Mexico City - At 28 years old, Mexico City-born Daniela Soto-Innes recently became the youngest woman ever to be named the best female chef in the world on The World's 50 Best Restaurants list.

At the age of 12 she moved to Houston, Texas, where she carried on the family traditions she learned from a line of strong Mexican women that love to cook. Some years later, she returned to her home turf to spend her formative years training under chef Enrique Olvera at the award-winning Pujol restaurant in Mexico City.

The knowledge and skills Daniela gained while training under chef Enrique Olvera is now expressed in the dynamic and inventive dishes she creates at the two contemporary Mexican restaurants she owns in New York City, Comse and Atla.

After opening Cosme with Olvera in 2014, Soto-Innes promptly gained the attention of New York's gastronomic elite with her own special version of traditional Mexican dishes that are featured on the restaurant's menu, such as duck carnitas, barbacoa with shishito peppers, quelites, avocado and salsa, and corn husk meringue desserts.

Two years later she was given the Rising Star Award by the James Beard Foundation and was later put on short list for The World's 50 Best Restaurants' best chef award for 2019.

In 2017, she and Olvera opened Atla, a casual all-day restaurant in the NoHo district of New York that serves traditional Mexican classics like huevos rancheros and quesadillas.

Soto-Innes is currently in charge of Cosme, which she defines as more of a "cultural institution" than a restaurant, and she has established her own set of standards. Members of Soto-Innes' kitchen staff do not necessarily have formal training, but learn all the skills they need under her careful tutelage. There is no rule of silence here, hers is a vibrant kitchen, where staff get fired up with music and exercises before each shift.

Daniela said she hopes to inspire and support people of all ages, races and nationalities to become cooks. "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..."

She and Olvera are now working on opening two new restaurants in Los Angeles later this year, a Japanese-influenced Mexican restaurant and a taquería.

When she accepts her award at the World's 50 Best Restaurants awards on June 25 in Singapore, Soto-Innes will join an illustrious list of female chefs who have received the same honor since the awards were launched in 2011. They include Clare Smyth, Dominique Crenn, Helene Darroze and Anne Sophie-Pic.

President López Obrador applauded Daniela Soto-Innes for gaining world-wide recognition, and said that ""Everything that is a triumph for one Mexican is a compliment to the Government and certainly to the whole society."