Dominique Crenn, 1965

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Chef Dominique Crenn inside her kitchen. Photo credit - Wikipedia

The first female chef to lead her restaurant in America to its first Michelin Star, and the highest-ranked female chef in the US.



Dominique Crenn is a San Francisco-based chef and restaurant owner. In the 2010s she won several prestigious awards – including the first female from the United States to receive three stars from the Michelin Guide – placing her as a leading female chef, in a male-dominated field.

She was adopted at the age of 18 months and raised in Versailles, France by a politicianpainter father and financial adviser mother. She graduated with a business degree from the Academy of International Commerce in Paris and moved to San Francisco in her early twenties. Without any formal culinary education, she started working in different kitchens, with a one year break flying to Indonesia, where she ran an all-women kitchen in a hotel. In 2011 she opened her own restaurant, and till 2019 opened three more.

Since she became famous, she voiced her opinions on current affairs that are close to her heart – such as the #MeToo campaign, immigration, and the environment.
She keeps her personal life – being gay and a mother of twins – private.

Defining success: Dominique Crenn at TEDxFiDiWomen

Dominique Crenn is the Chef/Owner of Altelier Crenn in San Francisco. Crenn made culinary history as the first female executive chef in Indonesia, heading the kitchen at the Intercontinental Hotel in Jakarta. She recently made history again becoming the first and only female chef in the US to earn 2 Michelin stars.

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“My biggest role models are not chefs, but women like Coco Chanel, Simone de Beauvoir, Nina Simone.”

“My biggest role models are not chefs, but women like Coco Chanel, Simone de Beauvoir, Nina Simone.”

Fun Facts

  • When announced as “Best Female Chef”, she considered rejecting the title, feeling uneasy of an award that judges women's culinary skills separately from men.
  • She starred in campaigns for refrigerators and tableware and lectured at Harvard University.
  • When she researched her heritage, she discovered that her birth father was Moroccan and her DNA was “all over the world”, originating from Southeast Asia, Siberia, Finland, Germany, France, Iberia, Italy, the Balkans, North Africa, and Africa.
  • Her 2015 cookbook includes a recipe of chocolate-cauliflower pudding.

Awards

  • Best Chef: West at the James Beard Awards in Chicago
  • Michelin Guide two stars
  • Michelin Guide three stars
  • “The World’s Best Female Chef” by the World’s 50 Best

Creations By and About Her

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Defining success: Dominique Crenn at TEDxFiDiWomen

Dominique Crenn is the Chef/Owner of Altelier Crenn in San Francisco. Crenn made culinary history as the first female executive chef in Indonesia, heading the kitchen at the Intercontinental Hotel in Jakarta. She recently made history again becoming the first and only female chef in the US to earn 2 Michelin stars.
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Category: Business & Entrepreneurship and Culinary
Tags: Chef, LGBTQ, Michelin Stars, and SF Bay Area Women

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