Two Michelin-starred Quintonil is opening a new dining room just in time for the 2026 World Cup
Mexico City is all about tacos. There’s a taquería around every corner, in every neighbourhood, feeding every meal from breakfast through late night snacks. The universal appeal of the unpretentious staple — equally beloved across the city’s economic spectrum — might help explain why fine dining has been on such a slow burn here in the Mexican capital.
When the Michelin Guide debuted in the city in 2024, it handed out stars to just 10 restaurants. The award that got the most attention was, arguably, the one that went to a taquería.
Only two places earned two stars: One was the modern Mexican pioneer Pujol; the other was its upstart neighbour Quintonil. Both are outliers in an intensely casual city, serving tasting menus with elevated takes on tacos, tamales and other street food classics in the affluent Polanco district. Both have brought international attention to Mexico City. And now Quintonil is expanding, planning new projects in the city and launching its first place beyond it — right in time for the arrival of the World Cup in Mexico in June.
Alejandra Flores (left) and Jorge Vallejo
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Quintonil’s owners, the husband-and-wife team of Jorge Vallejo and Alejandra Flores, met working at Pujol in 2007. In 2012 they launched their own restaurant, named for a Mexican herb, on the ground floor of a nearby former single-family home.
Quintonil began modestly, modelled originally on a traditional fonda, the family-run spots that specialise in comida corrida — wholesome daily changing menus that feed working people all over the city. Vallejo, the chef, and Flores, the host, initially lived above the dining room. “We wanted a simple, nice neighbourhood restaurant,” says Vallejo.
The food quickly grew in ambition. A cult following developed among chefs passing through Mexico City, such as Blue Hill’s Dan Barber and Noma’s René Redzepi, who contributed essays to the couple’s 2019 self-published cookbook, Quintonil: Food as an Agent of Change. (A follow-up book, from Phaidon Press, is currently in the works.)
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The pandemic brought a reappraisal, and the couple pursued a more high-end, international clientele concurrent with the flood of expats to the city. They installed an open kitchen under a soaring atrium and introduced a new menu format, eliminating à la carte options and committing to the sort of long tasting menu that dominates best-restaurant lists in cities from Copenhagen to Lima. “The city changed so much after the pandemic,” says Vallejo. “It was the right time to push for the top.”
The gambit paid off. At 2024’s unveiling of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list in Turin, Italy, Quintonil soared to No 3 — making it the highest-ranked restaurant in the Americas. (Pujol didn’t crack the top 50 this year.) “We went from having 30% foreigners before the pandemic to 30% Mexican after,” says Vallejo, who tapped into a huge surge of tourists travelling to the city to eat. Today, the wait list to dine at the 42-pax restaurant with three daily seatings can run to 1,000 people a night.
A recent US$300 ($389), 14-course meal showed off what the couple is doing: Fresh masa was moulded into high-end gorditas filled with ant eggs and wagyu beef. A palate cleanser of plankton sorbet topped with caviar was followed by sweet cornbread with a Mexican-style eggnog. The sommelier’s US$160 pairing showcased Mexico’s emerging winemaking scene.
As Quintonil’s international profile has risen, so have offers to open restaurants with prospective partners and investors. “Everyone comes to Jorge, ‘Let’s open a Quintonil — in Miami, Madrid, London.’ We always say, ‘No, there’s only one Quintonil’,” says Flores.
Still, fine dining is an increasingly challenging proposition. Earlier last year, Daniel Humm announced that he was bringing meat back to Eleven Madison Park in Manhattan to attract a broader range of diners. That was after famed Bay Area chef David Kinch closed his three Michelin-starred Manresa to focus on his more casual New Orleans-focused Bywater. Likewise, in Asia, Paul Pairet shuttered his celebrated Shanghai tasting menu restaurant, Ultraviolet, before launching his new French bistro, Moutarde, in Singapore. Compared to Quintonil’s several-hundred-dollar meals, two tacos and a beer will cost you US$5 across most of Mexico City.
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So 14 years after launching their only restaurant, Vallejo and Flores are embracing new ventures, too, by leaning into their country’s high profile as an epicurean travel destination. “The World Cup is coming. It’s going to be crazy for everyone — we want to be ready,” says Vallejo.
One of the couple’s first potential projects is a snacks and small-plates menu for a new cocktail omakase at Handshake Speakeasy in Mexico City, which in 2024 was ranked the No 1 bar by World’s 50 Best.
In spring, Vallejo and Flores are set to unveil their second restaurant, near the beach in Los Cabos. In partnership with the owners of the Mexican Chablé hotel group, the project will be a more casual concept: Pib, named for the Mayan method of underground fire-pit cooking. “We’re trying to build a restaurant that you’ll want to come to over and over and over again,” says Vallejo. “The idea of having a once-in-a-lifetime meal, it’s becoming obsolete.”
The new restaurant, a ground-up construction in a wooded sanctuary, will have its own smouldering pit, walls of compressed sand and a menu of generously portioned fire-kissed cooking. “It’s going to be casual but not in the flip-flops-and-get-drunk way,” says Vallejo. “Good casual, coming back to sharing because this is also Mexico, with the kind of food we eat with our families on weekends — amazing stews, amazing flavours, but with a very high level of sophistication and using the best produce that we can get in Mexico.” And, yes, there will also be tacos. — Bloomberg.
