When Dominique Crenn — the chef behind Michelin three-star Atelier Crenn in San Francisco — set out to design a restaurant for luxury fashion brand Dior, she went to bed one night and had a dream. She says she was walking on Rodeo Drive, holding hands with the late designer Christian Dior and discussing what to serve. When she awoke, she knew: Crenn would serve haute cuisine at the Dior flagship in Beverly Hills and celebrate Dior’s designs and Los Angeles through French-Californian cuisine and intricate, meticulous plating.
Monsieur Dior by Dominique Crenn marks Crenn’s first L.A. venture in nearly 20 years. Before she opened Atelier Crenn and Bar Crenn in San Francisco, and before she became the first female chef to earn three Michelin stars in the U.S., Crenn cooked at Manhattan Country Club in Manhattan Beach before opening Santa Monica’s Abode. She departed L.A. in 2007, appearing on shows such as “Chef’s Table” and consulting for films such as “The Menu.” But this winter, she returned with one of her most conceptualized menus to date.
“For me it was a way to bring my DNA — the French DNA — and also celebrate something that struck me: a texture or color or story, whether on a dress worn by Sophia Loren or Brigitte Bardot or Marilyn Monroe,” said the Saint-Germain-en-Laye-born Crenn.
But you might not notice unless you knew where to look: Dabs of cauliflower purée surrounding short ribs and truffle replicate a pearl necklace worn by Monroe when she donned Dior; intricate dark tuile atop delicate truffle agnolotti references the black lace of a gown on Charlize Theron; the houndstooth-patterned caviar, made with a custom Dior-made mold, is a nod to a jacket once worn by Ingrid Bergman.
Crenn scoured the archives, interviewed longtime employees and friends of Dior, and repeatedly visited the fashion house’s Paris museum, Le Galerie Dior, to translate fashion into food. Dior had long been one of her late mother’s favorite designers, but as Crenn dove into his history she uncovered familiar ties: His sister fought in the French Resistance in World War II. Crenn’s father, at the time only 14 or 15, was one of the Resistance’s youngest members.
“I got more emotional about their family story, so when I started to work with them I was very, very excited, actually,” she said. “I think the journey is more personal. Obviously I’m a chef and I got hired, but I think it’s more than that. I hope when you taste the food, you feel that there is some soul into it.”
The bar bites — available in the lounge, on the patio and at the small wood-accented bar — form potato choux into roses and dot caviar-and-crab nori rolls with a rotation of delicate flowers, all in homage to the namesake designer’s love of gardens and horticulture. The desserts mimic Dior looks and accessories, such as a chocolate-and-cherry cake shaped as the iconic Lady Dior bag.
Spread between her restaurants in the Bay, the cafe in Texas and now Monsieur Dior in Beverly Hills, Crenn tapped a tenured team to oversee the L.A. restaurant. “That’s what makes this restaurant incredible,” she said. “It’s not just Monsieur Dior by Dominique Crenn. It’s a restaurant by a lot of people doing incredible work.”
Executive chef Cameron Ingle, a Bestia and Bouchon vet, leads the kitchen with aid from Crenn’s corporate team, which includes L.A.-familiar faces Christian Dortch (formerly of Maude and Gwen) and former Bar Monette and Burgette chef-owner Sean MacDonald.
Anastasia Kondratieva, formerly of Vespertine, is the general manager, while executive pastry chef Juan Contreras and pastry sous Jose Mariscal (formerly of the Rose) run desserts. Crenn’s group beverage director, Florian Thireau, created cocktails such as a rose-and-peppercorn spin on the Negroni, while former Alinea sommelier Fahara Zamorano oversees a primarily French and Californian wine list.
Crenn steadily built her team and began working with the fashion house three years ago. She’d been tapped to lead their new culinary initiative in the U.S. It began with Café Dior by Dominique Crenn, which opened in Dallas in March with an upscale-cafe menu. Unknown to Dior, the partnership was more or less manifested a decade prior.
“When I started Atelier Crenn, I wrote in my journal that one day I will work with a fashion house,” Crenn said. “Isn’t that crazy?”
Monsieur Dior by Dominique Crenn is open Sunday to Tuesday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Wednesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
323 N. Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, (310) 594-7018, monsieurdiorbeverlyhills.com
Marvito
A pair of restaurateurs recently evolved their pandemic pop-up into a full restaurant and bar, launching one of West Hollywood’s most popular openings of the year — and one of the neighborhood’s wildest menus. At Marvito, the sibling spot to Beverly Grove bistro and wine bar Marvin, a mishmash of cuisines and cocktails include: veal parmesan, ceviche, thick cheeseburgers, barbecued ribs, banana splits, crispy beef tacos, large-format steaks, chorizo-topped queso, grilled zucchini, chili Colorado and shrimp cocktail. Grateful Dead and Steely Dan blare out across a space that feels, at times, a little like a dive bar conjured from the 1970s.
“I just want it to feel like an old restaurant that’s been there for a while, like a Musso and Frank’s or something,” said co-owner Max Marder.
