Breaking Bread with Chef Dominique Crenn
On a summer’s afternoon, we sat down with Chef Dominique Crenn, the newly appointed Culinary Curator of Les Bateaux Belmond onboard Coquelicot in Champagne, to discover the inspiration behind her menus for our fleet of river boats. Discover her career, from growing up in France to becoming the first female chef to attain three Michelin stars in the United States for her restaurant Atelier Crenn in San Francisco.
What was the moment you knew food was what inspired you?
Going down to my grandmother’s garden and picking up a tomato. My grandmother was a farmer; at that moment I don’t know what happened, but I just looked at this tomato and I looked at the vine and I looked at the connection to the earth and ground to the tomato. I picked it up, put it in my mouth and closed my eyes. It was messy but it was all the layers of life that I was tasting.
Why is storytelling so important to you when you create dishes?
Food tells a story and if you are a chef, you have to tell a story on the plate. If you look at tribes or any civilisation, through the food that they’ve been servings for years and centuries, you can understand the culture of that area, the time and the place. As a chef, it's the way I want to tell my story and where I come from.
How did you bring your love of France’s culinary culture to menus onboard Les Bateaux Belmond?
France is such a special place for me. I was born here, and I appreciate the savoir faire here, the art, the nature, the canals and the people, so working on the menus for Les Bateaux Belmond. was such an incredible journey. To create the menus, we looked at this history of the region, from that you get the produce and the style of cooking. My team and I closed our eyes and asked ourselves: "if we are the guests, what do we want to eat?" and that’s how we started.
BREAKING BREAD
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