Meet The Best Female Chef Of 2024, According To World’s 50 Best

The World’s Best Female Chef Award recognizes an individual who has impressed critics and gourmets from around the World, and it is part of the World’s 50 Best’s mission to highlight female role models within the culinary industry. The prestigious honor is voted for by 1,080 independent restaurant industry experts and gourmets from across the World.

Chef Janaína Torres, the winner of Best Female Chef in the World for 2024, leads the kitchen at the famed A Casa do Porco in her home city of São Paulo. She also oversees a range of other hospitality venues and is an advocate for food education, dining accessibility, and social inclusivity.

Fans rave about her menu at A Casa do Porco, which features pork in many variations. The casual restaurant, accessible to many foodies, offers the best-value tasting menus at around US$60 per person. Diners enjoy traditional artisan sausages, cassava croquettes, and slow-roasted pig cooked over an open flame for six to nine hours. The menu and cocktail offerings have put A Casa do Porco on the world's No. 12 ranking.

Torres started creating culinary feasts at a young age, "At 12, I was selling street food from a cart," she said. "Later, I fell in love with wine and entered the food world. In 2008, I opened my first restaurant, O Bar da Dona Onça, which focused on home-style pressure cooking. Then I started to see the world."

Regarding her menu's inspirations, Torres says, "Brazilian food is lots of people around the table. At my grandparents' house, we would go from midday until evening, eating roasted meat with all the trimmings. I'll always have food and music in my home."

Co-founded with her chef ex-husband Jefferson Rueda, who remains her business partner, Torres has been running the culinary operations for several years. In 2023, she launched the latest menu, Somos de Carne e Osso (We are Flesh and Bone), to great acclaim, inspired by her own stories of human failure and success.

In 2008, Torres opened O Bar da Dona Onça, a casual neighborhood spot in the famed Copan building in the city center. The bar-restaurant was so successful that it helped fund the launch of A Casa do Porco in 2015. Their portfolio includes the organic hotdog kiosk Hot Pork, ice cream shop Sorveteria do Centro, and canteen Merenda da Cidade, all located in the downtown neighborhood where Torres grew up.

Torres is passionate about opening her culinary world to as many people as possible, from marginalized communities to city schoolkids. She worked with São Paulo’s government to train school cooks and improved the nutrition of 1.8 million children by replacing processed ingredients with fresh, healthy options. During the pandemic, she mobilized thousands of Brazilian chefs and hospitality workers to pressure the government for vital financial support.

Previous Best Female Chef winners include Elena Reygadas (chef-owner of Rosetta in Mexico City), 2023; Leonor Espinosa (restaurant Leo in Bogotá, Colombia), 2022; Pía León (Kjolle in Peru), 2021; and Daniela Soto-Innes (two Cosme and Atla in New York).