In the second edition of the Michelin Argentina 2025 guide, Crizia He received a red star and renewed the green – obtained in 2024 – that rewards restaurants ethically committed to the environment. La Roja – a luminaire – is granted according to five criteria: the quality of the ingredients, the harmony of the flavors, the domain of the technique, the personality of the chef, embodied through its kitchen, and the regularity, over time and the proposal as a whole.
We are with the owner chef In situenjoying a modern atmosphere, with an oyster bar illuminated as a scenographic setting, the kitchen in sight – brilliant of order and neatness -, a four -story glazed cava with more than 16 thousand labels and a staircase that leads to the terrace, where an organic garden grows. The space has double height and the friendly treatment of the team, wrapped in black, predisposes to live an experience. Everyone moves accompanied, like ballet dancers, preparing the room for the function.
News: Of all the criteria that the Michelin guide considers, which one is most challenging to meet?
Gabriel Oggero: In gastronomy, concept and balance they are difficult to find; And I found them on my 20 -year -old. I come from a family gastronomic training, which instilled the discipline that helped me so much. Because for more concept you build, if you do not have the willingness to work 10 hours per day, sustaining regularity is difficult.
News: Could Michelin detect when he ate in Crizia?
OGGERO: In 2 and a half years that is the guide in Argentina, 800 days spent that I dedicated myself to discovering it. It was absolutely impossible! Think we have two tables and a diner, in a large majority. We receive 100 people every month and half the world. We made all kinds of observations, conjectures … but nothing! (laughs) Everything that is heard, the runrún, are speculation … that leave a fork on the floor, that put the napkin like this! (More laughs) They arrived in 2023, made a first inspection round and reported that they would evaluate restaurants in Buenos Aires and Mendoza. Imagine how much they are going around and never saw any!
News: Beyond the immense satisfaction of achieving the star, does extra pressure ensue?
OGGERO: In this type of restaurants, pressure exists constantly. This is Fine dying And people arrive with very high expectations; He is not eating in his natural state, he has been asking for more, to live an experience. Always put you to the test; If your cooking points are the ones that go, if the vegetables accompany well … Of course the star adds an extra pressure. Because a very trained person evaluated you who travels through the world seeing high -level restaurants.
News: We know that several chefs felt “crashed” – written by the pressure! – to the point their lives turned a turn. You worked with Paul Bocuse –creator of the Nouvelle cuisine– That he kept 3 stars from 1965 until he died in 2018. And to his restaurant in Lyon, L’Auberge du Pont de Collonges, they took a star in 2020 “because the quality of the food is no longer at the level of the three.” How do you think I would have lived it?
OGGERO: Mmm … I traveled and met him in 1990. His kitchen was shocking, a culinary of funds, broths, bases. His restaurant was then Mecca, France was. You could not be a chef without knowing that technique preached and practiced by the French Popes. I was with Pierre Troishgros, with Georges Blanc … a gastronomic tour I made with my father. I never saw a kitchen of the Bocuse level; I was 19 years old and I saw it clear; I said, it’s here.
News: And also visited New York …
OGGERO: When I returned from Europe I wanted to see that city. A friend who lived there had told me that the best French restaurant was not in France but in the big block. And the same with the best Italian and Spanish … New York was advanced in modernity with respect to Lyon. But that modernity would not have existed without Lyon. The foam does not work without a well done background. There I understood that my food had to be very rich, but with unavoidable technique and cooking point, although we care about the aesthetic.
News: In an interview I asked Bocuse what impacted him with the Argentine chefs and replied “that they dare to improvise.” Would improvisation and technique be at odds?
OGGERO: Improvisation is a vital part of the kitchen because a succession of problems to be solved is generated at the time; If you do not improvise, do not go ahead. In improvisation there is creativity, although with respect for the programmed structure.
News: How often does the letter change?
OGGERO: All the time, every time I can. My image team wants to print the menu. And I ask: How do I tomorrow do the alcauciles, the Nabo celery and Florida’s fungi, and they don’t consist? I refused. The Crizia letter is like that. There are two menus; The 7 is called Pure sea And it is a tour of the Argentine coast, from Mar del Plata to Antarctica. The other is 4 steps, Sea land. And we have 10 letter dishes. Because both my wife Geri Gastaldo (54) and I love the movement. That is why Crizia moved three times, began in the Buenos Aires microcenter, continued on Gorriti Street and today, in Fitz Roy, also in Palermo. We want what we like, that there is a dynamic, come through a menu, a dish or a glass of wine with a couple of oysters.
