Daniela Soto-Innes

Daniela Soto-Innes was only 28 when she became the youngest chef ever named World’s Best Female Chef in 2019. By then, she had already helped turn Cosme, the New York restaurant she opened with Enrique Olvera at 23, into one of the most recognized Mexican restaurants in the world. That same year, Cosme ranked No. 23 on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list.

Soto-Innes, born in Mexico City, moved to Texas at 12 and started working in Houston kitchens at a young age. She later returned to Mexico to cook at Pujol before Olvera chose her to help open Cosme in New York. Now, years later, Mexico is the setting for her next major chapter: Rubra, her first solo restaurant, which opened at W Punta de Mita in Nayarit in December 2024.

© Raul Tovar

Rubra began with the land. Before opening, the team tested 1,000 kinds of seeds to learn what could grow in Nayarit’s tropical climate. Today, ingredients including chaya, hoja santa and hibiscus come directly from its garden, helping shape a menu that changes throughout the year. Soto-Innes also built a kitchen that is nearly all female, reflecting the kind of restaurant culture she wants to create.

The restaurant quickly found its place on Mexico’s culinary map. In 2025, MexBest named Rubra Best New Restaurant. That May, Soto-Innes expanded its world with the Casa Dragones Palapa Bar by Rubra, an open-air bar and tasting experience inside the restaurant’s garden and the tequila house’s first of its kind outside San Miguel de Allende.

This year, Rubra also became a place for collaboration. Soto-Innes celebrated its first anniversary with a 12-course dinner created with six guest chefs, including Dominique Crenn. In May, she joined Jorge Vallejo for a dinner at the inaugural Arte Culinaria festival in Los Cabos, bringing together two prominent names in contemporary Mexican cooking.

© ANA TOPOLEANU

Her September appearance at The Shef’s Edition in Austria carried a different significance. The four-day gathering centered women’s perspectives in international gastronomy, a notable shift for a chef who remembers attending festivals earlier in her career and often being the only woman there. Today, she is part of a generation helping change who is represented in those rooms.

Soto-Innes reached the top of the culinary world unusually young, but Rubra reveals what matters to her now. She brought people she trusted with her to Nayarit and created a kitchen where a new generation of women can grow alongside her. For a chef who once found herself alone at the table, that may be one of the most meaningful changes of all.