Quintonil ranks fourth, now Latin America's top table
At the World's 50 Best gala in Lima, the Polanco restaurant climbed past dozens of rivals to become the highest-placed table anywhere in Latin America, as Pujol fell out of the top 100 entirely.
Quintonil, the Polanco restaurant run by chef Jorge Vallejo and co-owner Alejandra Flores, has become the highest-ranked restaurant anywhere in Latin America after taking fourth place in the World's 50 Best Restaurants 2026 list, announced on 4 November in Lima.
The ranking puts Quintonil behind only Asador Etxebarri in Spain's Basque Country, which took first place, Gaggan in Bangkok in second and Alchemist in Copenhagen in third. No restaurant from Mexico, nor from anywhere else in Latin America, finished higher this year.
The restaurant sits at Newton 55, in Polanco, and opened on 9 March 2012. Vallejo and Flores met in 2009 while both worked at Pujol, a few streets away, and left in 2011 to start their own kitchen on a loan and a short daily menu. It now holds two Michelin stars and takes its name from quintonil, the amaranth green that still runs through much of its tasting menu.
A restaurant that started on a loan now sits fourth in the world, ahead of all Latin America.
Pujol drops out of the top 100
Pujol, the restaurant Vallejo and Flores left to build their own, is absent from this year's extended top 100 altogether. It had ranked 33rd in 2024 and slipped to 60th in 2025, a steady fall from the kitchen that once defined Polanco's restaurant row alongside Quintonil.
Other Mexican restaurants held on further down the wider list: Alcalde in Guadalajara placed 55th, Huniik in Mérida 79th, Arca in Tulum 87th, Rosetta in Mexico City 96th and Fauna in Valle de Guadalupe 99th. Rosetta is one of 15 kitchens named in AMUSE's own round-up of Mexico City's best tables.
A first ceremony held in South America
This year's gala, staged at the Teatro Municipal in Lima, was the first time the World's 50 Best ceremony has taken place in South America. The 2025 list had been topped by Lima's own Maido, under chef Mitsuharu "Micha" Tsumura; this year the top spot moved to Spain.
Quintonil had already been named the best restaurant in North America and the top table in Mexico in the 2025 edition of the list. The new ranking stretches that run across a wider map, for a kitchen that started with a loan and a handful of daily specials fourteen years ago.
