Mexico/Mexico City: Mexico City – Quintonil Resraurant
Mexico City has 4 restaurants that are currently listed in top 50 of the entire Latin America. Standing at number 11 is the Quintonil with the most Mexican menu of the four, so we decided to check it out and went for the tasting menu to get the most of it. Quintonil is the name of a green Mexican herb similar to coriander that features in some of the dishes and cocktails, so not coincidentally Chef Jorge Vallejo creates a menu that’s is 100% based on local produce meant to showcase the best of Mexico. 10 items on the tasting menu, from appetizer to mains to deserts, followed in orderly procession. How to summarize it in three words? “Beautifully-presented, expensive, and not memorable”, which just reinforced the fact that most of these top-rated Michelin-style fusion restaurants create a mini work of art on your plate (and I mean “mini” because the portions are beyond tiny, some less then a single bite), that is usually such a hodgepodge of flavors and tastes that it leaves your palette wandering “WTF was that?”. The dishes were mostly certainly beautiful and everything was meticulously prepared right in front of you (was amazing to watch). Every dish tasted unique and had a twist on some local Mexican dish, down to the pallet-cleansing cactus leaf sorbet. But overall, it’s like being at a modern art museum, where you keep wondering what the artist meant by this or that.
