Dominique Crenn

“I just felt very isolated in France, a very bureaucratic place, no space for thinking in a different way, an artist's way.”

“I try not to spend 10 hours in the kitchen when I cook at home for guests. That's why I try to be really organized and have everything thought out.”

“In the restaurant business, if you break even, you're lucky. It's a really hard business, it's a survival business.”

“San Francisco needs to become a city where you have late night offerings.”

“I've participated at summits where I was the only chef. I was surrounded with thinkers and writers and innovators.”

“When I started to work in the kitchen, there's not a lot of women that were working and I didn't try to pay attention to that.”

“People ask me how come you say hello to your customers every night? It's because I need that. It's not just a restaurant. It's my house.”

“I'm talking to a lot of my industry to maybe try to create a guild and coalition where people, when they retire, would get a pension. We pay taxes through the years, we pay for unemployment, but we don't have a pension.”

“You have so much responsibility because when you're in the kitchen, it's not just food, it's where the food comes from, what you did with production, what you did it with human interaction, and how you did it with different cultures. Food becomes a mark of activism.”

“I've met a lot of people who were resistant to my ideas, because they were afraid to get into unfamiliar conversations. I didn't listen to them.”

“My grandmother was kind, but she knew what she wanted and she wasn't afraid to give a command. When, eventually, I ran my own kitchen, I realized I had a leadership model reaching back into my earliest memories.”

“I was sifting through the dier, and I remember thinking: This potato is important. It comes up from the soil and feeds us, it connects us. It is the core of society.”

“Food is what I think about constantly. I love the beauty of this planet.”

“I think Los Angeles is an incredible city. It's also very diverse, which I love about it.”

“I'm not a pescatarian, I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm also a conscious person. And I know the impact of the way that we fix meat nowadays is not good. It's killing us, it's killing the planet.”

“My mom and dad taught me to never take anything for granted, and to give what you are to your community.”

“There is so much inequality and injustice in America, and COVID-19 has exposed that even more. We have to really understand that this is a wake up call; this is a time of action.”

“I want people to start to think. I always say that: You've got to think before cooking.”

“Food, for me, is society, and food is very political. Food is part of culture, and culture relies on art and creativity. If there is no art, there is no food, and there is no city.”

“Food is politics. You know, we have one planet. And growing food is, you're using the soil of the planet.”