He used to live in Puerto Vallarta. He was helping out at a restaurant there, and Carlos Anderson really liked his service and quality of work. So he said, ‘Billy, I want to open up a new place.’ My dad had visited Cabo before on a small and he told him how he saw a lot of potential here in Cabo. So Carlos said, ‘Okay, let’s go see properties.’ They drove around, they saw many properties and they liked this one the best. That’s how it all started.
Occasionally, I’ll see on social media that old picture of the year you opened. Nothing but a dirt road out there.
That guy on the bicycle. Yeah, nothing but a dirt road for a long time.
Your father is who the Billy Kitchen and its food menu is named for?
Yes, the Billy Kitchen was named for him, just to let people know we also have a kitchen. Even now, a lot of people don’t know we have food, or how good it is.
Was El Squid Roe the first bar to open in Cabo San Lucas?
We opened in 1988, about the same time as Giggling Marlin (the landmark nightspot that burned down in June 2024). But then we changed the company three or four months later to Operadora Calamar and have been open as El Squid Roe since Jan. 1or 2, 1989 … whenever it was they gave us the permit.
We had a cooler, a CD player to play discs from clients or customers that would bring them down. They had like 50 of them, very minimal as it was growing and becoming the place it is now. We had customers bring us decorations, like the race car driver who brought us the hood of his car. And that’s how we built the place, with people bringing us things. My dad used to say, “If you have any trash at home, bring it to us. For us, it’s decoration.”
I remember reading somewhere that El Squid Roe was the place where all the locals gathered after Hurricane Kiko in 1989, even though it had only been open a few months. True?
Oh, yeah. We open the next day after every hurricane. We have a generator that uses gas and runs all day. I mean, when the light goes out, it kicks in five seconds later and we have power.
I believe what stops us the most during natural disasters is actually the employees. They have to fix themselves, check their families and make sure everything’s good. Once we know that they’re good, we bring in as many of them as can work. Not because we’re greedy, but because we feel like it’s our responsibility to ignite the destination again.
We have people come here from all over the world, and it’s not their fault that we have a huge hurricane every once in a while. The fact that we turn on our lights and have the party back again, it helps the destination, I believe.
Has the place been evolving since the very beginning?
Well, I feel like, talking from my point of view, the people who come here expect us to continually evolve. Otherwise, it’s going to get stale. At some point, it’s going to die out. Right. So we constantly add new things.
Like, we changed a whole bar. That bar used to come out. Now we’ve made it flat. And we added a bus, the London bus. We had a cart over there. The owner’s lounge is probably the newest thing. We have a joke internally that everybody’s the owner. When people come, they’re like, oh yeah, I’m the cousin of the owner or I know the owner or I know Billy. He’s my boy, he’s my friend, you know? It’s what happens when you have a place for so many years.
So we said, “fuck it.” If everybody wants to be the owner, let’s create an owner’s lounge. If you want to be in that owner’s lounge, you purchase 10 bottles. Okay. And with 10 bottles, you get the owner’s lounge. It has air-conditioning, it has private bathrooms and it’s a big-ass space.
And the favorite thing that people love is that it says “owners” on it. New Year’s Eve, we had two guys rent out that space with 10 bottles. So you can see, it brings in the right market. And it used to be a storage room for one-liter-sized cups!
So we constantly evolve. I mean, we have a huge plane up there on the second floor. We added the third floor in 2012. The skybox. Not only that, the party stuff, the dances the waiters do — everything has to be constantly refreshed.
People expect so much. Now a show is expected when you dine and wine, you know? So we also try to entertain them. We do drinking contests at night for dinner. So, little things here and there. Also, as the team grows, each person brings in new ideas.
That’s how you stay popular for 37 years! I was thinking earlier about what a celebrity hangout this is, and about people like ‘Johnny Football’ (Johnny Manziel) who have famously partied here through the years.
We all partied with him. All my friends said that we basically ruined his career. One of my friends came up to me and said, “Dude, the Heisman Trophy winner is here.” At that time, I didn’t know what it was, the Heisman Trophy. I was like, “Sure, let’s invite him.” We invited him over there. And we had a huge group there. And they partied, they took a lot of pictures. Many of the pictures ended up on ESPN. They showed up everywhere.
But, yeah, we’ve had many famous people. I mean, Tupac for one. The waiters recognized him, went up to him and talked to him. My dad introduced himself to him. And Tupac said, “Billy, I’m working on a music video. I’m gonna be back in a couple of weeks with some friends. Please take care of us again.”
My dad tells me the story. It was him and some other guy. I don’t think he was famous. He was a rapper. But they were making a music video with this rapper. I don’t think it ever came out as that was the year Tupac died.
