NYC's Cosme, a World's 50 Best Restaurant, Will Expand to Los Angeles

Massive news for the modern Mexican food movement in Los Angeles, as it looks like none other than New York City’s famed restaurant Cosme will be coming to the West Coast soon.

Chef/owner Enrique Olvera, who also owns the highly lauded Pujol in Mexico City, tells The World’s 50 Best Restaurants that he and chef de cuisine Daniela Soto-Innes will be coming to Los Angeles sometime in 2018. The piece doesn’t offer a specific location and hints that the opening date might be at the end of 2018, but no matter — a Cosme coming to Los Angeles any time in the next decade has to be considered a win.

The decision to jump Cosme to Los Angeles makes for a new bend in the big, arcing trajectory of Olvera’s career. The storyline when Olvera moved to New York City to launch Cosme was that the beloved Mexican chef wanted to prove that age-old maxim that if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. Add on the layer of providing Mexican cuisine to a city normally derided for its lackluster options, and you had the makings of a really delicious storyline for Olvera and Soto-Innes.

Daniel Krieger

Now with the shift west, the plot thickens. Los Angeles already has a basket of highly trained, very motivated Mexican and Mexican-American chefs cooking upscale, personal food here. There’s the brand new Verlaine by Valle de Guadalupe, Baja chef Diego Hernandez, Maestro out in Pasadena, and Ray Garcia’s heartfelt Broken Spanish in Downtown to name just a very small few. If anything, Cosme has more to prove in Los Angeles than it ever did in New York. After all, just look at the many-factored fall of Pok Pok in LA, a city with a fervent Thai food scene already.

That said, if anyone is up to the challenge it’s Olvera and Soto-Innes, the latter being a James Beard winning Rising Star Chef in her own right. The pair have cooked for Obama, earned massive accolades from chefs and critics across the globe, and a snagged a fair bit of awards hardware along the way. No doubt the place will find a special space in the hearts of everyone from locals to dining-focused tourists, and all the other chefs around town. Eater reached out for concrete info on where the restaurant will be and any other pertinent details, but so far hasn’t heard back.

• The Eater Guide to Mexico City [E]
• Diego Hernandez Wants to Introduce Modern Mexican Cuisine to Los Angeles [ELA]