i. Biography
The lagoon gives Giorgina Mazzero’s cooking its grammar: seafood, slow braises, and pasta formats native to the Veneto, handled within a regional tradition rather than a modernist one. In 2015, after a long Venice chapter, she took the chef post at Da Ivo Shanghai, Da Ivo’s sister restaurant in Shanghai, China, carrying a Venetian kitchen language into a different city.
The Estate
Before Shanghai, Mazzero spent 37 years in service at Da Ivo in Venice, Italy, where she had headed the kitchen for more than 35 years. That span matters most for what it says about continuity: a cook returning to the same set of traditions long enough for repetition to become judgment, and judgment to become style. The cooking associated with her there worked inside Venetian tradition. It did not turn toward modernist display; it stayed close to regional form, with the lagoon’s larder at its center. Seafood gave the kitchen one register, slow braises another, and the pasta formats native to the Veneto gave structure to the meal. Her specialty was Venetian cuisine, though the Venice restaurant also placed Tuscan cooking within her range. The pairing is concrete rather than decorative: two Italian regional vocabularies, each with its own sense of appetite, carried by a chef whose work was built through service rather than spectacle.
In the Cellar
A long-run kitchen develops like a cellar in use: not through novelty alone, but through attention to what repeats. Mazzero’s former Venice post was marked by dishes that depended on restraint and timing, including the balance required by seafood, the patience of braising, and the clarity of pasta served as a primo. That approach explains the importance of tradition in her work. Venetian cooking is not treated as a theme, but as a working method: ingredients tied to the lagoon, preparations that accept time, and shapes of pasta that belong to the Veneto rather than to an abstract Italian menu. Her 2015 move to Da Ivo Shanghai gave that background a new address. The role connected the Shanghai restaurant to a chef formed by decades in the Venetian kitchen, with a craft identity already shaped by regional dishes and long service.
The Bottlings
Two dishes help fix Mazzero’s work in the hand and on the plate. Stuffed zucchini flowers were recommended under her at the Venice restaurant, a preparation that depends on delicacy as much as filling. Tagliolini with white truffle shavings was also recommended as a primo under her direction. The dish places pasta first: a Veneto-linked format meeting the aromatic force of white truffle, served not as excess but as a focused course. Together, those signatures show the range named in her career: Venetian cuisine as a base, Tuscan and Venetian cooking in the restaurant’s repertoire, and a preference for regional tradition over modernist gesture. In Shanghai, the title she took in 2015 carried that history forward without needing to announce itself loudly.
Profile updated July 2026
FAQ
Asked of Giorgina
What is Giorgina Mazzero's current role?
Giorgina Mazzero is a chef at Da Ivo Shanghai in Shanghai in China.
