The chef behind three-Michelin-starred Atelier Crenn will open her first Australian restaurant this October, bringing a more relaxed side of her cooking to an all-day French café and wine bar on Collins Street.
Dominique Crenn will open her first Australian restaurant in Melbourne this October, bringing Petit Crenn to a 40-seat space inside InterContinental Melbourne The Rialto.
The Collins Street restaurant will operate as an all-day French café and wine bar, moving from coffee and pastries in the morning into bistro-style dishes, wine and cocktails later in the day.
It is a very different proposition from Atelier Crenn, Dominique’s three-Michelin-starred San Francisco flagship.
And that is part of the point.
Petit Crenn is intended to capture the ease of the French cafés that have influenced Dominique throughout her life.
“Petit Crenn comes from my own life, from the cafes in France where you can sit for five minutes or five hours,” she said when announcing the Melbourne restaurant.
A different side of Dominique
Dominique opened Atelier Crenn in San Francisco in 2011.
In 2018, it was awarded its third Michelin star, making Dominique the first female chef in the United States to achieve the distinction.
Atelier Crenn has since also received a Michelin Green Star for sustainability, while Dominique was named among TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in 2024.
Petit Crenn has always represented something different.
The original restaurant opened in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley in 2015 as a more relaxed expression of her cooking, drawing heavily on her mother and grandmother and the family’s connection to Brittany.
It closed in September 2024 when its lease expired, having operated intermittently following the pandemic.
Melbourne now becomes the next home for the concept.
What will Petit Crenn Melbourne serve?
The new restaurant will take inspiration from French café and bistro culture rather than attempting to recreate Atelier Crenn on a smaller scale.
Coffee and pastries will anchor the morning offering before the menu shifts towards French bistro dishes later in the day.
Early dishes revealed for Melbourne include mussels with preserved lemon, French raviole with onion consommé and steak tartare with egg yolk jam and sauce au poivre.
Petit Crenn’s own philosophy is that each location should reflect the rhythm of its city while retaining the same focus on thoughtful cooking, connection and everyday ease.
That makes the Melbourne kitchen team particularly important.
Recruitment is underway, with key culinary appointments yet to be announced publicly.
For professional chefs, it will be interesting to see how the team takes a concept with a clear French identity and makes it feel at home on Collins Street.
Keeping diners close to the kitchen
One of the more unusual elements of Petit Crenn Melbourne will be Le Contour, a standing table for five positioned close to the kitchen.
It will give a small group of diners a direct view of the cooking and reinforce the intimacy of the wider restaurant.
At 40 seats, Petit Crenn is also relatively restrained for the Australian debut of a chef with Dominique’s international profile.
There is no attempt to reproduce the theatre of a three-Michelin-starred dining room.
Instead, the focus is on an approachable, all-day restaurant built around French cooking, wine and hospitality.
That contrast is what makes the opening particularly interesting.
Dominique built her international reputation at one of America’s most ambitious fine-dining restaurants. Her first Australian restaurant will start from a very different place: 40 seats, familiar French dishes and a concept designed to work as comfortably for a morning coffee as it does for dinner.
Petit Crenn will open at InterContinental Melbourne The Rialto, 495 Collins Street, Melbourne, in October 2026.
