The Road to Michelin Stars: Stories Behind Every Plate (ft. Dominique Crenn)

Really I say foody subjective, but we do it with antigrity.
We have a voice on the plate, and I think
that's important. A chef should always have a voice on
the plate. And when I go to a restaurant, I
look at the story of the chef. I'm not here
to judge anyone. Someone will cook a burger around the
corner store or on the street making a berry too.
I love that if it's really good.
You always tell me how you love a hot dog.
Oh the best. A good hot dog is amazing. She
just crunchy, is nappy, and then you have the sour
crude with like that fermentation and the relish. The sweetness
is like and that's a perfection.
This is Wayfinder, life changing travel. This podcast goes beyond
the guide books into the heart and soul of real
life travelers as they journey around the world. I'm your host,
Daniel Scheffler. On this very special episode, I'm joined by
my dear friend, Dominie Crenn, a three Michelin star chef
and the force behind the restaurant Attalia Crenne in San Francisco.
She's also a mother, a storyteller, and one of the
most thoughtful people I know. Together will trace the geography
of her life from Brittany to San Francisco, family origins
to self discovery, ancestry to ancestry, and explore how every
piece of our journey eventually finds its way into who
we are and how we love. Don Gio Dominique bo'jo,
How are you okay? So let's start from the beginning.
Where did your story begin and how does it play
a role in your cuisine today?
Well, I think my story started at birth. I had
a journey about six months with my birth mother. She
was living on the street and she left me to
a babysitter, and then I went to an orphanage in
Versailles and I stayed there until the age of eighteen months.
And I was adopted by these wonderful people from Brittany.
But the living outside of Paris. My dad was a politician,
my mom was doing financial things. Both of my parents
come from farmers, so I was spending a lot of
time on the farm, especially with my grandmother. On my
mother's side, she had a put it a farm in
Brittany by the sea, and my grandmother was an amazing cook.
My mom was a great cook. My dad was the
worst cook in the world, but he loved to eat
and his best friend was a big food critique for
the Telegram, which is a newspaper in Brittany. And you know,
grew up at home with a lot of beautiful dinners
and going to a lot of great restaurants, and she
just had this love of community around the table, understanding
where the food come from and all of this. So
in France it's natural, but never thought about me becoming
a chef.
What was your travel life like as a child.
My father and my mother wanted us to learn diversity
tea and to see at the culture and the reason
why because very younger she told us that we were adopted,
and they said, we don't know really where you background
and where you come from, but what we know is
we love you, and we want to make sure that
you know when you go out there and people don't
look like you, or don't eat like you, or don't
have the same religion, then you doesn't mean they are
bad people. They live differently, but they have a common values,
which is family and love. That we are and we
want you guys to discover this. So a lot of travel,
a lot of his story, a lot of music, a
lot of knowledge that my dad wanted for us to discover.
After she finished college with a determination for more creativity,
Dominique set her compass West.
I told my dad, I can't be in France. They
don't care about creative people. And you say, want to
go I said, I want to go to United States,
but not anywhere else than California. And he said why California?
I said, Dad, I watched Stocky and Arch on TV.
You know, the wild, Wild West. I want to go
out there. It's like this sense of freedom out there.
So I went to San Francisco in knew someone and
then I was like, what I'm going to do. Maybe
I should cook. And I searched for the most anteresting
chefs because I didn't want to go to a French kitchen.
I have no antiest because I knew how the French
kitchen worked. And I met this man called jeremiaht to
Tower and he opened this restaurant called Stars in the eighties,
and I think Stars become one of the most progressive
American restaurant in the United States. And the reason why
is because he had a different philosophy and a lot
of chefs. So I wanted to go and work with
him because I did some research and the guy didn't
go to school either. He study architecture, and I'm like,
if he can do it, I can do it. So
I went to Stars with no appointment and he was
standing up in front of the open kitchen, which was
one of the first open kitchen in the United States,
and I was just like, Hi, not know, how are you?
I'm the Nukraine and I will love to speak with you.
Chef nothing, just looking straight into his kitchen and me
totally invisible next to him. Do you think I'm going
to walk away? Or no? No, no, no. I didn't
come all the way to not speak to him. And
then so I asked him a second time and nothing.
Then I started to get pissed off and I said, Chef,
I'm looking at your kitchen right now. I see just
men running around and where is me? And it's just
turned to me and he's like, who the are you?
And I said, I've already told you I'm Domini Crank
and I want to work with you. And he's like, okay, tonight,
you're going to be on the line with Chef Sean,
the su chef at the time, So I made my
way into Starts in nineteen ninety one and I was
with him almost three years. And what I loved about
Jeremiah Tower that he saw us for who we were,
and he was not afraid of talking to us. And
he said, this is HUMANU. This is the ingredient that
I want you guys to use. This is the idea
of the dish. There is no recipe. Each of you
guys have three or four dishes. By four point thirty,
we're going to do a testing. So it enabled our
creativity to be able to pour this into the making
of the dish. But you will also add that idea
that it was like, Wow, it trusts me as a cook.
