Chef Daniela Soto-Innes Conducts the Culinary Concert of a Lifetime

The beloved restaurateur prepares an outdoor feast in honor of the new Añejo Cristalino Organico from Jose Cuervo’s Reserva de la Familia

In a field of agave plants stretching as far as the eye could see, lightning frosted the spiky tips of the succulents as thunder boomed overhead. Pelting rain drove in sideways under the roof of a makeshift restaurant where one of the best chefs in the world was getting soaked. Daniela Soto-Innes had prepared an outdoor feast in honor of the new Añejo Cristalino Organico from Jose Cuervo’s Reserva de la Familia line. She and her team had been working on the menu for days. There was to be squash blossom and lobster aguachile, lamb belly barbacoa and quince pot de crème to finish. Her guests were supposed to be drowning in tequila, not rainwater. 

The sudden storm brought drama and a change of plans. Soto-Innes, who has been called “the most vivacious woman in the world,” was cheerful as ever; every cook must be able to roll with the punches, but not just anyone can do it with such good-natured warmth. Her plating station was getting the worst of the downpour, so she abandoned her fine-dining vision and ran over to the communal table in the center of the gazebo bearing pots and pans straight from the stove. “It’s family style now, guys!” she laughed. “Help each other, serve yourselves!” Lubricated with tequila, increasingly damp diners were happy to bump elbows and load up each other’s plates in the flickering light. Sparkling cocktails made with the Añejo Cristalino Organico enhanced with harvest quince, lemon and orange bitters were refilled as fast as they were drunk. The mood was festive, convivial. By the time dessert was served, laughter was ringing out louder than the thunder.

Soto-Innes has moved back to her home country after extraordinary success in the US. Running NYC’s modern Mexican restaurants Cosme and Atla, she became a James Beard Award-winner at just 25, and the youngest woman ever to be crowned the world’s best female chef. But where to go after making culinary history at such a young age? Offers came pouring in for her to open restaurants in different cities. But a louder voice was calling her home. 

“I wanted to feel my roots. And I wanted to see what it was like to grow a seed in Mexico,” she says. “Everyone that I’ve encountered here has so much love for their story and their culture. I feel like a little kid in a candy store again, you know? And I wake up feeling extremely excited about what’s next.”

Soto-Innes cleared time to talk to Cool Hunting about the inspiration for her upcoming restaurant Rubra in the surf town of Punta Mita, how to drink her favorite spirit and the partnership with Reserva de la Familia that made her burst out into song.

Congratulations on Rubra! Do you have an opening date yet?

If everything goes well, we’re really pushing to open at the end of this year. 

What brought you to back to Mexico after NYC? 

Do you know when you have a feeling in your gut or in your heart, about what you want your next step to be? Even if you’re like, “I have so many things going on and I have the perfect job and if I stop this, it might not make sense, but I really wanna do this.” I feel like it happens to everyone. And sometimes we’re scared of starting over. But after the pandemic, I just felt it in my heart. Something was missing about learning more about my culture and myself. I wanted to come back to my roots and continue to be a student. 

For the world’s best female chef to say, “I want to be a student,” that’s really interesting.

My sisters and I grew up playing sports and we were always so competitive, but also we knew what a team was, and it was about starting over, practice and doing the best that you could do. In most sports you’re never the best—it’s your team. And you celebrate together, but you cannot just settle. I’m still young and I said, “I’m just going to go for it.” A lot of opportunities came my way, but I needed to slow down a little bit. My dream growing up was, one day I’ll work in New York for a really amazing chef.

And then you worked in New York and you were the amazing chef. 

I never thought that would happen, and I never thought it would happen so soon, to me. I always said, “it will happen to someone that is close to me and I will make sure that I’m there to support them.” And then it just happened. We were opening all these new restaurants, but there reached a point when I said, what else is for me to discover? 

Seems like you’re doing plenty of discovery now. 

When you open your own restaurants, for a chef, the easiest thing to do is the cooking. The hardest thing is, how does everything work together? The architecture, what is your kitchen going to look like, how is the space going to feel? I always have New York in my heart, but in Mexico, everything works differently. It’s a new chapter in our lives because I’ve worked with the same team for almost 10 years and they’re all here now. It’s the first time that I’ve lived on the coast in Mexico. It’s amazing, waking up with palm trees every day.

What are you noticing about the food and drinking culture here as compared to what you saw in New York? 

The culture is completely different. What I love about New York is the speed. Everyone is always like, “let’s go, let’s go.” Here, everything is a lot calmer, less rushed. There’s more music. Lots of music. Everybody says cook with the soul. But Mexican food is like a recital for me.

You seem so energized by it. 

I have so much energy. Mexican food is about the soul of the cook and the environment that they’re in. The storyline of the fields, the farmers, the agriculture, aligned with the sounds and the colors. So everything is like poetry. The chiles, the way they smell, the way they feel. We have so much variety of different cultures and cuisines in Mexico. We have all kinds of weather; snow, tropics, desert, mountain ranges. You can have a journey. You can feel like you are in Switzerland and still be in Mexico. If you go to Oaxaca, there are seven moles. If you go to Vera Cruz, you have the most amazing seafood, and the best vanilla that I’ve ever had. If you go to Tabasco, if you go to Chiapas, you’ll have little tiny tortillas that are so perfect, and if you go to the north, you’ll have these huge flour tortillas that make a beautiful dance. Sometimes Mexican food in the United States might just be red rice with mole and chicken in it. 

And similarly with tequila, I think some people have one idea of what it is or what it’s for. 

People think tequila’s a cheap drink for partying. No, it takes so long for the agave to grow. You can take a shot but it is not for shots. There’s art and complexity behind every bottle. For me, tequila is for sipping. In Spanish we call the sips abecitos, little kisses. 

That’s lovely! Have you tried the new expression?

It’s amazing. I tell everybody that it is like the Star Wars movie. When I saw the bottle, I felt… [singing the Star Wars theme song]

The dramatic music!

Yes, exactly, It’s so elegant and smooth. I think it’s extremely sexy and complex and very easy to drink. 

How did the partnership with Reserva de la Familia come about? 

I’ve been a huge fan of Reserva for a while. And my team has as well. And one day I got like 15 calls and I said, “what’s going on? Is everybody okay?” And they’re just like “Oh my God, we got the Reserva deal!” Everybody was so excited. It’s been a very lovely time. It feels already like a family, everyone is so kind and knowledgeable. I’m learning so much. 

Interview lightly edited for clarity