This is my review for dinner on January 2026 at Atelier Crenn, a pescatarian French fine dinning restaurant. The price of the food for one person including all fees but not including any drinks was $541.11
Service, etc:
One of the servers I just didnt get good vibes from though its hard to put into words why, but all rest put in great effort to appear very nice and friendly, though with some of them it still just didn’t feel quite genuine. Overall they are very professional and one or two of the waiters do feel truly friendly, but overall something about it just seems a bit too robotic.
The ambience was also a bit disappointing to me for the price and prestige. Its quite a small restaurant and theres no open kitchen or anything, so your view is basically just watching the waiters walk around robotically in a tiny dinning room. The overall look is still pretty classy but just seems a bit dated. It looks more like what I would expect from a nice $100 per person French restaurant, than what I would expect for a *** $500+ restaurant.
Overall without considering the food, the whole experience is nice but just not top tier, and I think all the other *** restaurants in northern California are just a level above in that regard. But of course the main reason to come to such a place, at least for me, is the food.
Overall the food had some very high highs, such as the scallop dish which was my favorite scallop dish I’ve ever had. It also however probably had the lowest lows of any restaurant at this level for some of the mains. Mains are often not my favorite part of the meal and I can find them just a bit boring, but here there were 2 in a row that I really just did not enjoy.
To me it seemed that for the mains this pescatarian restaurant suffered from a similar thing that I find vegetarian restaurants often suffer from, which is that they sometimes immitate meat dishes, but those dishes just dont taste as good as the real meat dishes. In both cases I prefer when instead the dishes highlight the unique aspects of whichever ingredients they do choose to use, instead of using the ingredients to try to imitate a dish that highlights the unique aspects of a meat ingredient.
That being said, other than a couple misses the food is still very good and interesting. Though taking everything into account, for my taste this just felt like more on the ** level than the *** level, though thats still a very high level of course!
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Food:
Amuse (pic 1) clockwise from the bottom:
Kir breton sphere – I do love this sort of bite, this one was really delicious and just perfect – 10/10
Caviar meringue – simple but very tasty and really worked well without the caviar being overpowered – 8/10
Onion shell? – Im not quite sure what was even going on here, but there was just something special about this bite and some unexpected sweetness – 9/10
Persimmon, sardine, and olive oil tart – interesting and better than it sounded to me but flavors were just good not great – 6/10
Uni and truffle tart- a bit too salty but the tart itself was really nice and soft and it was a still nice bite overall – 6.5/10
Deconstructed french onion soup tart with broth (pic 2): It does taste good but a bit too soft in flavor for me. Cool idea and its still quite good but overall flavors were just not mind blowing – 7/10
Oyster with foam and greens (pic 3): some really great flavors here but a bit too thick and custardy for me – 8/10
Geoduck carpaccio (pic 4) – carpaccio itself had good flavors but the whole dish was just too acidic and just nothing memorable – 5/10
King crab with caviar (pic 5) – beautiful with great flavors and textures even though I personally done usually like cold crab dishes at all, but the caviar was overpowered by the rest of the dish – 8/10
Scallop with sweet carrot sauce and fingerlimes (pic 6) – Looks simple but truly exceptional sauce/flavors with nice contrasting textures. The cook of the scallop itself was quite good but not totally next level like the rest of the dish, but still overall my favorite scallop dish ive ever had – 9.5/10
Bread and butter (pic 7) – not my personal preference for the type of bread dish I like, but quite good for what it is, overall still 7/10 though others would probably like it more
Black cod with spiced yogurt (pic 8) – perfectly cooked with a tasty sauce, but overall somehow just not too impactful or memorable – 7/10
Abalone steak (pic 9) – I did not like this dish, flavors were fine but its just way too dense and chewy. I felt like the abalone was trying to immitate a steak, but I think an actual meat steak would just have tasted much better. Of course this is a meatless restaurant so Id rather they would have just done something totally different – 4/10
Sockeye with white truffle and fish roe (pic 10) – The sauce itself was great and this had some good individual flavors. However I think the flavors just didnt go well together at all and I really didn’t like fish texture which was too chewy for me. So this dish was basicslly chewy fish with fish roe, but then combined with truffle with an intense red meat sauce. I think this had a similar problem to the previous dish, where I would have preferred this to have been with an actual red meat and not fish, but since this restaurant is pescatarian Id rather they just do a totally different dish that lets the fish shine for what it is. – 3/10
Sea buckthorn mochi dumpling (pic 11) – Its pretty tasty – 6/10
Citrus baklava pillow (also pic 11) –
Not similar to a baklava at all to me even though the waiter called it that, though I see its not called that on the menu. But anyways the pastry was super light and hollow which was cool, and this had good light flavors – 7/10
Pineapple wafer sandwich (pic 12) – this breaks the moment you bite into it and is messy to eat, but very tasty with nice textures and makes you happy to eat it – 8/10
Fake blackberries with granita (pic 13) – those blackberries are actually like an icecream and those were great and its a fun dish, but the green granita is too one note and not especially tasty and theres just too much of it. – 7/10
Bonbons (pic 14) – pretty good – 6/10
by Pure_Shallot_1901
5 Comments
she’s also a horrible person to her staff.. don’t forget that part.
100% agreed, thanks for the write-up !
I went with my girlfriend and she summed it pretty well : “it’s like a pescatarian restaurant by people who prefer meat”.
“Dated” did come to mind for me as well.
When deconstructed dishes and fake meat dishes are worse than the original, what’s the point ? It’s not 1990 anymore, there’s no shock value.
I also had an especially chewy abalone, the worse I’ve ever had, and I usually love abalone.
The service is very dated as well, they seem nice but it’s like they are instructed to be stiff and obsequious.
Man, shut yo sensitive ass up. You really out here trippin’ over ‘vibes’ at a 3-Michelin star spot? You paid $500 for a world-class culinary experience, not for a server to be your new best friend or do a lil’ dance for you.
These people are professionals, they ain’t there to entertain your lonely ass. If you want somebody to grin in your face and act fake, go to a circus or a strip club. Calling a professional service ‘robotic’ just ’cause they didn’t give you that warm fuzzy feeling is peak entitlement.
It is similar to my experience, I dined there beginning of 2022. Even though I live in SF, I will not repeat the experience. Not because it was bad, because there are much better places in SF with better service and better tasting food. The food was one of the prettiest I have ever eaten ( and I have more than 100 stars under my belt) but flavor wise just meh. The star of the experience was the kitchen staff, we had a brief visit and it was really impressive that they can make those dishes in that tiny kitchen.
Is it just me the butter in pic 7 being slightly smeared on the board doesnt look good. I know it’s nit picky but damn, 500 plus pp is crazy to not even wipe your plate for service.