Today was our first dinner out here in CDMX. (For the record we did eat a late meall in the hotel yesterday since our flight out was delayed by almost 2 hours and although the food had some nice flavors, at the end of the day, it was hotel restaurant food). I had booked this restaurant 2 months in advance for our first night here. Quintonil is listed as #9 on the 2023 version of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. I booked us for the kitchen counter seating because we always love to see all of the action with the dishes being created.
We already had wine pairings, but the signature cocktails just sounded too good to pass up so we both had one. Even the ice cubes had the Quintonil logo frozen into them. Both were made with mezcal tastefully used. Andrea’s was more mezcal smoky and spicy and mine was a more citrus and sweet due to the honey. Maybe that reflected our respective personalities, haha.
First course was a vegetable course primarily consisting of butternut squash, sweetness from rice horchata, some cherry tomatoes, and some toasted pumpkin seeds. it was a beautifully composed dish and the pumpkin seeds gave it some nice texture and seediness (that doesn’t sound right. I would have wanted to say nuttiness, but hese are seeds!). This was paired with a rose from Provence made with the Tibouren grape which we’d never heard of, but we couldn’t forget because it made us think of Tiburon.
The second course had king crab with a delicious pipian verde sauce and blue corn tostadas. With all the flavors going on, primarily from the delicious pipian verde, we couldn’t really taste the crab much, but the verde was so good it didn’t matter. This was paired with sauvignon blanc from Australia.
Third course was a red lobster tartare from Baja and the presentation of the scalloped avocado on top was beautiful. This was paired with a tasty riesling.
As it turns out, it’s the season for insect consumption, so the next course had avocado and escamoles (ant eggs. these were actually the best presentation of ant eggs I had today given that I also happened to also have escalmoles for lunch!!), some oyster mushrooms, and ant chorizo (definitely the best any chorizo we’ve ever had and really it was a great chorizo since so much of the chorizo we have back home is more overpowering and one note, while this was a bit more nuanced in flavor), and some corn tortillas and some salsa roja. It was a bit of a choose-your-own-adventure to mix and match the ingredients as you wanted. This was paired with Ruinart champagne (the best wine pairing I’ve had with ants, lol) served in some interestingly shaped Gabriel glasses.
This was followed with a striped bass brushed with a adobo de chapulin (grasshopper) sauce interestingly paired with a mexican sangiovese wine. It seemed a surprising, but seemed to work fine.
Next came the main course which was a braised oxtail with negro panucho, a yucatan black bean paste paired with a wine from Uruguay that was a blend of cabernet and tempranillo served in Zalto bordeaux glasses.
The palate cleanser was a cactus sorbet which was quite good.
Then came what was probably the best and only dessert we’ve had with caviar. The caviar was from Petrossian (can’t go wrong with that…) and a creme fraiche ice cream and some exclusive honey that had a very citrus acidic flavor to it. It was a fantastic dessert and caviar dish. This was paired with a cider from Normandy.
The second dessert course was also incredible. a Mexican cornbread with rompope de nixtamal which is a kind of masa eggnog and some vanilla and passion fruit. it had a wonderful masa/corn flavor and very unique flavor profile from so many other desserts we’ve had and so perfect for this meal.
Lastly, we had a mamey fruit (a type of apricot) panna cotta and an incredibly light an airy tacho chocolate parfait with raspberry, black olive and garlic (how’s that for a dessert combo!).
All in all it was an incredible meal and I almost feel bad that we ate here first since I worry that all the rest of our meals may suffer by comparison!
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