Dominique Crenn is a French-American chef and the chef-owner of Atelier Crenn in San Francisco, the first restaurant in the United States to earn three Michelin stars under a female chef. She was born on April 7, 1965, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France, and was adopted at eighteen months old by a couple in Versailles. Summers on a family farm in Brittany and a mother who cooked Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese food at home shaped an early, wide-ranging palate, while her father, a politician, took her to Michelin-starred restaurants as a child. She went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in international business before turning to professional cooking. Wikipedia’s Dominique Crenn biography outlines this upbringing and the academic background that preceded her career in kitchens.

Crenn’s professional cooking career began in the late 1980s at Stars in San Francisco under chef Jeremiah Tower, followed by stints at Campton Place, 2223 Market and the Yoyo Bistro inside the Miyako Hotel. She then became head chef at the InterContinental Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia’s first female head chef, before fleeing the country during the civil unrest of 1998. Back in the United States she cooked at the Manhattan Country Club in Manhattan Beach and Abode Restaurant and Lounge in Santa Monica, then returned to San Francisco in 2008 to lead the kitchen at Luce, where she earned her first Michelin star in 2009 and a second in 2010. Wikipedia’s account of her career traces this decades-long path through hotel kitchens on two continents before she had a restaurant of her own.

In January 2011, Crenn opened Atelier Crenn in the Cow Hollow neighborhood of San Francisco with business partner Juan Contreras, building a menu written as poetry that reflected her Brittany childhood and her father’s influence. The restaurant earned a Michelin star almost immediately, making Crenn the first female chef in the United States to receive one, and had climbed to two stars by 2013. Wikipedia’s page on Atelier Crenn confirms the January 2011 opening and the rapid two-star climb that established Crenn as a serious contender at the top of American fine dining.

In November 2018, the Michelin Guide awarded Atelier Crenn a third star for 2019, making Crenn the first, and to date the only, female chef in the United States to hold three Michelin stars for a restaurant of her own. The Michelin Guide’s official listing for Atelier Crenn confirms the restaurant has held three stars continuously since, including the 2025 and 2026 guides. In 2016 the World’s 50 Best Restaurants organization named her Best Female Chef in the World, and in 2021 it presented her with its Icon Award; World’s 50 Best’s page on Atelier Crenn records both honors alongside the restaurant’s continued ranking on the North America’s 50 Best list.

Crenn won the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: West in 2018 and was featured in the second season of Netflix’s Chef’s Table, introducing her cooking and personal story to a global streaming audience. In May 2019, only months after earning her third Michelin star, she publicly disclosed on Instagram that she had been diagnosed with stage two or three triple-negative breast cancer, a diagnosis she later wrote about in her memoir; she has described herself as cancer-free in the years since. Wikipedia’s biography records the James Beard award and Chef’s Table feature, while Bravo’s coverage of her Instagram announcement documents the 2019 cancer diagnosis that became a widely covered part of her public story. She was also named to the Time 100 list of the world’s most influential people in 2024.

Monsieur Dior is structured as a direct partnership between Crenn and the luxury fashion house Christian Dior rather than a restaurant she owns outright, pairing her cooking with a menu inspired by Hollywood’s golden era inside Dior’s own retail space. Time Out’s report on the Beverly Hills opening describes the collaboration and its fall 2025 debut. On television, Crenn is a judge on Food Network’s Tournament of Champions, a paid role alongside chefs including Alex Guarnaschelli, Marcus Samuelsson and Michael Symon, and she also judges the French edition of Top Chef. Reality Blurred’s coverage of Tournament of Champions season 7 confirms her place on the judging panel, work that supplements restaurant income with television fees rather than replacing it.

Crenn built a small restaurant group around Atelier Crenn rather than a single property: Bar Crenn, a French wine bar next door, opened in March 2018 and earned its own Michelin star, while Petit Crenn, a casual Brittany-inspired bistro in Hayes Valley, ran from 2015 until its lease ended and the restaurant closed permanently in September 2024. SFist’s report on Petit Crenn’s closure confirms the 2015 opening and the September 2024 end date tied to the lease expiration. Crenn also expanded internationally with Golden Poppy, a California-inspired restaurant inside the La Fantaisie hotel in Paris that opened in 2023 and closed after about a year; The Taste Edit’s review of Golden Poppy describes the short-lived Paris venture. In fall 2025 she opened Monsieur Dior in Beverly Hills, a 105-seat restaurant on the third floor of Christian Dior’s flagship store and the brand’s first full-service restaurant in the United States.

Atelier Crenn operates from 3127 Fillmore Street in San Francisco’s Cow Hollow neighborhood, a leased commercial property held through the restaurant’s corporate structure rather than as Crenn’s personal real estate. Wikipedia’s Atelier Crenn page confirms this address, but no public source found in this research, including biographical profiles, restaurant-trade coverage and television-industry press, discloses Crenn’s personal home, investment property or other major personal assets. In the absence of documented figures, this section is limited to the verifiable restaurant real estate and does not assume undisclosed personal holdings.