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Quintonil

Mexico City

• Estrella Damm Chefs’ Choice Award 2022

Consistently brilliant Mexican cuisine from an energetic husband-and-wife team

On the Pass

Jorge Vallejo

Constant creativity: Celebrating 10 years in 2022, Quintonil is the setting for chef Jorge Vallejo’s boundary-pushing Mexican cuisine and his wife Alejandra Flores’s exceptional drinks and hospitality. Focused on fresh, local ingredients and traditional Mexican flavours and techniques in unique modern preparations, Quintonil is fast becoming a classic.

Taste the rainbow: Named after a green herb that features in some of the dishes and drinks, Quintonil brings to the plate a type of creativity seldom experienced by Mexicans. The tasting menu might contain seasonal dishes such as spider crab in green mole with lime kaffir and blue corn tostadas, or cactus sorbet. There’s also an à la carte menu featuring dishes like braised oxtail in traditional black recado sauce, or charred avocado with escamoles (ant larvae) and Mexican herb chips. Many of the ingredients travel just 30 metres from urban garden to plate.

About the space: In 2020, Quintonil underwent a redesign, with a new counter seating area that now serves an exciting menu including insect-based tacos with grasshoppers and chicatana ants, and a view into the open kitchen. The main dining room is split into two sections, a cosy entrance area and a light and bright section with Mexican art and a skylight.

About the team: Vallejo studied management and culinary arts in Mexico before working on cruise ships and then in top restaurants including Noma, Pujol and Diana at the St. Regis Hotel, Mexico City. He opened Quintonil in 2012 with Flores, who has a Masters in hospitality management from Switzerland’s prestigious Les Roches School and has worked as operations and commercial director for the Enrique Olvera Group. The charismatic duo bring a winning combination of warmth, energy and exceptional food that has diners returning again and again.

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