Rebecca Wilcomb left Boston four years ago looking for a warmer city with a thriving food scene. She picked New Orleans, where she became chef de cuisine at Donald Link’s celebrated Herbsaint restaurant. “We get the most amazing ingredients at the restaurant,” she says. “Whole red snapper from Mississippi, locally raised goat meat, Louisiana-grown citrus.” Both at the restaurant and at home, Wilcomb, 30, favors simple food, rooted in French and Italian traditions, that celebrates the area’s ingredients and the people who grow, raise and catch them. Though she admits to late-night peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, chocolate-covered pretzels and the occasional margarita, one of her favorite dishes is insalata di riso, a rice salad with mortadella and tuna, based on her Italian grandmother’s recipe.

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