Anito Lo

Chef Anita Lo credits her endurance with jettisoning her over hurdles—like a confidence-corroding interview with a screaming four-star chef—and on to co-ownership of Annisa on Barrow Street. There she draws on her French culinary education, stints at Bouley and Chanterelle, and a lifelong passion for food to create seasonal menus that might as easily include a sea-urchin-and-potato terrine as a salmon and smoked-paprika sauce inspired by dishes prepared by her Hungarian nanny. This woman isn’t the only one to whom she pays homage with her cuisine, recipes of which will appear in a forthcoming cookbook. “Female chefs in fine dining in New York City are very, very few,” she says, noting that Annisa means “women” in Arabic. “So we thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we had a wine list featuring female vintners?’ ” It would. And they do.