Elena Reygadas has had a busy and exciting last couple of years. The chef and owner of Mexico City’s Rosetta received the award for The World’s Best Female Chef 2023 in May of last year. Rosetta has been featured in eight editions of Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants since 2014, and recently announced as number 34 in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Now, the gorgeous garden restaurant has received a Michelin star in the guide’s first ever Mexico edition.
After starting her culinary career in London, Reygadas decided to return to her hometown to see what she could do with traditional Mexican products and recipes. Opened in 2010 in an old mansion in the emblematic Colonia Roma neighborhood, Rosetta offers the chef’s personal vision of Mexican cuisine, with a focus on seasonality, sustainability and fair-trade, using local ingredients sourced from small producers. The result is a creative cuisine that is decidedly Mexican, but with global influences.
Rosetta’s garden inspired dining room is elegant yet relaxed and serene.
On the restaurant’s second floor, Reygadas reimagined a space as Salón Rosetta, an intimate bar showcasing cocktails and house fermented beverages, Mexican spirits, and wines. Her other restaurant projects include Panadería Rosetta, a gourmet bakery where she creates traditional Mexican breads and pastries with a modern twist, and locally beloved casual concepts Lardo, Café Nin and Bella Aurora.
The chef is widely recognized for her commitments to social and environmental causes, serves in various boards of directors, and established the Elena Reygadas Fellowship to foster equal opportunities and strengthen the leadership of Mexican women in the culinary world. She also launched a publishing project, Notebooks on Food Culture, Health and the Environment, in collaboration with respected authorities in each field, designed to share topical reflections on these essential subjects.
A dedicated admirer of design, she just debuted the Rosetta Collection, a line of modern glassware designed in collaboration with Milan-based creative studio Research and Design Lab (R +D.Lab), hand-crafted in Italy with borosilicate glass and shaped through a traditional mouth-blowing technique. These are available for purchase at the adjacent Mesa Rosetta, a shop that sells many of the dining accessories used at the restaurant, including some developed by Reygadas over the years in collaboration with Mexican artisans and designers.
The Rosetta Collection is a line of glassware designed in collaboration with Milan-based creative … [+]
How, one may ask, does one single woman manage to do so much. “I don’t do it alone; I have an incredible team on which I rely every single day,” says Reygadas, a petite, soft-spoken lady who carries herself with the simplicity and elegance she has infused into her flagship restaurant. “More than employees they are collaborators. We are constantly brainstorming ideas for dishes, concepts, and events. There is no way I could do everything I do without them.”
Reygadas also relies on her purveyors to craft her outstanding cuisine. Sure, there are iconic items at Rosetta that will always be there – the savoy cabbage tacos with romeritos and pistachio pipián, for instance – but most of the menu will change according to availability. Currently, summer mangos feature in an appetizer, as does shrimp aspic with stone crab and avocado. Thanks to her time cooking at an Italian restaurant in London, pastas and gnocchi feature prominently, all infused with Mexican ingredients like huitlacoche, epazote and amaranth.
The savoy cabbage tacos with romeritos and pistachio pipián are a mainstay in Rosetta’s … [+]
Although not a strictly vegetarian restaurant, the menu relies heavily on fruits and vegetables, which come from nearby farms such as Huerto Tlatelolco and Arca Tierra. The few meats on the menu come from family ranches and sustainable fisheries, which the chef supports not just because of their excellent quality, but also to help them continue their environmentally friendly practices.
For these and many other reasons, all the recognitions Reygadas had received over the years are more than justified, and the latest award of a Michelin star is, so far, the crowning jewel on her incredible career.
“We’re overwhelmed by Michelin’s recognition of Rosetta during this inaugural Mexico Guide that is a testament to the depth and diversity of the culinary scene in our region,” says the chef. “Rosetta is a restaurant that has continuously evolved since we opened our doors in 2010, and we found our voice through an experience that celebrates our community, the indelible contributions of our team, and the purveyors who inspire us. We’re filled with joy to share this with our restaurant family, and every colleague, artisan, farmer, and producer who has played a role in Rosetta’s story.”