Karime López deja Gucci Osteria da Massimo Bottura

In the coming months, Karime López will be stepping down from her helm of Gucci Osteria da Massimo Bottura in Florence for personal reasons. The news, contained in these few lines and confirmed to us by the Gucci Osteria team just hours ago, marks a turning point in a notoriously lazy and silent gastronomic summer.

Something is changing at one of the coolest fine dining restaurants to emerge in recent years, the first project born from the collaboration between Massimo Bottura and former Gucci CEO Marco Bizzarri, his childhood friend. A project that fuses haute cuisine and fashion, located in a stunning building (Palazzo della Mercanzia, home of Palazzo Gucci), with a concept (from the ambiance to the ceramics, from the spaces to the colors) dedicated to beauty.

All of this would have been enough to make Gucci Osteria a trendy dining destination, in fact. And yet, adding that extra touch was Karime Lopez (one of the very few Michelin-starred Italian female chefs of her generation, as well as the first Mexican female chef to receive one). With her astonishing touch, she quickly gave the place an identity that transcended and differentiated the world of Osteria Francescana. Karime—just as Jessica Rosval, another incredibly talented student of Bottura, is doing today—really put her own spin on it. She brought her personality, her South America (her Purple Corn Tostada became a signature dish at lightning speed, as only great dishes can), and we like to think she even exceeded the expectations of the Florentine Maison, and of Bottura himself, in a sort of modern fairytale in which a young chef takes full pride of place.

Takahiko Kondo, former sous-chef at Osteria Francescana and Karime Lopez's assistant at the restaurant since 2022, will remain at Gucci Osteria Firenze, demonstrating that if there was a breakup, it happened peacefully. Karime, it seems, is taking some time for herself and her family outside the kitchen. And Gucci Osteria Firenze continues to operate, at least in part, despite the absence of the hand that had made its identity so strong and personal.

Karime Lopez, (former) chef of Gucci Osteria Firenze

Under Karime Lopez's leadership, Gucci Osteria Firenze has quickly achieved significant milestones, starting with the achievement of its first Michelin star in 2019, which made Karime the first female Mexican chef to achieve this prestigious recognition.

Karime has served as Head Chef since the restaurant's opening in January 2018, when Gucci and Massimo Bottura entrusted her with the project in Piazza della Signoria. In just a few years, she and her team have created an innovative culinary aesthetic that blends international influences with Italian excellence, earning critical acclaim and an international following. In 2020, she was named Female Chef of the Year in Italy and in 2023, Best Mexican Chef Abroad by the National Chamber of Restaurants and Seasoned Foods. That same year, she also received the Food Art award at the Best Chef Awards.

Karime's journey is the culmination of experiences spanning the globe. Born in Mexico City, she studied art in Paris, where she was captivated by the "art de vivre" of pâtisseries and tea salons, realizing that food could be an art form.

Thus began his training in the best restaurants in the world: at the three-star Can Fabes with Santi Santamaria in Catalonia, at Mugaritz in the Basque Country with Andoni Luis Aduriz, at Enrique Olvera's Pujol in Mexico, at Seiji Yamamoto's Ryugin in Tokyo and finally at Central in Lima, where he worked alongside Virgilio Martinez and Pia Leon studying Andean ingredients and indigenous techniques.

In 2014, she met Takahiko Kondo, sous-chef at Osteria Francescana, in New York. He would become her husband in 2016 and remains at the helm of the restaurant in Piazza della Signoria today. In 2017, she moved permanently to Italy, becoming part of the great Francescana family. Then came her debut at Gucci Osteria, and the beginning of a more personal career focused on her own image, which we hope she will one day resume, starting from here.