Arlene Keith dropped out of culinary school after three months. But it hasn’t stopped the 30-year-old from working, in her words, “all over New York,” including at impressive kitchens such as Momofuku Noodle Bar and Eleven Madison Park.

Today, the self-taught Keith is chef de cuisine of Edi & the Wolf, an Austrian restaurant in Manhattan’s East Village. Raised in Queens, where she still lives, Keith began cooking when she was nine years old. “My family is very old-school Hispanic,” she says. “The women learn to cook when they’re young.” By her own admission, she has come a long way from the rice and beans of her childhood, and for the Sous Chef Series, she prepared a pan-seared rib eye steak with goat-cheese potatoes.

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