“The most important thing is to keep it, to ensure it!” Says a Parisian chef

Would the location of his establishment have brought him luck? Oxte, Enrique Casarrubias’ restaurant, located a stone’s throw from Place de l’Etoile in Paris, won its first Michelin star in 2021. “We have the octopus with black pudding, the beetroot mole pork chop”, lists the chef. A cuisine where France and Mexico, his country of origin, intertwine. Enrique Casarrubias has not forgotten the day the phone rang, in such a particular context. The director of the Michelin guide will call you back in half an hour, we warn him! “The Longest Thirty Minutes of My Life”he confides.

“At first, we didn’t believe it because we were in the Covid period, so the restaurants were closed. It’s a lot of excitement, joy but also reflection. You know, stars are not for life !”

Enrique Casarrubias, starred chef

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When asked what has changed with this star, he replies: “It hasn’t changed the way we welcome customers, it hasn’t changed the cuisine, we try to do better every day. On the other hand, it has changed the clientele!” He is happy to have kept the lunchtime regulars, the business lunches. But the Michelin distinction also attracts – in the evening in particular – people who are truly curious about this Franco-Mexican cuisine. “When we go to a restaurant, it’s to eat something we’re not used to.he says. We offer an emblematic dish here in which we will cook the meat in an earthenware casserole, and we add ears of corn and pine cones.”

A reward he owes, he says, to all of his staff: “A Michelin star is not for a chef, it’s for the whole team.” Especially since star or not, like the whole sector, Enrique Casarrubias is experiencing real recruitment problems, “We have lost a lot of people who no longer want to work in our profession”. Of its nine employees today, only one was already there before the star, only a year ago: a real turnoverwhich he cannot explain.

“We don’t understand why, we try to give the maximum. We close the restaurant on Saturday and Sunday, we give a lot of advantages. The few people who remain are quality people.”

Enrique Casarrubias

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What sommelier José Miguel confirms: “We are a very tight-knit team, we move forward together, we grow, we evolve”. To evolve maybe one day towards a second star? “The most important thing is to keep the star, to secure it”says Enrique Casarrubias. “But you know, no chef will ever say no!” And that can go through zero-waste desserts, like this amazing burnt bread ice cream: “It’s very simple: we infuse the burnt bread and the Espelette pepper in the cream, and then we can make the burnt bread ice cream.”