San Francisco’s modernist Atelier Crenn, long praised by local and national critics as one of the country’s top fine dining establishments, has finally received a global culinary honor it has curiously lacked: three Michelin stars.
The award bears particular significance because it highlights historic gender disparities in both professional kitchens and the top tiers of international culinary guides. In the thirteen years since Michelin came to the states, Dominique Crenn is the first female head chef of a three-starred restaurant.
Since its opening in 2011, Atelier Crenn has served as one of the West Coast’s few bastions of progressive, sometimes avant-garde cuisine, serving apple cider encased in white chocolate spheres and printing interpretive menus in the form of nature-inspired poems. Its opening and success presaged and, to an extent, helped paved the way for two prominent experimental spots in Los Angeles, the heralded Dialogue and more controversial Vespertine.
Eater’s ex-national critic, Bill Addison, wrote that his most recent dinner at Crenn “was filled with greater fundamental pleasure than the first one. More masterfully than ever, Crenn and her team are mining the middle ground between intellect and emotion, between thrilling drama and flat-out satisfying flavors.”
Atelier Crenn earned two stars by 2013. With the exception of Baumé, all of her two-star brethren that year — Benu, Saison, Manresa, and Coi — had already been elevated to three stars. Quince, which held a single star that year, was promoted to three in the 2017 guide. All are run by male chefs (Coi was downgraded in 2019).
Of the 120 or so three starred restaurants around the world, only about five are run by women: Arzak (Elena Arzak), Maison Pic (Anne-Sophie Pic), Dal Pescatore (Nadia Santini), Sant Pau (Carme Ruscadella, described by Michelin as a “short-haired feisty Spanish-Catalan chef”), and now, Atelier Crenn. Katianna Hong, now chef at Charter Oak, ran the three Michelin-starred Meadowood as chef de cuisine under chef Christopher Kostow.
Atelier Crenn, like the Bay Area’s other vaunted fine dining establishments, is a supremely expensive place to dine. Dinner is $335 per person, service included. A fully-loaded dinner for two, after optional wine pairings and tax, will run over $1,200. There is also a $450 chef’s table option.
“It is a splurge most of us can afford very, very rarely,” Addison wrote of Atelier Crenn. “But I will also say that this ranks alongside Benu and Saison as the mind-opening indulgences I would spend my own money to binge.”
Dining and Cooking