The art of creating moments people will never forget

“I don't want cooks to be just workers. I want them to be thinkers. I want them to be proud about the dishes they create.”

At ATELIER CRENN, diners are presented with a poem, not a menu. Each verse arrives as a dish created by the chef's team. Walk in the Forest is a dessert version of a savory dish the restaurant served when it first opened. Pastry chef Juan Contreras suggested the revival. It evokes Crenn's memories of mushroom- and berry-hunting excursions in the French woods with her father and brother. Customers, she says, are interested in the narrative and the journey. “It's all part of an expanse,” she says. The dessert has “the texture, sweetness, and bitterness of what the forest is about.”

Pat Parker, a ceramicist in Florida, designed the bowl to imitate the grain and color of the trees in Brittany, where Crenn spent her childhood. ● Sorrel extract, drawn from the plant's bitter stems, is blended into a sweet mixture that's frozen to...