Quintonil, Mexico City — Five Stars

 As per usual, I always read a review for great restaurants:

There are great restaurants, and then there are restaurants that remind you why a truly exceptional meal can become one of the highlights of an entire trip. Quintonil was firmly in the latter category. We eat at a lot of ambitious restaurants and have been fortunate enough to experience some extraordinary tasting menus over the years, so our expectations were high. Somehow, Quintonil still exceeded them. It was easily one of our top restaurant experiences of the year. 

From the moment we arrived, the service was exceptional. Our sommelier, Paz, was phenomenal, enthusiastic, incredibly knowledgeable, and genuinely excited to talk about wine. She went into wonderful detail about the bottles, producers, regions, and why particular wines worked with the food. It never felt like someone simply reciting tasting notes or working through a predetermined pairing. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and she made the wine an experience unto itself.

Our waiter, Erin, and Elena, who was part of the support staff, were equally wonderful. The entire team managed that extraordinarily difficult balance of being polished and precise without ever feeling stiff or rehearsed. Dinner lasted about three hours, yet it never once felt long. Instead, it felt as though the restaurant had invited us into its world for an evening.

The atmosphere itself is sophisticated but remarkably warm and intimate, which made even more sense when we learned that the restaurant had once been the chef’s home. There is something wonderfully personal about that history, and that sense of hospitality seems to have remained embedded in the restaurant. 

And then there was the food.

We had the “Our Mexico” tasting menu, and there simply wasn’t a weak course. Every item was executed beautifully, but the meal never became overly intellectual or precious (though Emily and I might have😉). The lime-pickled tomato tostada with jícama kimchi and fennel was a beautiful opener. The mussel tartlet with mole de mar, charred onion reduction and chipotle was intensely flavorful. Fried escamoles with tomato caldillo and guajillo was the kind of dish that reminds you why a tasting menu should occasionally challenge and surprise you. 

The seafood courses were outstanding: kampachi, oyster and blue shrimp from Tampico; steelhead trout from Baja California with adobo de chicatana and seasonal mushrooms; and later coconut sorbet with plankton, physalis and caviar, a combination that sounds almost improbable on paper but worked beautifully. 

One of the most visually memorable dishes, remarkably, was the lettuce course. The lettuces arrived arranged almost like a wreath, delicately and somewhat precariously balanced around the rim of the bowl. Beneath them, at the bottom of the bowl, was the sikil pak pumpkin-seed sauce/dressing, along with Cuadro cheese and celeriac. It was an incredible presentation: architectural, beautiful, and just slightly improbable. It was the sort of plate that makes everyone at the table stop talking for a moment just to look at it.  And then it tasted every bit as good as it looked.

The avocado-bean tamal with Wagyu chicharrón, young corn and plantain foam was fantastic, followed by rib eye with chichilo negro, charred pico de gallo and huitlacoche. The cactus paddle sorbet was a perfect reset along the way. Dessert continued at exactly the same level with Mexican cornbread, rompope de nixtamal, vanilla and passion fruit, followed by dulces mexicanos. By the end of the meal, we couldn’t identify a single course that felt like filler. Everything had a purpose and everything belonged.

Throughout the evening, the kitchen managed to make the food feel unmistakably Mexican while still being inventive, elegant and completely its own. It wasn’t Mexican cuisine filtered through somebody else’s idea of fine dining. The ingredients, techniques and flavors of Mexico were the center of the experience. Most importantly, if you didn’t pick it up from the ingredients, they used ants, and bugs in majority of their dishes. They then came out with Some trepidation to show us.  Examples of the bugs we ate. We were delighted and surprised!

 But perhaps what elevated Quintonil from an exceptional meal to a truly memorable experience were the small, personal gestures. At one point, the staff brought over their own recipe book for us to look through, giving us another glimpse into the thinking and creativity behind the restaurant.

And then there was the time card.

Throughout the meal, the staff had been using a personalized time card to track the progression and timing of our dinner. At the end of the evening, they actually gave it to us.  In all of the restaurants we’ve visited, no restaurant has ever given us the actual personalized time card used to orchestrate our meal. It was such a small thing, but it was phenomenal, a behind-the-scenes artifact from this three-hour experience that suddenly became a souvenir. They even took the time to handwrite wine and bar recommendations for us.

Those details weren’t necessary, which is precisely why they were so memorable. They transformed a technically extraordinary meal into something personal.

That is ultimately what Quintonil does so well. The food is obviously operating at an exceptional level, but the restaurant never seems satisfied with simply putting beautiful plates in front of you. There is a generosity to the entire experience. The staff want to talk about the ingredients, the wines, Mexico, the restaurant’s history, their cookbook, and even where you should go after dinner. You leave feeling that the people taking care of you genuinely wanted you to have a wonderful evening.

Three hours later, we walked out having eaten an extraordinary meal, discovered new wines and ingredients, learned more about Mexican cooking, and accumulated a handful of little memories that we’ll probably talk about long after we’ve forgotten the details of individual courses.

Five stars, without hesitation. Quintonil wasn’t simply an excellent dinner in Mexico City. It was one of those rare meals where the food, wine, service, setting, and dozens of tiny acts of hospitality came together perfectly, and one of our favorite restaurant experiences of the year!