#Women led restaurants full#

#Women led restaurants full#

From pork stuffed with lemongrass to Luang Prabang river weed with tomato-chilli dip, every bite at Doi Ka Noi is packed full of flavour and native culinary knowledge.īijan, which specialises in fine Malay cuisine with an innovative twist, was founded in 2003 by three women – Yuen Sze To, Lissa Yeoh and Way Cheng Yeoh. Doi Ka Noi is the only Lao member of the Slow Food Movement and the restaurant prides itself on making all sauces and stocks from scratch, as well as growing organic vegetables and eggs in its own garden. Kaewduangdy goes out of her way to source and forage traditional Lao ingredients that can seldom be found in any other restaurant – from vegetable fern tops to wild ginger flowers and termite mushrooms. She opened Doi Ka Noi in October 2015 to showcase Lao food’s regional diversity and moved to larger premises a year later, expanding her operation to include dinner service. Big portions of local dishes are served on woven bamboo baskets called sambara at this essential Amami Ōshima address.ĭoi Ka Noi’s chef-owner Ponpailin ‘Noi’ Kaewduangdy grew up in rural Laos in an off-grid subsistence farming community with no road access, where recipes were passed down orally and all food was grown, foraged or caught. Even the restaurant looks like a private home, with small dining rooms for each party. Natsukashiya serves traditional Amami Ōshima food, with all ingredients sourced from the island itself, which is located some way south-west of mainland Japan. With the younger generations leaving Amami Ōshima island to find work and education in Japan’s metropolises, she noticed that the scene was missing a place where islanders could return to and find the flavours of their childhood – so she took it upon herself to rectify this. Meaning ‘home of nostalgia’, Natsukashiya was created by the entrepreneurial Egami Isako after retiring from a career as a schoolteacher. In 2017, it opened India’s very first restaurant breastfeeding lounge, and it continues to empower local female farmers and spice growers. All the recipes for Mum’s Kitchen came from these local women, including as many as 15 different seafood curries original to Goa, tribal dishes, and the secrets behind a perfect kingfish peri-peri, crab masala and lobster meat recheiado. They started by hiring local Goan mothers – the only ones, according to them, who had the keys to saving a culture that had been handed down through the generations. Having witnessed how Goan cuisine progressively lost prestige and popularity when local restaurants turned to cater to Western travellers, the couple took it upon themselves to recover the region’s culinary traditions and originality. Two of her signature dishes at the Hong Kong institution, the roast suckling pig and yellow earth chicken, are cooked in terracotta urns that Xu designed herself.Īs it approaches its 25th anniversary, Mum’s Kitchen remains as relevant as the day when Maria Suzette and Rony Floriano first opened it – 12th March, 1997. In 2015, she relocated the venue to a house on Ting Kau’s beach, joined forces with sous chef Chi Ho, and started focusing on Hong Kong’s disappearing fishing village cuisine – and thus, the restaurant was reborn as Yin Yang Coastal. An early proponent of farm-to-table cooking, she brought the restaurant to near-instant fame thanks to her original recipes focused on local, organic ingredients grown in Hong Kong’s New Territories.

Take a closer look at how seven female-led restaurants from the collection are living and breathing this ethos across the continentĭesigner-turned-chef Margaret Xu opened the first iteration of Yin Yang in a small listed building in Wanchai in 2008. Many of these were honoured in Essence of Asia, a collection of local hero establishments presented in association with S.Pellegrino & Acqua Panna as part of the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants 2021 programme. B.In a continent where gastronomic traditions go back millennia, a handful of unique restaurants stand out for their commitment to preserving – and sometimes refreshing – their region’s rich food heritage.Jane on Fillmore (2123 Fillmore // Pacific Heights).Foreign Cinema (2534 Mission St // Mission ).Besharam (1275 Minnesota St // Central Waterfront).Acquerello (1722 Sacramento St // Nob Hill).Always using organic farm-grown, local produce, Chez Panisse is focused on sustainable eating and sourcing for quality ingredients. Alice Waters is a Berkeley legend, and she's owned the go-to spot for celebrating anniversaries, graduations, and milestones for the last 50 years.