Chef Isabel Coss is a Mexico City native best known for landing on FOOD & WINE’s list of the eleven "Best New Chefs in America" Class of 2023, as a 2025 James Beard Foundation "Best Chef Mid-Atlantic" semifinalist, and one of “100 Latino Leaders in the United States.” She moved to Washington, DC in 2020 to join The Popal Group, and is currently the Executive Chef of Pascual.

 After years of studying to become a professional ballerina in Mexico, Coss followed her passion for food into the pastry industry as a teenager. Her culinary career started in Mexico City at 17 working as a bread maker for renowned chef Enrique Olvera’s landmark “World’s 50 Best” restaurant, Pujol. In 2011, Coss moved to New York and worked at several top tier culinary concepts, including Empellón with chef Alex Stupak and Lauren Resler, ultimately returning to work with Olvera, chef Daniela Soto Innes, and Casamata Restaurant Group as Executive Pastry Chef at Cosme. Under her leadership, Cosme landed #25 on the World’s 50 Best list.

 Coss moved to Washington in 2020, and quickly overhauled the pastry program at Lutèce, The Popal's Group's French neo-bistro in Georgetown. Thanks to her work and the work of spouse Chef Matt Conroy, Lutèce is now a New York Times “America’s Best Restaurants” 2022, Washingtonian's current #13 “Very Best” Restaurant, a multi-time "RAMMY" award winner from the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, and one of RESY's "Ten Restaurants That Define American Dining" for 2023.

 Pascual, the Mexican concept she opened alongside Conroy and The Popal Group in 2024, is now one of 14 Eater's “Best New Restaurant in America in 2024,” a 2024 New York Time's America's Best Restaurants, one of ten Robb Report Best New Restaurants in America, The Washington Post's #1 Best New Restaurant 2024, and Eater DC's #1 Best New Restaurant 2024. The hearth-focused restaurant takes inspiration from Coss’s upbringing in Mexico City and the pair’s combined leadership at the best Mexican restaurants in the world.