by KAREN LEIBOWITZ For the past year, I’ve been masquer- ading as a restaurant person. To be honest, I only worked in a restau- rant briefly, and for most of that time, I was a flailing amateur, but ever since my husband and I pub- lished a book about our adventures running a pop-up, I’ve been treated like an industry insider. For the most part, I assume that I’m the beneficiary of reflected glory, but I do enjoy the attention, especially when it comes from people whose opinion I admire, like Chef Dominique Crenn. I met her one night when she was eating Atelier Crenn received a particularly luxurious because the a late dinner at a restaurant that I Michelin star last October, but restaurant is situated in the mid- helped open. We chatted for a few when I first went, in July, it felt like dle of the Marina, a San Francisco minutes at the bar, and she was so a neglected treasure. Only about neighborhood known for binge nice that I made a reservation at her half the tables were occupied, drinking. The menu offers a choice restaurant as soon as I got home. and the quiet dining room felt between two tasting menus, but 2 | Lucky Peach Paintings by FEDE YANKELEVICH Rorschach food by THIERRY AGEE butter sphere topped with a dollop of cassis jam; she advised us to con- sume it all at once, as a shot. How charming! How personal! The story behind the food made it all the more compelling, because I could identify the burst of flavors I was experiencing as something I now recognized as “French childhood.” Over the next few courses, I realized that several of Crenn’s dishes were in fact avant-garde updates of classic flavor combina- tions, which is why the high-flying techniques didn’t feel like mere you cannot order a la carte—you are made a version of kir royale that stunts. The textures were innova- in the chef’s hands. paired cassis with cider instead of tive, but the flavor combinations Indeed, Crenn delivered the champagne. This dish, she said, were powerfully satisfying, and second amuse bouche herself, with was an adaptation of her childhood even vaguely emotional. When I an explanation that when she was memory. In Crenn’s updated ver- tasted a beef tartare garnished with growing up in Brittany, her mother sion, the cider is enclosed in a cocoa tiny pearls of smoked sturgeon, Lucky Peach | 3 horseradish custard, and rye crumbles, I felt Tasting Menu” and a longer “Sonnet Tasting that she had somehow tapped into my own Menu.” New potatoes with chestnut spheres, memories of lox and pumpernickel bagels potato consommé emulsion, and truffles are with my grandparents, mixed with the beef- called “Mémoire d’enfance;” a plate adorned and-horseradish flavors of Passover. This with a wide stripe of wild mushrooms is “A Frenchwoman had transformed my Ameri- Walk in the Forest,” and an intermezzo is can-Jewish childhood into haute cuisine, and given the grandiose title of “Crennologie.” I loved it. It may be tempting to dismiss all of The next time she came to our table, I this as frou-frou nonsense. It could seem poured out all of the memories her food had solipsistic for a dish to allude to the chef’s evoked. She laughed, ducked her head a bit memories of childhood, but ultimately, it has when I praised her cooking, and said that a sociable function, like a poem that draws she liked to hear about the emotions inspired on a specific experience to communicate a by her food. I felt like we were becoming universal truth. In terms of poetry, Crenn is friends—talking about our childhoods and much more of a Romantic than a Modern- trading compliments. Wasn’t it great to know ist: at Atelier Crenn, food is offered up as the chef? a tactile poem, which registers both emo- And then she went and spoke with the tionally and intellectually, though personal table across the room. expression is primary. And because the food A few minutes later, I saw her standing is presented as art, the chef resembles an art- at the door, deep in conversation with another ist. Perhaps not coincidentally, Crenn fulfills couple. many preconceptions about artists: she is Who were these people? How did she stylish, passionate, feminine, and French. know all of them? I felt a twinge of jealousy. She looks like an artiste. She was making a personal connection with Of course, not everyone subscribes to each of them. It had nothing to do with who this idea of the artistic chef. In a review for had met her before. We all felt like her cook- San Francisco magazine, Josh Sens wrote ing was speaking directly to us. Was this