Now, his message is different.

Working long shifts and aiming for perfection is not an easy task for the 60 people working at Quintonil.Quintonil’s team of chefs test sauces for the menu at the restaurant in Mexico City, Friday, Feb. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Ginnette Riquelme)

Quintonil’s team of chefs test sauces for the menu at the restaurant in Mexico City, Friday, Feb. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Ginnette Riquelme)Rodríguez can spend up to four hours selecting a handful of sprouts to decorate a plate. Other near-invisible, almost ritualistic tasks are performed daily. One of them is brushing the “milpa,” a textile that hangs from the terrace and was named after Mesoamerican fields where crops are grown.In the end it’s all worth it, Rodríguez said, because Quintonil provides clients with moments that evoke special memories.

She, too, has seen Vallejo’s clients cry over food. One of them was her dad. It was his 50th birthday, she said, and while she was not an employee of Quintonil at the time, Vallejo greeted her warmly.The menu of the day included “huauzontles,” a green plant commonly cooked as a bun-shaped delicacy dipped in sauce. It also bears history, as Aztec communities ate it and used it to perform religious rites.

Quintonil’s recipe added stir-fry tomato and a local cheese. “When he ate it, he started crying and said they reminded him of my grandma,” Rodríguez said. “I had never seen my dad cry over a plate.”

Vallejo has often expressed joy for the recognition that Quintonil has achieved. But in his view, a chef’s true success is measured by what he make his clients feel.“It’s remarkable that in all the time we’ve spent caring for the snails, this is the first time we’ve seen one lay an egg,” she said in a statement.

Like other snails, Powelliphanta augusta are hermaphrodites, which explains how the creatures can reproduce when encased in a hard shell. The invertebrate uses a genital pore on the right side of its body, just below the head, to simultaneously exchange sperm with another snail, which is stored until each creates an egg.Each snail takes eight years to reach sexual maturity, after which it lays about five eggs a year. The egg can take more than a year to hatch.

“Some of our captive snails are between 25 and 30 years old,” said Flanagan. “They’re polar opposites to the pest garden snail we introduced to New Zealand, which is like a weed, with thousands of offspring each year and a short life.”The dozens of species and subspecies of Powelliphanta snails are only found in New Zealand, mostly in rugged forest and grassland settings where they are threatened by habitat loss.