My recent travels took me to Mexico City which meant I found myself at Quintonil. I say "found" but the reservation was made 3 months in advance. I knew I was going to be at Quintonil even before I had a plane ticket or hotel in Mexico City, and boy am I glad I went.

My visit happened in May 2024 so that's 1 month before Quintonil received its 2 Michelin stars. I think this blog post will be a fine guide for a recent experience and even though the menu changes monthly, the taco course is a standard offering that gets updated with a new age every season.

Compared to the other hot 2-star restaurant in town, Pujol, which I also went to during this trip, I think Quintonil is a great destination for the best-of-the-best in Mexico City. Many casual favourites like tamales, or tacos, were taken to 11 during my visit, and all of the exotic foods I had heard of from Mexico City were fully represented during this meal. Let's dive in together.

Tasting Menu:

Team Tastic came here for a Monday night dinner and the 11-course tasting menu ($4500 MXN after tax, tip not included) included the following:

1. Mexican herbs chileatole and cuaresmeno pepper
2. Melon salad with olive oil
3. Blue fin tuna, aguachile de brassicas, wasabi iced powder, spring herbs
4. Pibil duck tamale, young corn cream
5. Grilled blue fin tuna meatball with recado rojo, pickled mussels and requeson costeno
6. Entomophagy festival
   1. Vegetables ceviche in smoked cactus leche de agre;
   2. Charred avocado tartare with escamoles;
   3. Oyster mushrooms alamore with salsa macha and grasshopper chintextle;
   4. Santanero beans from Oaxaca and confit onions;
   5. Abalone homemade chorizo;
   6. Salsa rona with numiles and epazote;
   7. Striped bass barbacoa in grasshopper adobo;
   8. Grilled green beans;
   9. Cauliflower cream;
   10. Criollo corn tortillas from Opichen, Yucatan
7. Cactus paddle sorbet
8. Crème fraîche and melipona bee honey, passion fruit, caviar
9. Mexican cornbread with rompope de nixtamal. vanilla from Cuetzalan, passion fruit
10. Mamey fruit panna cotta tartelette, pixtle cream
11. Chocolate cookies

We started things off with a cool chileatole with Mexican herbs and cuaresmo pepper. This was the Mexican version of a Japanese sunomono which is equal parts tangy and refreshing. The herby kick to the chileatole was great for neutralizing my palate for things to come.

Next up was the melon salad which was another chilled dish. Mixing fruit with olive oil isn't something I immediately pair together in my head but this olive oil was really light and refreshing. This melon was also not too sweet, so another neutral palate experience was in the works and I was happy.

The chilled dishes kept rolling out with the bluefin tuna aguachile. The food started moving upwards in full-bodied vibes and bluefin tuna is some of the best way to experience this transition. It has a buttery feeling to it but this tuna was on the leaner side. Again, the herby wasabi iced powder helped to neutralize the palate but kept things spicy and interesting.

The duck tamale was the most surprising dish of the night. I had participated in a cooking class earlier this day but this duck tamale was unreal. It had a ton of steamed duck that I love in Chinese cooking, but the drizzle of young corn cream and the wrapping in a corn husk made this a positively Mexican dish. I could eat like 6 of these but unfortunately we had another 7 courses to go.

The most creative dish of the night was definitely the grilled bluefin tuna meatball. This was a little more buttery than the aguachile but let's be real. Do you ever expect to have a meatball made of fish in your life? This felt like something that was only possible with someone with fine culinary vision and truly pushing boundaries. It was a good meatball, but it was the vision that put this dish over the top.

"Entomophagy" is the practice of eating insects, and when you're in Mexico City, what's a better way of proclaiming this practice than having an entire taco course about it? This was a table-filling course of everything you could ever want in a taco. Proteins, greens, sauces, but most importantly, bugs! I'm sure my stomach did not love me after indulging in everything here but truly this course makes the meal at Quintonil.

I'll give special mention to the fish. Bluefin tuna makes another appearance and this time, grasshoppers were the sprinkles on top. This tuna had a wonderful mouthfeel and the grasshoppers reminded me of a Japanese seaweed or sesame powder you would eat with your rice.

After the taco course, I was really full. Thankfully, the rest of the courses were sweet dishes. First up was a small paddle of cactus sorbet. I've had cactus in salads before and it generally has a neutral flavour though a bit chunky to eat. That all gets stripped away in the form of sorbet and I could have enjoyed a few more spoons.

Next up was a dish of creme fraiche served with melipona bee honey. To amp up the pizazz was a serving of caviar, I'm guessing Northern Divine. The caviar added a heavy butteriness to the creme fraiche and the sensation of a single spoon instantly filled up my mouth. I can understand why this stuff is so expensive.

Next up was my favourite barbecue friend – cornbread! Straight from the motherland, this cornbread was a concentrated block of corn further enhanced by a whole cream of nixtamal corn which was a great way to introduce even more corn into the flavour of this corn dish. Suffice to say, if you don't like corn, you probably won't like a lot of food in Mexico City, because this stuff is everywhere.

If papaya and canteloupe had a baby, it would look like mamey, which was the main star of the panna cotta tartelettes. These had a strong sweetness and were very fun to eat. You could either slurp up the panna cotta and then finish with the shell like an ice cream cone, or you could distribute everything evenly and pop it into your mouth all at once. I opted for the latter.

Finally, we had some chocolate cookies. These were probably the most underwhelming items of the night in terms of flavour and appearance, but that was not a huge deal considering we just went through 10 courses I had to somehow fit in my stomach.

Vibes:

Dining at Quintonil is an experience. Whether it's the brightly-lit restaurant or the different little nooks you can dine in at the restaurant, it seems hard to have a bad table here. The natural woods give this place an almost sunny feel even though this place is most popular for its evening hours.

There was seating for about 60 guests in small dining booths, cushioned nooks, and of course, a kitchen counter with high chairs. For our table, the weaving symphony of limestone and naturally forming aberrations made all my photos look better and my camera greatly appreciated it.

Service:

Service at Quintonil is high-class but not overbearing. I was also at Pujol on this trip and at both, the service is so fulfilling, that it's a bit stifling. I really don't need someone to walk me to the restroom or back to my table, but it's a standard at Quintonil and these finer places in Mexico City.

The best thing however, was that this dining service was rapid. Unlike Pujol, which took 4 hours to finish dining at, we finished in about 2 hours at Quintonil. There is also nothing like the experience of being served the taco course, which takes up the entire table, but it almost feels like a show because the table becomes a stage and is perfectly filled up with all you need in your tacos.

Final Thoughts:

One-liner: Quintonil is Mexico City's best dining experience and it is finally recognized on the Michelin Guide as a premier destination
Highlight: The Entomophagy festival
Price per person: ~$5,800 MXN or ~$430 CAD
Would I go back? Yes.