Marder long dreamed of opening a sibling concept to Marvin, which he also operates with chef-partner Ricky Moreno, and he’d conceptualized it as an abbreviated, fast-casual restaurant centered on burgers and margaritas. But when the pandemic hit and the team leaned into to-go service, Marvin’s pop-ups for burgers, Mexican food and more took off — and they realized, while looking for their next restaurant space, that this blend of items could be their new focus.
They signed the lease on the former home of the Gardens of Taxco, a long-loved restaurant that still exists in a nearby cloud kitchen. The curved arches and tiled roof inspired Marder and Moreno to reimagine it as a kind of Mexican diner, neighborhood spot and dive bar, where Moreno’s shrimp enchiladas could mingle next to burgers and burrata.
Just as Marder developed an obsession with natural wines for Marvin, he fell headfirst into the world of tequila. The spirit forms the backbone of the beverage program, which includes spins on classics but also pays homage to his father. Prolific restaurateur Bruce Marder has operated a string of successful L.A. restaurants through the decades, including Rebecca’s, Broadway Deli, DC 3 and the still-operating Capo and Cora’s Coffee Shoppe. Moreno cooked for the senior Marder for decades before Max Marder asked him to partner in Marvin and Marvito. At Marvito, they serve the famous, Cointreau-tinged Rebecca’s margarita and call it the Marvarita.
Moreno and Marder also took possession of the adjacent two spaces and plan to expand Marvito in the coming year, as well as launch a wine shop and an extension of the bar. In 2026 Marvito will also launch lunch service, flipping the restaurant to an all-day model. Marvito is open daily from 5 p.m. to midnight.
1113 N. Harper Ave., West Hollywood, (323) 798-4185, marvito.la
Paradise Dynasty and Le Shrimp Ramen
With colorful xiao long bao and a sizable menu, one of the world’s most popular soup dumpling specialists — and rival to Din Tai Fung — just touched down in L.A. with a tandem ramen shop.
Singapore-founded Paradise Dynasty serves an array of xiao long bao, wok-fired dishes and soups, and first launched in 2008 before expanding to China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and, in 2021, the U.S. with a location in Orange County. Now it — along with its shrimp-based ramen shop, Le Shrimp Noodle Bar — can be found at the base of the Americana at Brand shopping center in the former Din Tai Fung space. (Din Tai Fung now operates in the adjacent mall, the Glendale Galleria.)
Founder Eldwin Chua, chief executive of Paradise Group, said that what could be interpreted as planting a flag in the brands’ ongoing dumpling wars is “definitely not intentional.” Paradise Dynasty had hoped to open in a buzzing mall in L.A. just as it did in Costa Mesa’s South Coast Plaza. The fact that Din Tai Fung was the previous tenant is, he said, a coincidence. He also does not appreciate the frequent comparison between the dumpling chains.
“We are totally, totally different,” Chua said. “It’s a Taiwanese restaurant, and we are like a Singaporean Chinese restaurant. Even the taste profile is different … . It’s just that we are both popular and famous for our soup dumplings.”
Chua’s Paradise Group operates more than 170 locations between 13 restaurant concepts around the world, but the chef-founder began by cooking out of his grandfather’s coffee shop in an industrial area of Singapore. He borrowed money from family and friends to pay his grandfather rent, and served plates of fried rice and noodles until his pop-up became so popular that he took over the cafe entirely and then flipped it to a live-seafood restaurant. He expanded with multiple upscale Chinese restaurants, and then developed his most scalable brand yet: Paradise Dynasty, where xiao long bao take center stage.
Its signature dish is a bamboo steam basket of eight colorful soup dumplings, each with their own unique flavor and a wrapper that’s tinted with natural ingredients such as beet root or spinach, and pork-based fillings in flavors like cheese, kimchi and black truffle.
“It’s very difficult to produce,” said Chua. “A lot of restaurants actually copy us, but they do it for like three months and after that, they are not doing it anymore because it’s so difficult. To make the dough with the color consistent is very difficult, and each flavor is also not easy. We hope consumers can look into the effort rather than take it as a gimmick.”
In Glendale, just as in Costa Mesa, Paradise Dynasty opened alongside the group’s Chinese-meets-Japanese ramen shop, Le Shrimp Noodle Bar.
Singapore stalls and restaurants serve a popular, ubiquitous clear prawn noodle soup, but Le Shrimp Noodle Bar’s broth derives a smoky aroma from the wok-charring of shrimp shells, as opposed to a simple boiling, and each bowl receives a choice of noodle and toppings such as wontons or prawn balls. Dry noodle bowls, bao and chicken rice are also on offer.
“It’s a very unique broth, the shrimp broth, which you hardly get anywhere else in the world,” Chua said.
Paradise Dynasty is open in Glendale Monday to Thursday from 11 to 9:30 p.m., Friday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Le Shrimp Noodle Bar is open in Glendale Sunday to Thursday from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
177 Caruso Ave., Glendale, paradisegp.com/paradise-dynasty and paradisegp.com/le-shrimp-ramen
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