The World’s 50 Best Restaurants: No. 9
Quintonil is the world-renowned gastronomical project headed by Alejandra Flores and wife, Jorge Vallejo. The aim is to express Mexican flavours with a personal touch. Since 2015, Quintonil has been included on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. Today it is ranked ninth worldwide and forty-third in the Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list.
Embracing a philosophy rooted in fresh, locally sourced ingredients and traditional Mexican flavours and techniques, Quintonil has swiftly established itself as a culinary classic. The restaurant takes its name from a vibrant green herb that features prominently in both dishes and drinks, infusing a unique creativity onto every plate. Notably, many of the ingredients travel a mere 30 meters from their urban garden to the plate, ensuring the utmost freshness with seasonal delicacies including highlights such as spider crab in green mole with lime kaffir and blue corn tostadas, or even cactus sorbet.
Jorge Vallejo's culinary path began with studies in management and culinary arts in Mexico, followed by stints on cruise ships and renowned restaurants like Noma, Pujol, and Diana at the St. Regis Hotel in Mexico City. In 2012, Vallejo, along with Alejandra Flores, who holds a Masters in hospitality management opened the doors of Quintonil.
We had the pleasure of speaking with the visionary behind Quintonil, the celebrated Mexican culinary gem.
SOPHRON: Describe the experience that you aim to create for guests visiting Quintonil?
JORGE: In addition of being a Mexican cuisine restaurant, Quintonil is a space and a project that seeks to transmit ideas and particular ways of conceiving Mexican culture from our food tradition. In that sense, we want the experience in our restaurant not only to be a memorable culinary experience, but also to transmit values, customs, ideals of communities and producers through their own cultivation of the products they provide us.
SOPHRON: What is the one factor that makes Quintonil a continuously compelling venue that keeps guests coming back?
JORGE: I think that in some way we have been able to gather and design a journey through the flavours of our territory and build recipes, which although they take a lot from the regional traditions of Mexico, we also give them a different impression: such as putting certain insects in a sauce that in tradition does not have them; or making a particular tostada or taco from some region but with ingredients from another part of Mexico, or using a technique from another place or one that was made in the restaurant. More than doing new things, it's about altering and alternating what already exists and giving it more personality.
When two people tell you the same story, the important thing is not so much the story itself, but how it was told. We want to tell that story better.
SOPHRON: What is the most exciting creation that has recently come out of the Quintonil kitchen?
JORGE: We are working a lot with insects. They have been eaten plenty in Mexico, since hundreds of years ago, and we are paying a lot of attention to them for different reasons: first of all, because of their flavour; they are delicious. They taste a lot, it is unique and diverse, and they change the configuration of a whole dish. On the other hand, they are very nutritious, they are like the food of the future, they have proportionally more protein than meat. We have dishes like “Taco placero” or “Entomophagy Festival” which is a course in our menu with different protein dishes, nopales (cactus paddle), mushrooms, salsas and tortillas for preparing tacos at the table, in the community, as we eat in Mexico. I consider this a happy invention on the menu.
SOPHRON: What is the most challenging aspect of being one of the world's 50 Best Restaurants?
JORGE: Overall, you have to know how to live with it. Getting into these lists is very demanding, because of the media, the public, colleagues, friends, judges, opinion leaders. You have to know how to deal with the pressure and concentrate on what you know how to do: cook and serve. Recognition is important because you have a voice to trigger changes or initiatives, but on the vanity side, you have to be careful, because success is fleeting and sometimes deceptive.
SOPHRON: As one of the culinary world's most exciting contemporary venues, what is the legacy Quintonil hopes to leave?
JORGE: We live in a present that poses challenges like no other time. When was human civilization and the entire planet ever threatened in its entirety? Being a chef and owning a restaurant in this time means leaving a more ethical legacy: learning and teaching that food is more than an act of luxury, elitist or exclusive. It is a way of living and a way of relating to our environment and improving it. A chef must also be an agent who knows how to conserve, care for and regenerate, whether it is a community – where our suppliers work, for example-, an ecosystem or a project. That is what sustainability is, acting in the present with a view to a future that our children and grandchildren will habit. “What kind of a planet will we leave for them?” that is the question we must ask ourselves in the kitchen every day.
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@jorgevallejo | www.quintonil.com | @rest_quintonil