News: What role does your wife have in Crizia?
OGGERO: It is 50 percent of everything that is Crizia and the one that transforms everything into a smile. We met in my parents’ company. She worked at the reception and I in the kitchen. It was more than 30 years ago. Geri already had a daughter, Serena (36), a year and a half, who is my daughter too. We had no children together.
Oggero is self -taught, with a remarkable experience that begins as a boy, along with his parents, Marta Simón (78) and Nelson Oggero (88), owners of the gold deer, with his emblematic pastry and rotisería. There he met greats like Pedro Muñoz, chef from Plaza Hotel. “My love for oysters began with Don Pedro, who prepared them to champagne and I went crazy,” he says with passion.
He worked a lot in Catering and met the gastronomic referents of that time. He did a course with Dumas cat, admired Ada Conaro, Restaurateur de Volume I, and Emilio Garip, with his famous Oviedo restaurant; He received the Lapidary criticism of Alicia Delgado, had talks with Derek Foster and shared the talent and jokes of Miguel Brascó – abogado, journalist, cartoonist and Gourmand-, that he said: “What pillo you are, how you found the return to hot oysters.” He ate them raw, accompanied by her sparkling. “And the first journalist who made me a great note,” says Gaby, “was Fernando Vidal Buzzi, a pillar in my career. He went to Crizia del Microcenter and told me: ‘This is one of my 5 favorite restaurants from Argentina. I will be very aware of your evolution and whenever I can give you a hand, tell me.’
News: They call him “The Lord of Oysters.”
OGGERO: Some journalist put it! (laughs) I gave them magnitude and I carry them throughout the country. Every time I have to cook, I go with my oysters. But the story is longer … They started calling me that way after the chewing fair. Brascó’s Gourmand Expo had ended, which was more elitist, and a group of chefs formed chard with Garip and Ernesto Lanusse, and the idea of a fair inspired by the largest in the world, but popular, emerged. And they offered me a stand for my oysters. I thought it was not very consistent, but Geri saw him as an opportunity. It had a total faith. And he told me: I take care. I put the stand and did the Briefing With the team, warning that they did not depress if we did not sell, because the proposal was to show what would be Crizia in the future. I left her with 500 oysters and the time called me to tell me that I was 30 meters in a row, that I needed a barrier to contain the oyster table and more product. I went to cook to Patagonia, I sent a truck with 10 thousand oysters, I returned and we did not get to Sunday. I had to put on the grilled prawns so that the stand had what to offer. It was a boom, a decade ago.
News: The first Crizia had sushi …
OGGERO: Yes, we offered kitchen, embers and sushi bar. So we put the seed. The Sushi began to explode in Buenos Aires and he doubted if we were up to height to offer it, although he trusted in the kitchen. We lived in Caballito and the pickets complicated us to get to the microcenter. We think of Palermo and we found a place on Gorriti street that we loved. I am a frustrated architect and I designed it inverted. May people enter through the kitchen and cava, and the room was behind. While we did the work, I put Crizia in Mar del Plata, in Varesese. And there began my deepest love for the sea. I saw that Palermo was full of sushi and said, let’s get the sushi and put oysters. First I bought them from a deer supplier and soon I saw a fascinating hatchery in Los Pocitos, in the province of Buenos Aires. The whole beach full of oysters in a natural hatchery! After meeting with experts – Biologist, veterinarian – I did all the development with them and they are my suppliers.
News: Kitchen for private meals?
OGGERO: I have to share with Dolli Irigoyen some culinary trips. I admire her very much. We cook for many artists in different parts of the world. Joaquín Sabina, Maluma, Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias, René de Calle 13 … Soccer players. Diego Maradona did family ends of the year at his home.
“Crizia opens at 19 and closes at 23. It could not always be like that, but now we can and believe that it is good for everyone. We have family, private life. This work generates a lot of stress and has a lot We use even thorns and with the onion peel we make a background, ”concludes Oggero.
Image gallery
