Quintonil

Quintonil is a contemporary Mexican restaurant in Polanco, Miguel Hidalgo, Mexico City. Owned by couple Jorge Vallejo and Alejandra Flores, Quintonil started as a menú del día restaurant and progressed to fine dining. With à la carte options and a nine-course tasting menu, the restaurant focuses on using herbs and vegetables that are uncommon in dishes.

The British magazine Restaurant has continuously ranked Quintonil on its list of the World's 50 Best Restaurants since 2016. Quintonil was awarded two Michelin stars in 2024, in the first Michelin Guide covering restaurants in Mexico, becoming the highest-rated restaurant in the country and tying with the Mexican restaurant Pujol.

Description
Quintonil offers both à la carte and a nine-course tasting menu selections that change seasonally; diners can pay an additional fee for wine pairing. Fruits and vegetables are sourced from Milpa Alta and Xochimilco in Mexico City, and the neighboring states of Hidalgo and the State of Mexico. Pork meat is imported from Michoacán and Yucatán, beef from Durango, and fish from Baja California.

Dishes are made with common ingredients like beans, squash, various chiles, and mushrooms, as well as non-traditional ingredients like quintonil or "heirloom vegetable and herbal varieties"; a few dishes use beef. Dishes, including huauzontles and chilacayote mole, have been served since its establishment. A variation of the Mole Madre sold at Pujol is also available. Quintonil serves European wine variants and has Mexican beverages such as mezcal, local vintages, and artisanal beer. In 2024, the restaurant held an Entomophagy Festival, where insects were the main dish.

The restaurant has volcanic stone floors and wood and mirrored walls. It has space for 42 people, and there is no mandatory dress code.

History
After dropping out of high school, Jorge Vallejo studied gastronomy at the Centro Culinario Ambrosía. He trained at the restaurant Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark. He met manager Alejandra Flores while working at Pujol in 2009, a restaurant in Polanco, Miguel Hidalgo, Mexico City.

Both started to date, left Pujol in 2011 and chose to open a restaurant with a "family concept", whose idea was to "receive customers and farewell friends", as they described it. Named after quintonil, a type of amaranth, the restaurant opened in Polanco on 9 March 2012 with a limited budget from a loan. While it was initially a restaurant with cheaper menú del día meals, it gradually transformed into a fine dining business.

For Quintonil's tenth anniversary in 2022, Vallejo and Flores invited international chefs, including Dominique Crenn and Julien Royer, who were asked to reinvent Quintonil's recipes and provide new dishes.

Reception and recognition
Tiffany Yannetta of The Infatuation recommended the tasting menu, calling it "entertaining" and highlighted the Entomophagy Festival, and suggested trying the restaurant's experiments like the bluefin tuna with frozen wasabi powder. Adrián Duchateau wrote for Afar that Quintonil cooks with local varieties of vegetables and herbs "as part of the progressive and sustainable eating program it so elegantly advocates". Scarlett Lindeman said it represented a new wave Mexican cuisine movement and it is a "place to impress that's not Pujol". A writer for Bon Appétit encouraged the reader to try "delicious new things you might otherwise skip [...] like cactus, tamales, mole, and escamoles". Leslie Yeh from Lifestyle Asia praised ingredients and the restaurant's ambience. On their selection of the top twenty-three restaurants in Mexico City, Time Out ranked Quintonil at ninth place.

Awards
Restaurant has ranked Quintonil on its World's 50 Best Restaurants lists multiple times: at number 7 (2024), 9 (2022 and 2023), 11 (2018), 12 (2016), 22 (2017), 24 (2019), and 27 (2021). There was no list in 2020 due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the food industry. In the 2023 edition, Restaurant stated, "Quintonil is the setting for chef Jorge Vallejo's boundary-pushing Mexican cuisine and his wife Alejandra Flores' remarkable hospitality. Focused on fresh, local produce and traditional Mexican [flavors] and techniques weaved into modern preparations, it is fast becoming a classic."

When the Michelin Guide debuted in Mexico in 2024, it awarded 18 restaurants with Michelin stars. Quintonil and Pujol received two stars each—meaning "excellent cooking, worth a detour"—and tied for the highest number of stars obtained in the country. The guide added that "[t]he elegant cuisine is an enticing melding of excellent local product, impressive execution, and great creativity to produce refined compositions".