Mattia Agazzi

The Essentials - Nationality: Italian. - Current role: Executive Chef, Gucci Osteria da Massimo Bottura, Beverly Hills, 2020–present. - Specialty: Contemporary Italian cuisine infused with local culture. - Background note: “I come from Bergamo and landed at Gucci Osteria after meeting Massimo Bottura when I had an interview at Francescana and they initially told me about the Gucci Osteria project in Florence.” Agazzi’s story carries the momentum of an Italian kitchen culture shaped by memory, family, and movement. He comes from Bergamo, and the path that led him to Beverly Hills begins with a meeting with Massimo Bottura at Francescana, where he was interviewing and first heard about the Gucci Osteria project in Florence. That origin gives his work a pleasing sense of continuity: one restaurant conversation opening onto another, one city leading into the next, with his cooking now translating Italian ideas through a California lens. At Gucci Osteria da Massimo Bottura, his cuisine leans into contrast—elegance with wit, precision with play. Contemporary Italian cuisine, in his hands, is not frozen in nostalgia. It is alive to place, to the surrounding culture, and to the possibility that familiar flavors can be re-seen from a sharper, more current angle.

Signature

Mattia's signature dishes include Uni Carbonara, Oops I Broke the Meringue, and Risotto camouflaged as pizza. Those titles alone hint at the spirit of the menu: a chef willing to let humor, surprise, and technical control share the same plate. Uni Carbonara suggests a meeting of richness and sea-bright intensity; Oops I Broke the Meringue carries a wink in its very name; Risotto camouflaged as pizza promises the kind of culinary sleight of hand that rewards curiosity before the first bite. Together, they point to a kitchen language that is modern, confident, and unafraid of a little theater.

In Their Words “It is this gathering of the whole family – and some households also have their grandparents living under the same roof too – that I think has made our food so famously convivial; the tradition to celebrate food altogether daily.” “Before we ate, we always waited for everyone to be seated at the communal table, which feels very traditional for an Italian way of eating.” These reflections open a window onto the emotional center of Agazzi’s cooking. What he remembers is not merely a set of recipes, but the atmosphere around them: the patience of waiting, the gravity and comfort of a communal table, the everyday ritual of gathering as a family before a meal begins. In that sense, his food seems to carry forward an inherited way of eating—one in which conviviality is not an accessory, but the heart of the experience.