See that's the difference. It gave us, with a lot
of tension, the responsibility to do that dish. But that
responsibility was also he gave us the go ahead. Hey,
I trust you. You're here because I trust you. It
saw us as human, not as a number. So I
learned that from him. But I also learned to change
the menu and to deal with farmers and to understand
where the food come from and also what California give
to us, you know, and the story beyond California and
we're not here to do Italian food. We here to
do California food. And what is California food? Well, California
is a metipop of a lot of different communities. We
all know that California used to belong to Mexico, so
a lot of Mexican influance, but a lot of Asian influance,
like the Chinese, Japanese. I mean, we all know that story.
They came here and a long time ago, and they
were also an alienated community, but they brought things to California.
So it was like this area in United State which
was not the United State. I was like, yeah, I'm
all for it.
This is the place.
Yes, it's amazing, and the diversity was there at the beginning,
and I was like, this is my home.
Dominicue had found her home in San Francisco and built
a life, a career, and a sense of identity there.
But identity has a way of resisting meat conclusions. Just
when she thought she had made sense of her story,
an unexpected discovery revealed there was more to uncover.
I decided to do n Indienna years ago and what
came up is French and German fifty percent and thirty
three percent. North Africa, so Maroco and Tunisia, Jiaia and
even Siaya, you know, all that area, and then West
Africa Sierra Leon, Liberia, and then it go up to Anatolia,
which is the old world of Chucki, and then through
Egypt and then go east from Siberia to the Jakup
which is a tribe, and then go back to East Europe.
And I was like, this is so interesting. I was
trying to understand. At one point, It's like who I am,
what is my identity? I mean, how I'm supposed to cook?
And then I realized that cooking is so deep inside
of you. There's things inside of you. You don't know
where that come from. And when I was very young,
I love anything that comes from the water, and Mediterranean
and Britain is like that too, but it's a lot better,
which is a little bit different, which I love also.
But one thing that is difficult for me is the
spices of Morocco. And I don't know what it is.
Is it something that maybe I had to do with
what happened with my birth mother. I don't know.
It's just weird, like a trauma.
There's a trauma differently in me and everything is connected.
Food is connected to trauma and all of this, of course,
and then I really got deep with what I was
eating at home and my grandmother cooking and all that.
So Brittany and the water and the fish, it's that
other side of my DNA that you sid I love it.
So I wrote in my book, you don't define your
identity where are you from. You define your identity where
you we are brought up and who give you? Loving me?
That's a mix. Yeah. As an adopted child, I feel
the same. Like meeting my birth mother and seeing how
she is and how she lives. It's like, oh, there's
so much she did not imprint on me. It was
my French mother that imprinted most of who I am
on me, my adopted French mother, you know absolutely. Okay, wait,
tell me when you found out this North African ancestry,
what was emotionally significant understanding that you're now a citizen
of the world. Like I grew up thinking, oh, I'm
just one thing. And then I expanded this by doing
twenty three and me and you know, I knew I
was adopted, but I didn't know what that really meant.
And then I was like, Oh, I'm something different to
what I thought, So tell me the emotional significance.
Well, I think the emotion is that you grew up
in a place where you think this is your country
and then you have this in your head and then
it kind of closed down your brain. But it was
emotional because Yallomi is like who I am to judge
anyone in this world that don't look like me or
is different than me. And it is also teach you
how people were moving all over the world, you know,
like the migration. There was not really any frontier they
are to move because they were very nomadic. And so
the idea that we own something it's crazy. The idea
of you can't live here or you not allowed to
live here. It's like, now we are people of the world. Yeah,
culture is important because of time and place, but we
have to be more open about inviting others to the table.
And that allow me to look at the world differently
and to find pride in who I am and who
I am and I'm proud of it.
Having this new information about your identity and your roots.
Did it influence your cooking.
Well, I think the cooking was never an idea of
to follow somebody else footstep and start trying to find
my own voice in the way that I use ingredient
like a painting or a photography is like, what is
the emotion why I'm going to pick this and I'm
going to mix that. There is no dictionary about this,
but it goes well together for me and to understand
the test of it. I feel food. You know, it's
like I like it or I don't like it. And
food is subjective also, which is very interesting. Chefs should
cook the way they thing is good, and you're going
to have people that are going to push back and
it's going to say, we don't like that, and that's okay.
