Bloomberg Businessweek (Europe)
For this chef, “it’s not just putting food on a plate. It’s also storytelling”
To please the palate, chef DOMINIQUE CRENN first captivates the eye By Howard Chua-Eoan
“The visuals must trigger something in your mind, condition you to what you experience. It's not just putting food on a plate. It's also storytelling.”
“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.”