Chef Mauro Colagreco. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The chef "magnifies" his cuisine through essences and flavors of the south of France embracing land and sea, herbs and flowers, bitter and acid tastes to create dishes without borders. The current seasonal menu is an exploration of elements like citrus, purple cauliflower, scallop and radish flowers with aged balsamic vinegar. The goal, he says, is to revive the simple enjoyments of friendship and the spirit of a festive dining gathering by the Cote d' Azur seaside.

At Azur in Beijing, signature dishes start with French Gillardeau oysters with shallot whipped cream and Williams pear declination, and the meal could end with the delicate sweetness of Naranjo en Flor, a fantasy of saffron cream, orange sorbet, almond foam and more. The recent Michelin celebration dinner also highlighted his king crab and grapefruit roll, a savory calamari and eggplant, and crispy suckling pig nestled in a variety of corn-based textures.

Colagreco beams after early-morning shopping for produce at Beijing's Sanyuanli market－a favorite of high-end chefs in the capital, though some of his colleagues teased him about the cost.

Colagreco simply smiles. "Sometimes you have to pay to get the quality," he says.

He also took some good-natured teasing from his colleagues about his use of garlic, which is sparing.

"Chinese would use a lot more," says one.

"Are you sure you're Italian?" jokes someone else?

Colagreco insists that subtlety is the core of his art.

Simple things like well-made fresh bread are "designed to wake up some memories", he says. Starting a meal that way evokes his own memories of meals with his grandmother, and also of a much loved poem by Pablo Neruda, which he likes to present at table with his bread. It begins:

Bread, you rise

from flour,

water and fire.

Dense or light,

flattened or round,

you duplicate

the mother's

rounded womb,

and earth's

twice-yearly

swelling.

How simple

you are, bread,

and how profound!