Like there's some people that came to the restaurant a
few months ago and they're like, there is no meat
on the menu, and it's like, yeah, hell, it's a
pescatarian menu. I said, food is subjective, but we do
it with antigrity. We have a voice on the plate,
and I think that's important. A chef should always have
a voice on the plate. And when I go to
a restaurant, I look at the story of the chef.
I'm not here to judge anyone. Someone will cook a
burger around the corner store or on the street making
a berry too. I love that if it's really good.
You always tell me how you love a hot dog.
Oh the best. A good hot dog is amazing. She
just crunchy, is nappy, and then you have the sour
crude with like that fermentation and the really sweetness is
like and.
It's a perfection for Dominique. A menu isn't just a
collection of dishes. It's an autobiography. Every ingredient, every flavor,
and every source carries traces of the people and places
that raised her, the adversity that shaped her, and the
encounters that continue to inspire her.
The way that I cook today, I find myself a
whole again because when my dad to where it was
like a part of me just died. But it was working, working,
and then the cancer happened and then I was like,
all right, anything else that's going to happen. And then
my mom passed away in twenty twenty three. It was difficult.
I was lost, and then I traveled back to Brittany
and put new flowers on their grade. My dad and
my mom just together, and then something happened. I just
embraced my life and I remember the last words of
my mom, and I'm like, Okay, let's continue this journally
free of heartbreak and all of this. Let's do it,
and let's continue to create things with the team that
speak to us and bring emotion to others. And the
menu today, I mean you still have the little drink
at the beginning, you know, the that you pop in
your mouth, and then it's a lot of things from
the farm and it's a little snack of emotion of
what I grew up in Brittany. You know, the flower,
the oaster, the longustin. I mean, this is not the
longest sein we use. We use the Pacific shrimp and
it's super good. And then the onion soup. I hated
onion soup, and so I made my own onion soup
and the onion about Brittany and all that, you know,
I grew up with that alion feeling. And then the
abalonee also and the fermented sauce from carrots from the farm,
beautiful scalo cook aminute on one side with different type
of gel that I made from all the herbs from
the farm. Just little things like that, and then top
with a little fish shows that we've been doing for
the last three years. Then I go to the desert
and the chocolate and the marshmallow and the crisp pimmeering
and the consumme of strawberry. It's all my shallow and
taste that I love, but also what I want to
be tomorrow. It makes sense.
Yeah, that's the journey.
It's the journey, and my journey is all about sources.
It's like the ocean is the core of the earth,
So the sources for me at the core of the dish,
all the flavors of the ocean inside of the sauce.
This is how I describe it.
After all these travels, this emotional travel. There's travel with
your family, this kind of travel for yourself. We need
a little San Francisco love because that's your town. What
makes San Francisco home to you?
You know what makes San Francisco go home to me
is because I can travel in San Francisco and learn
every day something new. When I read about a new
restaurant opening and I read about the young chefs opening
those restaurants and their story where they come from, it's
so exciting for me and I was like, wow, I
am so grateful and lucky to be a part of
this community.
After decades of living, cooking, and building community in San Francisco.
Here are Dominique Cran's tips for travelers hoping to experience
the city the way she does.
I will tell them to not rent a car. You
can walk everywhere in San Francisco. I love to take
the trolley. I love that that gives us a sense
of San Francisco is very hilly, so they can go
from downtown area to Russian Hill. It's just amazing. They
need to walk by the Fisherman Wharf, go up to
the Ferry building. The landscape here in San Francisco and
outside of San Francisco it's incredible. They got to go
to Marine Island. You got to go to Alamo Park
and Preceduo amazing. Walk by the beach under the Goldenen Bridge,
It's beautiful. The museum are incredible, from the Dion to
the MoMA to the Lesion Dinner. The food is incredible,
from Little Chinatown to the Clement Street Shinatown Asian Italian.
You have to go to the mission to understand what
San Francisco is. There is the Western Addition. There is
the film More where there's this huge history about the blues,
the jazz and all of this. It's kind of the
melting pot of what America is, you know, and every
community is really coming together. What's beautiful about San Francisco.
We accept each other for who they are. The freedom
is incredible. You're going to have people that say something bad,
but we come together as community. You know, we have
an earthquake, we have fire, we have like a lot
of things happening here. But that's what is our resilience.
You know, it's where the love and peace started. Hate Street,
a lot of things started here. You know. Human rights,
a lot of human rights started here.
Alsokay, right, yeah. I love how close you look with
your emotions. You live like me, Like we're ready to cry,
we're ready to laugh, We're ready to be angry, We're
ready with that stuff. Do you think that you're able
to be more creative because you're like.
This, Well, you know, vulnerability is one of the most
incredible strength of a human and unfortunately people think it's not.
When you are vulnerable, you can be under person, more
authentic with yourself, and then you can do things. You
have to be vulnerable, you have to show up with
your emotion. Otherwise you become a machine and you do
everything that other people do. You know, I am trying
to do the things that the most authentic for myself
and my team, and unfortunately there is risk with that
not being accepted for being so vulnerable and authentic sometimes.
