When the world’s most famous chefs – your Jamies, your Hestons – are freighted in to open a restaurant in Melbourne, the number of seats is usually commensurate with the level of fame. That big name has to get paid somehow.
Hats off, then, for Australian firm Salter Brothers, which has tapped California-based star Dominique Crenn for a little 40-seat restaurant on Collins Street, inside the Intercontinental. The French-born chef is best known for her three-Michelin-starred Atelier Crenn in San Francisco and also runs Monsieur Dior in LA and Café Dior in Dallas. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people of 2024.
“Petit Crenn comes from my own life, from the cafes in France where you can sit for five minutes or five hours and always feel welcome,” Crenn wrote in a statement. “I’ve wanted to bring that feeling to Australia for a long time, and Melbourne, with its curiosity and its love of good food, felt like exactly the right place to do it.”
Paris’s all-day comptoirs were the starting point for the menu, which will be about coffee and pastries in the morning. Everyday bistro food is the game at lunch and dinner. Dishes revealed so far are mussels with preserved lemon, French raviole with onion consommé, and steak tartare with egg yolk jam and sauce au poivre.
Crenn designed the space with Salter’s in-house team, drawing on the landscapes and coastlines of Brittany, where she grew up. Natural materials figure strongly. Excitingly, a standing-only table, Le Contour, will put five guests right next to the action in the kitchen.
Petit Crenn will open at 495 Collins Street, Melbourne in October 2026.
Dining and Cooking