It’s not every day that a Michelin-recognized, world-renowned chef like San Francisco’s Dominique Crenn opens a restaurant in Los Angeles—and with Dior, no less. In a surprise Sunday morning news post on WWD, the international luxury fashion house announced plans to open a Beverly Hills rooftop restaurant this fall in partnership with Crenn, who made history in 2018 as the first female chef in the United States to earn three Michelin stars for her eponymous San Francisco restaurant, Atelier Crenn. Many may also be acquainted with the French American’s work through season two of Netflix’s Chef’s Table or the on-screen culinary wizardry featured in The Menu (2022), a horror-comedy satirizing the absurdities of fine dining.
The culinary concept, Monsieur Dior, will sit on the third floor of Dior’s sprawling 323 North Rodeo Drive flagship, mere steps away from Gucci, which also features a chef-affiliated terrace restaurant, Gucci Osteria by Massimo Bottura. Technically, the Beverly Hills rooftop concept is Dior’s second Crenn-affiliated project. The first is Cafe Dior, which opened in Dallas last February. Unlike Cafe Dior, however, Monsieur Dior will offer dinner as well as lunch and light bites—the first full-service Dior restaurant in the United States. Per WWD, the 105-seat restaurant will be divided between a lounge/bar area and an indoor-outdoor dining room.
Like Gucci Osteria (which I have visited and found to be merely okay), Monsieur Dior will offer affluent tourist-friendly fare plated on luxury branded serveware. While menu pricing is still to be determined, diners can expect visually arresting à la carte dishes that draw inspiration from the red carpet and Old Hollywood. This, too, is not unlike the desserts available at Pret-a-Portea, a red carpet-inspired afternoon tea service offered at the Maybourne Beverly Hills a few blocks over. WWD reports on a few confirmed dishes, including a tuna tartare with purple yam chips and crème fraiche; black truffle agnolotti with mushroom consommé; guinea hen with maitake mushroom and turnip; and ribeye cap with cauliflower purée and black truffle.
For dessert—arguably, what Atelier Crenn is best known for—the chef is planning on a coconut cream creation with raspberries and pistachio that draws inspiration from Jean Seberg in Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, as well as a devil’s food cake tribute to Princess Diana carrying a Lady Dior bag.
“What is beautiful about Beverly Hills is I could focus also on the Hollywood era,” Crenn told WWD. “Those dresses really speak to me—but also, the energy of the actresses when they were wearing Christian Dior. I wanted to tell a story through the dishes that reflect the story, perhaps, of Monsieur Dior when he dresses those women.”
With Crenn’s name recognition as a culinary superstar and the fact Monsieur Dior is her first venture into Los Angeles, reservations are likely to be quite difficult to snag, at least in the beginning. Personally, I'll be taking a wait-and-see approach once Monsieur Dior finally opens its doors; no matter the name attached, brand-new restaurants usually need a minute to iron out the invariable kinks in service and operation. But if you’re jonesing for a taste of Crenn’s cooking (albeit a tourist-friendly, Dior-branded version), the Rodeo Drive restaurant will be at your restaurant in no time.