Mexican-born New York chef Daniela Soto-Innes has been named the world’s best female chef at the ripe old age of 28.
The rising star was bestowed with the lofty title by organisers of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards for her dynamic, inventive cooking at contemporary Mexican restaurants Comse and Atla in New York.
After having spent her formative years training under chef Enrique Olvera at the award-winning Pujol restaurant in Mexico City, Soto-Innes opened Cosme with Olvera in 2014, where she promptly gained the attention of New York’s gastronomic elite.
In 2016, she was given the Rising Star Award from the James Beard Foundation and has also been shortlisted in the Best Chef category for 2019.
At Cosme, the menu is anchored in Mexican flavours and traditions and includes dishes like duck carnitas, barbacoa with shishito peppers, quelites, avocado and salsa, and corn husk meringue desserts.
Atla is an all-day casual eatery that serves Mexican classics like ranchero eggs and quesadillas.
Soto-Innes is also working on opening two new restaurants in Los Angeles later this year with Olvera: Japanese-influenced Mexican restaurant Damian and taqueria Ditroit.
“Both older talent and young talent deserve all the respect at all times, and we should be able to hear what has to be said,” she told World’s 50 Best in reference to her own youth.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’ve been cooking 40 years or one year. There are cooks who weren’t even cooks when they joined me a year ago, and they’ve taught me a lot more than what I knew when I was 14.”
Soto-Innes joins an illustrious list of female chefs who have received the same honour since the awards were launched in 2011. They include Clare Smyth, Dominique Crenn, Helene Darroze and Anne Sophie-Pic.
She will accept her award at the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards on June 25 in Singapore. – Relaxnews
