Milpa
Mexican restaurant · Spanish Trails
4226 S Durango Dr Ste 101, Las Vegas, NV 89147
Highlights
Authentic Mexican with heirloom corn tortillas & fresh flavors
Authentic Mexican with heirloom corn tortillas & fresh flavors
"A fine-dining experience devoted to creative Mexican cuisine, set in an open-air dining room under delicately woven canopies shaped like flower petals. The kitchen treats each plate with meticulous attention to detail, and reservations are recommended for this elevated, locally rooted meal." - Carley Rojas Avila Carley Rojas Avila Carley Rojas Avila is a bilingual travel writer, editor, and content marketer. She is an expert on Latin America, the Caribbean, and Cuba, as she lived and worked in four different countries in that region. Carley founded the digital travel publications Loosely Local and Home to Havana. Travel + Leisure Editorial Guidelines
"Far too many Mexican restaurants in Las Vegas don’t make their own tortillas. But Milpa does. They import dried corn from Oaxaca, Mexico, hand grind roughly 150 pounds of it daily, and then overstuff these scratch-made tortillas with barbacoa, beer-battered mahi mahi, or carne asada with guacamole and red onions. For the best tortilla experience, order a tetela—a folded triangle of blue corn filled with a creamy squash puree, or an overstuffed birria taco. We can’t in good faith recommend not getting a tortilla, but they also have a solid chickpea and quinoa harvest bowl. And if you're in the market for something kind of healthy, the vegetarian tacos, like the Vegas-grown oyster mushroom with salsa verde, are also excellent. Milpa is small, with more live plants than seats, so takeout is a common move here, but these tortillas taste best straight out of the kitchen." - Ryan Slattery
"James Beard Award nominee and chef DJ Flores, a Las Vegas native who has worked on the Strip alongside the likes of José Andrés and Lorena Garcia, makes all his tortillas in-house — and sells them to many other restaurants, too. The menu has grain bowls with roasted corn, beans, quinoa, and other fresh vegetables. Or try a black bean tetela, green chorizo and lentils, or an avocado tostada from the brunch menu. Every taco is made better for the masa Flores uses in his tortillas. Stock up." - Janna Karel
"Chef DJ Flores’s Mexican food doesn’t start with his tinga-marinated cauliflower or earthy, braised barbacoa — it starts with his method to using masa itself. Flores approaches tortilla-making with equal parts art and science, sourcing red, yellow, and blue dried corn from small farmers in Mexico, then boiling, milling, forming, pressing, and cooking the tortillas in the restaurant’s kitchen. From there, warm, delicately flavored tortillas find their way into chicken adobo tacos, form into triangle-shaped tetelas filled with spiced squash and mushrooms, or are fried until crisp for chilaquiles. The efforts have paid off: Flores’s cooking at Milpa earned him a 2025 Best Chef: Southwest semifinalist nod from the James Beard Foundation. Tacos, blue corn pancakes, and garlicky cilantro lime shrimp bowls are also served in his casual restaurant, just right for dining in with a michelada — or ordering to go. Best for: Casual neighborhood brunch with dishes you will want to share." - Janna Karel
"A modern Mexican restaurant opened in 2021 by chef DJ Flores; the chef is fresh off his second consecutive year of earning a semifinalist nod for the James Beard Award: Best Chef Southwest and earlier earned his first James Beard semifinalist nod in part for the masa he grinds in-house. That masa produces soft blue tortillas used in carne asada tacos and also shipped to other local outlets (for example, Vesta Coffee Roasters for their breakfast tacos). Flores’s work with masa and his modern Mexican approach form the culinary foundation for his expanding hospitality ventures." - Janna Karel
