Tinto y Roca

What Tinto y Roca is

Tinto y Roca is a wood-fired grill house in Bernal, the Pueblo Mágico an hour outside Querétaro city that exists because of the Peña de Bernal, the monolith rising about 350 metres over the rooftops. The restaurant sits on the grounds of the Hostal Medieval, a themed hotel at the base of the rock, and the tables look straight at it.

The name spells out the concept: tinto for red wine, roca for the rock. It is a two-part project. The main room is the asador campestre, a countryside grill with a proper wine programme and long lunches. A beer garden with local craft beer, casual food and occasional outdoor cinema and theatre runs alongside it, and was still being built out through 2026.

Tinto y Roca opened on 28 November 2025, which makes it one of the newest reasons to eat in Bernal rather than just climb the rock and leave. Because it is new, there are no guide listings or awards yet, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing.

Who is behind it

The project was created by Alberto Barroso and Alfonso Tovar, who built it around fire, aged meat and the idea that a meal should take the afternoon. Alfonso Tovar is the partner guests tend to meet, and when I visited, both the owner and the chef were on the floor greeting tables.

Chef Alberto Manso runs the kitchen as executive chef. He sums the method up as three A’s in Spanish, asado, ahumado and añejado: grilled, smoked and aged. In practice that means the restaurant maintains its own dry-aging room, cooks slowly and sometimes overnight, and finishes over open fire. The vegetable side of the menu comes from the restaurant’s own garden and nearby farms, with heirloom corn and regional cheeses from Querétaro producers.

Awards and press

• No guide awards as of September 2026. The restaurant is under a year old.
• Covered at its opening by Querétaro outlets including Quadratín Querétaro, El Queretano, Códice Informativo, Meganoticias and Dapper Magazine, all in late November and December 2025.
• The Querétaro state tourism board announced the opening, and state tourism secretary Adriana Vega attended the inauguration.

How the menu works

Tinto y Roca is à la carte, with the grill at the centre and a wine list built to sit next to it. The published menu runs through starters, pizzas, garden dishes, soups, pastas, cuts and desserts, so it is not a steak-only place.

• The cuts: the long list is the reason to come. Marbled Wagyu, ribeye, brisket, arrachera and more, aged in house and priced by weight, generally per 500 grams.
• From the oven: the same wood-fired oven turns out pizzas, focaccias and burgers, which is the cheaper way to eat here.
• From the garden: the vegetable dishes are not filler. The beets with pistachio and the heirloom tomatoes from a local farm are the two worth ordering.
• The wine: Querétaro labels first, then the rest of Mexico and imports. The house wine is called Alma Vieja, which the restaurant describes as a collaboration with a Valle de Guadalupe producer.

What I ate

My visit landed on the grill and the garden rather than the pizza side. The meat came out of the aging room, went into the open-fire oven, finished on the grill and rested in a holding box before it reached the table, which is the sequence the kitchen talks about. On the side, the beets with pistachio and the heirloom tomatoes were the two dishes I would order again. Expect the cuts available to change with what has finished aging.

What it costs

Prices below are what I recorded when I filmed, in Mexican pesos.

Item	Price
Arrachera, per 500 g	About 600 MXN, roughly 32 USD
Wagyu, per 500 g	About 1,300 MXN, roughly 68 USD
Pizzas, focaccias, burgers	Below the cuts, the cheaper route
Wine	Charged separately, by the glass or bottle

The cuts are sold by weight and are meant to be shared, so two people ordering one larger piece plus vegetables and a bottle is the normal shape of a bill here rather than two mains. A full meat-and-wine dinner puts Tinto y Roca in the upper price band for the state, well above a Bernal main-square comida. The oven dishes bring it back down if you want the setting without the steak budget.

How to book

• OpenTable Mexico: search for Tinto y Roca, Bernal.
• WhatsApp: the link is on tintoyroca.com.
• Instagram: @tintoyrocabernal for current hours and event nights.
• Email, for the hotel and events: hostalmedievalbernal@hotmail.com.

Book for Friday and Saturday evenings and for Sunday lunch, the three busiest services. The venue also runs events and has a hall on the hotel side, so ask whether a private booking affects your date.

Getting there

• Address: Fidel Cabrera Montes 1, La Fuente, 76680 Bernal, Querétaro, Mexico, inside the Hostal Medieval.
• From Querétaro city: about one hour by car, via Ezequiel Montes.
• From Mexico City: roughly two and a half to three hours.
• Parking: on site at the hotel.
• Without a car: buses run from Querétaro to Bernal, then it is a short taxi or walk from the centre to the foot of the rock.

Before you go

• Check the day. Four days a week only, and two of those close at 17:00. This is the single most common way to get it wrong.
• Go for the fire, share the cut. Cuts are priced per 500 grams and built for two, and the oven menu is there if you want to spend less.
• It is at the base of the monolith. The Peña sits about 2,510 metres above sea level and formed somewhere between 8 and 10 million years ago depending on which study you read. Afternoons get windy and cool fast once the sun drops behind it, so bring a layer.
• Pair it with a night in the village. Hotel Altamonte is a few steps from Bernal’s main square and puts the same rock in front of your breakfast.
• Make a wine weekend of it. Bernal sits on the Ruta del Vino y el Queso, so Cava Bocanegra in Tequisquiapan and the vineyard restaurant Ruinas are both an easy add.
• Check the hours before you go. The hours on this page come from the venue’s public listings, which drift, so confirm on Google Maps or the venue’s own channels before a special trip.

Watch the visit

The reel above is the short version of the aging room, the fire and the view. For everything else nearby, open my map or browse the rest of the Querétaro recommendations.