Mauro Colagreco at 20 years of Mirazur: from Menton chef to head of a global group

He arrived from Argentina in 2001 and opened his restaurant above the Mediterranean in 2006. Mirazur is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a menu designed with Ferran Adrià, and its chef now runs more than 25 restaurants worldwide.

Some thirty small plates to tell the story of twenty years of cooking. From today until 17 May, Mirazur is serving a retrospective menu designed with Ferran Adrià, the Catalan chef of elBulli, invited as “gastronomic curator”. Priced at around €500 and preceded by an exhibition, it celebrates 20 years of the Menton restaurant, named the world’s best in 2019.

Mauro Colagreco was born in 1976 in La Plata, Argentina, into a family of Italian descent. He came to France in 2001, trained at the hotel school in La Rochelle, then joined Bernard Loiseau, working for him until the Burgundy chef’s death in 2003.

In 2006 he opened Mirazur in Menton, a few metres from the Italian border, overlooking the sea. Six months later Gault & Millau named him “discovery of the year”. The accolades followed: two Michelin stars in 2012 and fourth place in the World’s 50 Best ranking in 2017.

The crowning moment came on 25 June 2019 in Singapore, when Mirazur was named the world’s best restaurant in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, a first for a French restaurant. “It’s a great moment for French gastronomy,” the chef told Euronews at the time.

The cook has become a businessman. That same year he took over a former bakery in Menton, now Mitron Bakery, and opened the Pecora Negra pizzeria in town, whose sauce is made with tomatoes from a Menton garden. Both brands have since spread to Strasbourg, Lyon and Monaco.

Today Mauro Colagreco oversees more than 25 restaurants worldwide, including in London at Raffles London at The OWO, according to the trade website The Staff Canteen. His group publishes neither revenue nor headcount figures.

His commitment goes beyond the plate. Appointed a UNESCO goodwill ambassador for biodiversity in 2022, he champions cooking rooted in gardens and producers. He will also chair the honorary jury of the 2026 Roux Scholarship, one of the most prestigious cooking competitions in the UK.

Success raises a question familiar to every chef turned brand: can one be everywhere at once? More than twenty-five restaurants, from Menton to London, rest on one name and one signature. The risk is that the signature thins out as the addresses multiply. At around €500 for the anniversary menu, Mirazur also caters to a very narrow clientele, far from the garden-and-terroir cooking it champions. And the group publishes no figures that would allow its solidity to be judged.

Twenty years after opening, Mirazur remains the heart of an operation that has spread far beyond Menton. But it is from the lemon town that the Argentine chef continues to steer his projects.