But that thing is necessary because I hope people can
be inspired by it. You know, there's a lot of
great people. You can watch what Alice Waters used to do.
You can watch the best chef in the world what
they're doing, but they're unique in their own It will
never be another Alice Waters. But it will never be
another Dominique Crane. We are here to plan the seed
for the next generation, and to do this you have
to be vulnerable. You have to show people the things
that you do, not just at work, but also your
daily life. We have to be human and continue to
be human.
San Francisco is where you came into your own as
a queer woman.
Right, yes, but baby, uh huh. I was in my
bedroom with all my vinyl, singing the Beg's and grease
and being John Travelta with Olivia. You enjoy my girlfriend?
Oh my god, I love it.
You know, love is never disgusting. Love is. Love doesn't
matter if it's a man and a woman, two men together,
two women together, whatever. Love is a human emotion and
human feeling. Let's talk about violence. Then we can say
it's disgusting, you know, like people have perspective and different
way of doing this, But the world need to stop
judging things when he has to do with human emotion
and love. We live in a world right now where
it's so disconnected and if you don't have like your
hair the way it should be, people gonna hate you.
If your skin is not as smooth as other people,
they're gonna judge you. So love is important and we
need to continue this because love always win. We are
here to evolve, We're not here to stagnero, to go
back to something that is not good.
Even though you look at the news or you kind
of look at what things are and it feels like
it's going backwards, But in the greater arc, I know
that we're moving forward. And on a small scale, right
like what I do with my life, I'm trying to
do more love. Like you saw Michael and I together,
we're in love. It's just love, love, love, and I
try and carry a lot of that forward and push
more of that. Like I travel all the time and
I hope to just leave people with that little tingle
of perhaps there's love out there.
Absolutely, you have to focus on what is in front
of you and your community and the people around you,
and don't worry about the noises. I mean, let's focus
on what we are and the surrounding of the people
that we love and we want to support. And if
we do that on a smaller scale, it become a
bigger scale because the other person see that, it's like, wow,
maybe I should do that also when I come home.
I said that to my team all the time. The
way we treat each other at work, I hope when
you go home, maybe your wife or your children, please
treat them with love and listen to them.
Yeah, the show is called Wayfind a Life Changing Travel.
What do you think is your life changing travel?
Well, I think that started when I start to realize
that there is some other things inside of me that
I need to be open and when I've decided that
I'm not a follower or anyone, I'm going to be
someone that's going to be on the quest of her
own truth and her own curiosity about the world. And
I know that that quest is going to last forever.
So I'm still learning and discovering. But I think that
moment of knowing that identity is not the blood that
you are or the place that you were born, but
it's all the experiences that folds you and make you
and the different layer that's happening to you. And we're
still changing. We are movements, you know. And I want
people to sit with it for a second. I'm not
telling them to do the samething I did, but to
sit with it sometime where they feel angry about something
and they feel entitled to think a little bit of
about that this world belonged not just to them. There
is also other people around them that we need to
listen to and to see also, and to come to
the table and to have some good discussion and not
disconnect yourself to the world, because you know, the agree
with the world.
Don't you think travel helps with this? Travel helps you
kind of unlock this. The ego takes a seat, and
then you're able to show up in a way that
just feels definitely more authentic, but it also feels like
you're able to learn more when your ego is constantly
in the forefront. You're learning nothing, nothing, not about yourself
and not about the world.
No, you think that you're the best at everything. It's stupid.
Ever thinks that you the best at what you do,
then your ego is killing you. We want to do
things that make us feel good and make us feel good,
but we're not the best. We always have a space
to be better every day.
Dominique's story is a reminder that identity is as multifaceted
as a Michelin star byte of food with ingredients source
from the people who raise us, stories we inherit, haven's
we call home, and encounters that quietly change the way
we see ourselves. For Dominique, identity gets told through cuisine,
but for all of us it shows up somewhere, perhaps
in our work relationships or just the way we move
about the world.
My message to future chefs and food maker is be confident,
be yourself, learn about yourself, be vulnerable, tell you with
personal story, and go at their antiques on us.
Like Dominicuan does, exactly wherever your journey takes you next,
may each encounter leave its imprint on you, becoming part
of who you are and a story only you can tell.
Wayfinder Life Changing Travel is a production of Iheart's Ruby Studio.
I'm your host Daniel Scheffler. Our show's executive producer is
Sierra Kaiser, supervising producer Kelly Kyle and story producer Ryan Amador,
with post production supervision by James Foster and sound design
and mixing by Sierra Spreen. Don't forget to subscribe to
Wayfinder and please rate and review the show wherever you
get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.