But anyway, two or three weeks later, my dad’s at the bar. He gets a tap on the back. It’s Tupac. He’s like, “Billy, I’m back.” My dad turns around, and there’s Tupac, Snoop Dogg, Suge Knight and MC Hammer. They asked for the mic. There’s a picture of them singing in the center of the dance floor. I think that’s one of my favorite stories.
Back then, it was more normal to see these famous people come out and have fun. Now, they’re more likely to stay in the villa, in the hotel. But celebrities still come in. For example, the quarterback of the Los Angeles Rams, Matt Stafford, was here last year with his friends. They got the owner’s lounge. So we still get football players. We get basketball players, actors.
Speaking of people staying in their villas, a lot of people are talking about nightlife being down in Cabo San Lucas. El Squid Roe is always popular, but do you feel like nightlife here isn’t what it used to be?
We notice how a lot of people come in, they get dropped off, they come in, then they get picked up and then leave. So it’s sad. It used to be like, “Oh, we’re going to party three days, stay one day at the hotel, then party three more days.” Now it’s like, “We’re going to stay at the hotel, and we’re going to go out Friday,” out of a whole week, you know? So it’s not good, not for the destination.
Things have to change, maybe. How, I don’t know, but we’re trying our best to keep our spirit alive, keep the place alive, bring new things all the time. But as long as we don’t all do it as a whole, it’s going to be complicated to just do it ourselves.
What do you think should be done?
We’re doing smaller things for now, like painting the streets. We added those trees outside as a group of restaurants together. We put in some trees, paint the streets and keep everything looking clean.
Those small changes help a lot. But we have to take bigger actions. And it’s not just us but also the government. Keep the streets lit up, keep them clean. Have some security around, you know? Like, try and do something more.
But that doesn’t depend on one business. It depends on either the government or a group of businesses doing it together. You need everybody to kind of be on board. And it’s hard. It’s hard to get everybody on board. They look at you and they say, “Well, you’re the biggest one. You get all the people. You should pay 80% of it.”
So, it’s complicated, but I believe we should do it. That’s the only way we’re gonna be able to keep up.
Do you have many problems with customers, either because of cultural miscommunication or just because they get too drunk?
I love all my customers, you know? I think they all bring something great, but sometimes it’s hilarious when they come to the door and they have their bracelet, and they say, “Oh, I bought the all-you-can-drink, all-you-can-eat package.’
I’m like, yes, at the hotel, though. “Oh, wait, it doesn’t work?” No, we’re not part of the hotel. So that happens a lot. Too many times. Maybe it’s their first time out of the country, or their parents told them that they had all their food and drinks included, and they thought that meant everywhere.
We’ve even had people who are not our customers, who are from somewhere else, come up to us and say, “Hey, we don’t have money for the taxi to go back home. Can you please lend us some money?”
There have been times when our employees take them to the hotel because of that, or because they’re too drunk, you know? We’ve had customers call us to ask us if the club next door is open, if the bar across the street has hookahs. It’s crazy.
Your service is great here, but that’s a hallmark of Los Cabos, don’t you think?
The warmth here is … I’ve never seen it anywhere else. I’ve been to many places. Cancún, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlán. And since I’ve been involved in this business since I was a kid, I always try and notice those kinds of details.
How do they receive you? Or, how do they sit you down? How is the food, the service? So I’m very critical. I think it’s cool to check and compare with Cabo and how we do it here. And I’ve never seen anywhere else where they treat people the way we do in Cabo.
I’ve been to other restaurants in Mexico. San Miguel de Allende, for example. That was the last place I went to. Oh my God. People are so slow. They’re not used to propinas. People don’t tip at all.
Me, I tip everyone. I literally had a conversation with some waiters and I said, guys, does nobody here like to earn money or what? They’re like, “Well, we don’t get tipped.” And I’m like, well, what if somebody does tip you? Wouldn’t that be nice?
But you go to the restaurants there, and they’re super nice. You’re like, wow, they spent a lot of money doing this place. And they’re empty. So I don’t know; it’s very different. But, yeah, I definitely had conversations with many waiters where I’m like, have you figured out how to get tipped yet? “No, we get paid; that’s it.”
But here in Cabo, even people when they come from other parts of the country, they get it. Mexico City has great service. But when people from there come here, they’re like, “Okay, yeah, I have great service. But I’m missing, you know, the personal touch.”
Ask the customers where they’re from. Ask them about sports. Make them feel welcome.
Chris Sands is the former Cabo San Lucas local expert for the USA Today travel website 10 Best and writer of Fodor’s Los Cabos travel guidebook. He’s also a contributor to numerous websites and publications, including Tasting Table, Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, Forbes Travel Guide, Porthole Cruise, Cabo Living and Mexico News Daily.
