Credit: Alex Lau

Inside the Kitchen: Seven Questions with Isabel Coss

5 Minute read

09 Jun 2025

Nevin Martell

Journalist

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The Mexico City–born pastry chef shares the street food dish that changed her life, how fine dining has evolved for her, and what she’d want to eat on a desert island.

What Is Your Deserted Island Meal?

My grandma’s turkey mole, which also has plantains, almonds, and ancho chiles; served with rice. Or a bowl of white pozole with fresh oregano and onions on top, plus spicy sauce on my tostadas.

What’s Your Most Poignant Food Memory?

I grew up with a very constrained diet. I couldn’t eat many things because I was training to be a ballerina. My food was literally weighed on a scale until I was 13 or 14. Then I rebelled. Part of my rebellion was starting to try street food in Mexico. I remember the first time I had a pambazo torta filled with chorizo and potatoes. It gets dipped in red guajillo sauce and gets griddled, so the outside gets a little crispy, then it’s filled with lettuce and crema. I thought, ‘Wow, I love this. Food is my passion.’

What Does Fine Dining Mean to You?

That’s changed for me in the last five years. It’s a restaurant that takes care of its people; it’s bringing innovative ideas; it’s connected with its neighborhood and its environment; it makes sense where it is; it doesn’t matter the cuisine, but it respects the seasons around it and the people responsible for the food; it’s a meal that feels inspiring; it’s creative and delicious food in a welcoming space.

What Are Your Restaurant Goals or Dreams?

I want to make restaurants that last a long time and become institutions.

What’s On Your Restaurant Bucket List to Visit?

I want to go to Yucatán, Mexico, since I’ve never been. That’s where cochinita pibil is from. The food there is so exciting, fresh, and beautiful. It reminds me of a lot of Philippine cuisine.

What Is Your Food/Cooking Philosophy?

Cooking gives me discipline, creativity, family and friends, pleasure, and challenges, so it keeps me inspired.

What's Your Comfort Food?

I truly love seafood: poke bowls and sushi are my comforts.

The Chef

Born and raised in Mexico City, Isabel Coss trained as a ballerina before swapping the stage for the kitchen. As a teenager, she rebelled against the rigidity of ballet and discovered a new passion—baking bread at Enrique Olvera’s Michelin two-star Pujol.

In 2011, she joined the pastry team at Alex Stupak’s Empellón Cocina in New York City, where she met savory chef Matt Conroy. The pair began dating within a year and married in 2015. Coss went on to cook at Agern, a progressive Scandinavian restaurant in Grand Central Terminal, and later returned to Olvera’s world at Cosme in Manhattan’s Flatiron District.

Throughout their careers, Coss and Conroy shared a quiet ambition to someday build something together. “It was an unspoken understanding that we would both work to get better at our craft,” Coss says, “so that one day we could be the best versions of ourselves and work together.”

In 2020, Conroy moved to Washington, D.C., to lead the kitchen at Georgetown’s Lutèce, operated by the Popal Group. Coss joined later as pastry chef, helping elevate the restaurant to national recognition. She was named one of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs in America in 2023. Lutèce, meanwhile, earned accolades from The New York Times, Washingtonian, and the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington.

In 2024, Coss, Conroy, and the Popal Group opened Pascual, a wood-fired Mexican bistro on Capitol Hill. It was named one of Eater’s Best New Restaurants and earned a spot on The New York Times list of America’s Best Restaurants.

09 Jun 2025