Chef’s Table: Dominique Crenn
Description
“I’m not serving a menu, I’m serving a story,” says Dominique Crenn, and the story she tells in Chef’s Table is a moving and compelling one indeed. Crenn, the only female chef in the US with two Michelin stars, was adopted at 18 months by a family in the Brittany region of France, and she is the first to admit that this region forms the backbone of her cuisine. In this episode of the highly acclaimed Netflix series, she lays out her philosophy of food, her professional background (she has no formal training as a chef but has worked at restaurants in the Bay Area, Jakarta, New York and Santa Monica) and her family history. A visit to her mom in Brittany takes her to her childhood home and her father’s grave. She speaks about her fine dining restaurant Atelier Crenn (named for her father), where the menu is in the form of a poem, and her more casual spot Petit Crenn, modeled on her mother’s hospitality and cuisine. Passionate about food and with a well of inspiration, Crenn shows off spectacular dishes from her two San Francisco restaurants and, even more importantly, tells viewers about the mind and heart behind them. —Rod Armstrong
Andrew Fried is a director and producer known for his work on TV shows including Storymakers, Iconoclasts and Chef’s Table. He’s directed several episodes of the series Back to the Shop as well as the Niki Nakayama segment of Chef’s Table from Season One.
Filmmaker, executive producer and series creator David Gelb had a vision for Chef’s Table to distinguish it from other similar programs. He says, “All food shows today have a host … People kept telling me that [Chef’s Table] needed a unified host, but I believed that the chefs could tell their own story.” Weeks of research go into preparing for each episode. Gelb goes on, “The hardest thing is to choose the chefs, chefs that are at the absolute top of their field, are dynamic story tellers, have interesting stories in their personal lives.”
Film Details
Language English
Year 2016
Runtime 50
Country USA
Director Andrew Fried