Elena Reygadas Has a Michelin Star. Her Martini Glass Has Zero Reviews.
Three stockists we tried to confirm gave us a dead page, a block and a password. None of the four we did confirm carries a review.
Did not pass
Somewhere in Marostica, a small town in Italy’s Veneto region, a third-generation glassblower held a gather of molten borosilicate to his lips and shaped something inspired by vessels buried under volcanic ash two thousand years ago.
The glass he made costs $124 for a set of two. It carries the name of a restaurant in Mexico City ranked 46th in the world.
Nobody who has bought it has reviewed it.
That is not an exaggeration. Zero.
The Collaboration
R+D.LAB is a Milan design studio founded in 2006 by Jay Vosoghi and Sara Mostofi. Their glassware is mouth-blown in Marostica using German borosilicate glass sourced from the company that invented it in 1893.
East Fork, the Asheville pottery brand whose own team calls R+D.LAB “the very best,” has been selling their work for years.
The Rosetta collection came from a different direction. R+D.LAB partnered with Elena Reygadas, chef and owner of Rosetta in Mexico City. Reygadas was named World’s Best Female Chef in 2023 by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, voted by 1,080 culinary experts in a process audited by Deloitte. Her restaurant holds a Michelin star and currently sits at number 46 on the World’s 50 Best list. She runs five restaurants and employs 410 people.
The collaboration was guided by Fenn Apartamento, the design publication.
Together they designed three pieces: the Sour, the Martini, and the Acqua, each drawing from ancient Mediterranean drinking vessels found at Pompeii. The product page describes the intent: “a modern glassware that conveys a timeless elegance” by reviving “the subtlety and elegance of curves” from a bygone civilization.
Four Retailers, Zero Reviews
We confirmed R+D.LAB’s presence at four premium retailers. Heath Ceramics in San Francisco carries over 100 of their products, including the Rosetta Sour and Rosetta Acqua at $124 each. Kneen and Co, an authorized dealer on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, lists the Rosetta Acqua at $132. abc carpet and home in New York stocks 19 R+D.LAB pieces. East Fork sells their glassware alongside an editorial feature that details the collaboration between Jay Vosoghi and their co-founder Connie Matisse.
Three additional stockist claims could not be verified on the day we checked. The MR PORTER page returned a 404 error. Goop blocked our access. MARCH San Francisco’s site was password-protected. These retailers may well carry the brand, but we could not confirm it, so we did not count it.
What none of these retailers have, for any R+D.LAB product, is a customer review.
The brand’s own Shopify site has no review widget. Heath has no reviews for R+D.LAB. Kneen has none. abc has none. We searched Amazon (not sold there), Reddit (no discussions), Trustpilot (no page exists). The review count across the entire internet, for the Rosetta Martini or any R+D.LAB glass, is zero.
Where It Landed
GLOW scored 8. The borosilicate clarity and Pompeii-inspired curves photograph with the precision you would expect from a studio whose work sits next to Heath dinnerware and East Fork pottery.
WOW scored 9. R+D.LAB is invisible to most shoppers despite being stocked by four of the most respected design retailers in the United States. The Elena Reygadas collaboration adds a layer of discovery that no competitor in our barware collection can match.
A Michelin-starred chef whose restaurant is named after the glass collection you are holding is not a story you encounter often.
MOMENT scored 8. A set of two martini glasses, designed by a world-class chef and inspired by Pompeii, turns a first pour into a conversation. The story does the work.
TRUST scored 4.5, derived from a confidence score of 45 out of 100. Four verified premium stockists. One of the most credentialed chef collaborations we have encountered. Nineteen years of continuous operation. And not a single person on the public internet describing the experience of drinking from one of these glasses.
The final SleekNova Score: 7.83. The threshold is 8.0.
Why We Wanted This
The R+D.LAB Rosetta Martini would have been the first cocktail coupe or martini glass in our barware collection. Twenty-two products, and not one designed for the drink that defines the home bar.
The combination of a World’s Best Female Chef collaboration, Pompeii-era design inspiration, and Italian artisan production made this one of the most compelling candidates we have evaluated in barware. The Sophie Lou Jacobsen Piano Cocktail Glasses, which scored 8.5, serve the same shape category with AD100 credentials and verified buyers.
The coupe gap remains.
What Would Change
Verified customer reviews across any platform would shift the confidence score. A single major retailer enabling a review widget for R+D.LAB products would provide the data our system needs.
The brand validation is extraordinary. The customer experience data is absent. Those are two different things, and our system requires both.
