  A nonlocal chiral quark model is consistently extended beyond mean field
using a strict 1/Nc expansion scheme. The parameters of the nonlocal model are
refitted to the physical values of the pion mass and the weak pion decay
constant. The size of the 1/Nc correction to the quark condensate is carefully
studied in the nonlocal and the usual local Nambu-Jona-Lasinio models. It is
found that even the sign of the corrections can be different. This can be
attributed to the mesonic cut-off of the local model. It is also found that the
1/Nc corrections lead to a lowering of the temperature of the chiral phase
transition in comparison with the mean-field result. On the other hand, near
the phase transition the 1/Nc expansion breaks down and a non-perturbative
scheme for the inclusion of mesonic correlations is needed in order to describe
the phase transition point.
