LatAm 50 Best announces Best Female Chef, One to Watch and Icon awards

Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants sponsored by S.Pellegrino and Acqua Panna is celebrating its 10 edition this year and, as we draw closer to the awards ceremony and the countdown from 50-1 in Rio de Janeiro, on Tuesday 28 November, three special awards have been announced, as is the tradition in the run-up.

Cordero, in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas has been announced as the winner of the American Express One to Watch Award 2023. The name 'cordero' means 'lamb', an aptronym, as the menu is derived entirely from the meat of the young sheep. Codero is built on a farm-to-table concept with 80% of its ingredients coming from a farm, Proyecto Ubre, less than 40 minutes away, owned by Pedro Khalil, the restaurant’s co-founder.

The kitchen is helmed by Venezuelan chef Issam Koteich, from the city of Mérida, with over 20 years of international experience, including in the Basque Country. The exciting and innovative lamb-based concept of Codero was enough to entice the chef back to his homeland to work in a kitchen and restaurant with a bright future.

The Icon Award 2023 is given to Argentine chef, TV presenter and author Dolli Irigoyen who has been a consistent voice in inspiring a whole generation of Argentinians to cook and develop a passion for food.

Starting her professional life as a primary school teacher in General Las Heras, about 70km from Buenos Aires, her career path took an unexpected turn when she was asked to take over the restaurant of a local sports club. It was here she found her passion for cooking, for creating community around food and for supporting local producers through her cuisine. A supermarket chain engaged her to help upgrade their fresh produce department and one day she was asked to cook a dish on camera. The rest is history as the television world opened up to her and she became a household name in Argentina.

50 years later, Irigoyen is still going strong, appearing on many TV shows like MasterChef Celebrity Argentina and Bake Off Argentina. She works from a space known as Espacio Dolli, featuring a test kitchen, culinary school, events space, library and store.

Brazilian chef Janaína Torres Rueda of A Casa do Porco in São Paulo has been named this year's Latin America’s Best Female Chef.

The chef, entrepreneur and community activist, known as Lady Jaguar (Dona Onça), first rose to prominence with the much-loved Casa do Porco, which she opened with her now ex-husband Jefferson Rueda in São Paulo in 2015. The restaurant made the Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list the following year and currently sits at #12 on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants.

Since then, everything that Torres Rueda touches turns to gold, with numerous business ventures on the boil, global recognition and a spot on Brazil’s Top Chef television show. However, Torres Rueda remains, always, true to her roots and insists on baking inclusivity into her business formula to make fine-dining democratic.

With A Casa do Porco in such high regard, the chef could certainly charge high prices for her pork-based tasting menu, but she instead resolves to keep prices low to make the restaurant experience as accessible to as wide a customer base as possible.

It comes from a deprived upbringing in central São Paulo, where at the age of 11 she was selling her mother’s clothes door to door, leaving school at just 14. A tenacious and entrepreneurial spirit led her to the bar game, working nightclubs and later as a sommelier. She opened her first venture, the Dona Onça bar in the Copan building in downtown São Paulo, in 2008. Getting in on the ground floor of a regeneration phase for the city centre.

The bar had a casual, very Brazilian feel, serving comfort food. The success funded the opening of A Casa do Porco, around the corner, seven years later.

While Torres Rueda’s business portfolio has expanded and her international profile has risen, she has always endeavoured to give back to the community from which she came. She has helped overhaul the city’s school meals system, bringing better meals to over two million children.