the that “Crenn has made her namesake atelier a sign of a great chef or a great personality? bold song of herself, a restaurant so devoted to her personal expression that occasionally it seems that she forgets about the people on nitially, Dominique Crenn planned to the other end.” In other words, personal cui- call her restaurant Atelier 123, using the sine can be perceived as egotistical, or even IFrench word for “workshop” or “studio,” domineering. Crenn insists that she isn’t but in the end, she decided to name it in interested in imposing her vision on her din- homage to her father, who was an artist and ers. She just wants to let them get to know a politician. The restaurant is filled with her. She reflected somewhat ruefully that she paintings by Mr. Crenn, but the name also is praised and criticized for the same quality: cultivates the idea that his daughter is an “Personal can be viewed by some people as artist in her own studio. Atelier Crenn con- very endearing, but other people will tell you sciously draws a connection between cook- that you can’t be personal. And I don’t think ing and art, or rather, Art with a capital A: that’s right.” the restaurant’s tagline is “Poetic Culinaria,” and diners have a choice between a “Haiku 4 | Lucky Peach he Personal is Political,” the femi- notions wholly distinct from grandmothers’ nists declared in the 1970s, in recipes. “Personal cooking” is a term that’s “T what was once a radical assertion also employed by chefs with avant-garde tech- that individual lives matter far more than had niques, unconventional menu designs, and been previously acknowledged. A generation later, we hardly need to declare the importance of “the per- “I felt that she had somehow tapped sonal,” but perhaps we do need to into my own memories of lox and examine what we mean by a term that draws on some conflicting pumpernickel bagels with my grand- notions in our culture, particularly when it comes to food. parents, mixed with the beef-and- “Personal” might be on its way horseradish flavors of Passover.” to becoming as much of a culinary buzzword as “artisanal,” “sus- tainable,” or “authentic.” Last October, Sam idiosyncratic palates. It simultaneously evokes Sifton’s final review for The New York Times the most traditional cooking and its opposite. summarized his favorite restaurant thus: “... So what exactly is personal food? Or, more no restaurant in New York City does a bet- importantly, why does that word resonate with ter job than Per Se of making personal and us? I confess that I love to know about a chef’s revelatory the process of spending hundreds background and how it relates to the menu— and hundreds of dollars on food and drink.” perhaps because I want to feel that I’m not In the last few years, Food and Wine has run simply buying a product, but making a con- an article called “When Restaurants Get nection—and I don’t think I’m alone in that Personal,” while Saveur has published on both desire. Our interest in the personal side of food “Personal Space” and “The Personal Touch”; draws an artificial connection between a chef’s Ruth Reichl’s new Gilt Taste runs a series of life-story and his or her food. But what if chefs personal essays on food. want to cook something outside of their ethnic It’s not just the word but the concept of jurisdiction? What if their reimaginings of being “personal” that has expanded its reach. childhood dishes stray far from the originals? An astonishing amount of food media is built Is their food then impersonal? on our interest in chefs and their personal lives. We see “Chefographies” on the Food Network, and in the last few years, even the t the end of my meal at Atelier Crenn, New Yorker has started running long profiles I did something I’ve never done of chefs. Cookbooks lovingly trace the prov- A before: I asked the chef out to dinner. enance of recipes through family traditions I suggested that we go to Benu, which Corey and childhood memories. Lee had just opened. He had won a Rising Star But “personal” is a slippery word. It Award from the James Beard Foundation for sounds so appealing, with its cozy connota- his work as chef de cuisine at the French Laun- tions of old-fashioned home-cooking, of dry, and Benu had been getting rave reviews mothers nurturing their children, of food already. It’s now one of six restaurants with two as an expression of place and heritage. And stars in the San Francisco Michelin guide, and yet, at the same time, “personal” can evoke its reputation is still growing.