Raiza Carrera, the wild soul of the bar industry (and thank goodness someone still has the balls to be wild), returns to Italy with a project that shares her exact identity.
We are talking about Agite Club, a project born from her mind in 2023, which we would describe as a platform focused on promoting the hospitality sector and knowledge sharing. Agite Club aims to highlight the essence of bars not just as physical spaces, but above all through the people who work in them.
All of this arrives in Milan at Salmon Guru on October 6th, during one of the most anticipated and coveted weeks on the Milanese and Italian bar industry scene: World's 50 Best Bars Week, that event where everyone is desperately hunting for a ticket.
At Spaghetty, we aren't used to covering events before experiencing them, because we like to connect with people, study the dynamics, and only then share our thoughts. But in this case, we know the explosive force of this woman—whose mind moves at the speed of light—and we are fucking curious.
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing." — Jack Kerouac (On the Road)
In an era of cookie-cutter guest shifts, in an era of venues trying to stand out only to end up doing the exact same thing (because someone has to say it every now and then), Raiza has decided to literally "take over" Salmon Guru with 8 exceptional companions.
What we will likely take home (since we haven't seen anything yet) will be 8 entirely different venues sharing their own approach to hospitality, taking us on a journey from Europe to Asia and Latin America:
NAKED, Jardín Tragos y Pasteles, The St. Regis, Gorilla, Salmon Guru, LOVO, Gaia Bar, and Agite Club.
And obviously, since tickets for the 50 Best are impossible to find, this event will also be strictly by invitation only. But maybe, for once, the guest shift is actually designed to give guests a unique moment of true hospitality, leaving the ego of the personalities involved at the door.
“For me, this event is a reflection of what Agite Club is really about: connecting bars, cultures and, most importantly, people. We’re bringing together eight different bars from different parts of the world, each with its own identity and way of understanding hospitality, and putting them all behind the same bar for one night. This edition is also particularly special because, for the first time, we’re bringing food into an Agite takeover through a pop-up by Niño Gordo from Buenos Aires one of my favorite spots in south america, For us, that feels like a natural evolution. What excites me most is not the scale of the event, but the human exchange that can happen in that room. Bars have never been just physical spaces to me — they are the people, stories and communities behind them. Salmon Guru Milan gives us the opportunity to bring all of those worlds together, share knowledge, create new connections and celebrate hospitality in a very genuine way.” Raiza Carrera
To top it all off, there will be a dedicated food pop-up curated by Niño Gordo: for those unfamiliar, it is one of the most famous and celebrated fusion restaurants in Latin America, an Asian parrilla (grill) founded in 2017 in the Palermo Soho neighborhood of Buenos Aires.
