Adriana santagati
05/10/2021 11:24 AM
Clarín.com
Gourmet
Updated 05/10/2021 11:31 AM
June 2019 already sounds like prehistory to us.
To life BC (not before Christ, but before the coronavirus).
Almost two years ago, Mauro Colagreco celebrated the election of his Mirazur restaurant as the best in the world in
The World's 50 Best
.
This heading is a
guarantee of world fame
, months with the restaurant with reservations taken.
But the Covid came.
And on January 7, 2020, France announced the closure of restaurant bars.
"It was a
total
blunder
," Colagreco now tells
Clarín
, via Zoom, from France. He speaks from his restaurant, closed again. It has been
unopened for more than six months
, since October 29, with the restrictive measures ordered by Emmanuel Macron in the second wave. But today there is more optimism and a reopening date: June 9, when the restrictions will be relaxed and the capacity for gastronomy will return.
Chef and businessman,
the Argentine who reached the highest level of the world's gastronomy elite
, lives the pandemic on one side and the other of the ocean, with businesses there and here.
In France, its flagship is Mirazur in the city of Menton, but it also has the
GrandCoeur
brasserie
in Paris and has just opened Pecora Nera, a Neapolitan-style pizzeria also in Menton.
In Argentina, it has
the Carne hamburger chain
, which started with a store in its native La Plata and today it already has several branches, including a recent one on the other side of the world, in Singapore.
The chef in the Mirazur garden, in July of last year.
AFP photo
“I don't know which was harder, this confinement or the other.
This second for us was very long, ”says Colagreco.
In the first, the one that shocked everyone because “we didn't know where he was going, although we still don't know much about it”, he retired to Mirazur, in his garden, and
completely redesigned the concept of the restaurant
, which is now governed by its menu for biodynamics and the phases of the Moon.
"The pandemic was for everyone a
remise en question
", he says, in some of the few expressions in French that escape him in the talk after two decades living in Gallic lands.
“It was a question of everything again.
A very difficult moment, ”he recalls.
To this second
lockdown he
also responded with action: fueled by the end-of-the-year holidays and then Valentine's Day, he was challenged to rethink the
Mirazur
experience
at home
, which could also be purchased from other cities.
In addition, he opened a
pop-up
in the Swiss town of St. Moritz, a well-known ski resort.
“Switzerland was open while we were in
lockdown
.
That allowed us that part of the team could be there.
The bottom line is that we got
a Michelin star
after a month and a half,
the fastest in the guide's history
.
We were going to stay for three months and the problem is that now the hotel where we had opened it asks us to stay ”, he laughs.
Its restaurants in Argentina and France
Colagreco has two children.
The eldest, from his first marriage, lived in Argentina.
But in October he took it to France.
“There you know the situation more than I do.
No school, a disaster for the boys ...
We decided with the mother to come here for a while.
He is already in school, "he says, and says that taking his children to school and doing homework with them was" a joy "that the pandemic gave him.
- How are you going through Carne, your project in Argentina, all this pandemic and these new restrictions?
`` The great thing is that Carne continued to work well despite everything.
Obviously it dropped, but not to a level that could jeopardize activity.
We opened a franchise in Mendoza last year, in December in Singapore.
It is a concept that allowed us to easily deliver.
We were able to keep all the employees and it was a very great satisfaction for us to be able to do so, because it is true that there was aid from the State, but compared to other developed countries that aid was much less.
Mauro Colagreco at Carne, his restaurant in La Plata, his hometown.
Photo: Archive.
Colagreco details that "in France, we have had 84% of the salary of all employees for the past 11 months, which is guaranteed by the State. We had the possibility, thanks to God and the effort of all our employees, to keep that salary at 100 %. Also since December the State has given us 20% of everything invoiced in 2019. It allows us to face that difference in salaries and almost all fixed costs. So
the difference is very large
. "
In France, salaries and that percentage of state support are "defiscated", that is, they do not pay taxes.
“There is real support so that when it can be reactivated,
the economy reactivates quickly
.
That is perhaps the big difference, because there is a certain economic difference that it is normal that things can be done here due to the fact that it is a country with much more purchasing power and of the first world and that it has wealth that unfortunately we have perhaps badly managed ”, analyzes the response to the crisis on both sides.
--Both chefs and customers, how do you think this pandemic is going to change gastronomy?
`` It is changing and I hope it continues to change.
The tendency to accept that the gastronomic industry has a strong impact on society was reinforced, the way we feed ourselves and produce our food really has a social and economic impact and on the environment.
That is increasingly expressed is the trend towards which gastronomy is going or to which I would like gastronomy to go.
Colagreco in Mirazur, in a photo from July last year.
AFP photo
The axis in sustainability
For Colagreco, cooks have a responsibility because they are the ones on the front line, in contact with the producer and with nature. "If we do not do or do not bring this issue to the public, it
is ridiculous,
" he emphasizes. In this sense, four years ago it was proposed that Mirazur be
a plastic-free restaurant
. It managed to certify it as the first
plastic free in
the world at the beginning of 2020. This last year, it managed to overcome the last remaining challenge: eradicate film paper.
“We found a producer, but it is not as strong as the other and it cannot stand the heat ... But we replaced it and went from
using six rolls of plastic wrap per week to only one per month,
” he says.
Sustainability and innovation are at the core of another of the activities that has him busy these days: the presidency of the jury of the Prix de Baron B - Édition Cuisine, which rewards a gastronomy project and which in previous editions were won by Patricia Courtois and Santiago Blondel.
- Are you with other projects underway?
-We are about to open Meat here in France at the end of the year.
That is a great challenge, to bring it to the place where I chose to express my gastronomy with Mirazur, knowing that France is the second largest market in the world for hamburger consumption after the United States.
And we are about to open another restaurant here near Menton, on the Côte d'Azur, dedicated only to seafood, not only fish, but also seaweed and herbs, a whole job in which we have been doing a lot of research.
Colagreco with his wife and the entire Mirazur team, when the restaurant was elected the best in the world in 2019. Photo EFE
- Considering the trend of Neapolitan pizza in Buenos Aires, do you plan to bring your new pizzeria to Argentina?
`` I would really like it very much.
We are now opening our first branch in June in Strasbourg, a city in northern France, so why not?
-In October Mirazur will cease to be the best restaurant in the world. Who do you think can be the successor? And with this context, do you think that the time has come for a Latin American to be at the top of the ranking?
--October 5, my birthday!
I would love for a restaurant in South America to be the first in the world: I think we deserve it.
Among the strongest candidates is obviously Central (NdR, the restaurant of the Peruvian Virgilio Martínez), I suppose that this year Don Julio will also be very high, who came out first in South America ... The truth is that I don't have much idea because they were practically two years of great uncertainty, of many challenges.
I don't know if a restaurant should be awarded.
How can we reward the industry?
The beauty of the Prix de Cuisine is that we reward a project.
And I think maybe a project will also be awarded with the 50 Best.
ACE
Look also
Surprising: Germán Martitegui withdrew from the ranking of the best chefs and restaurants in the world
The Don Julio grill, the “cheapest” restaurant of the best in the world