Owner of SF’s most expensive restaurant opens affordable spot

The California-inspired restaurant is the French-born chef’s first restaurant in her home country, located inside the chic boutique hotel La Fantaisie. While the tasting menu at San Francisco’s Atelier Crenn will run you $475, most dishes on Golden Poppy’s menu are between 18 euros and 24 euros (about $19 to $26). That said, there are still a few big-ticket items, such as the dry-aged “Ikejime” sea bream whole fish for 110 euros (about $119) and the tacos with abalone, avocado and kimchi for 48 euros (about $52).

Still, the prices at Golden Poppy are a lot less steep compared with any of Crenn’s San Francisco restaurants. Aside from Atelier Crenn, Petit Crenn currently costs $350 per person for a six-course menu with wine pairings, while Bar Crenn’s “snack menu” costs $120 per person. 

The menu at Golden Poppy is fully pescatarian, as is the case with all of Crenn’s restaurants. Dishes are California-inspired, using seasonal produce and sustainable seafood, while “showcasing the global flavours that drive West Coast food culture,” wrote the Financial Times. That means dishes like sea bass ceviche with pea milk and leche de tigre, banana pancakes with smoked caviar, and orange kakigori, a Japanese shaved ice dessert.

“A golden poppy is the state flower of California, so it’s the feeling and flavors of California,” Crenn told Town & Country. “California is a melting pot of global cuisine, so that’s what Golden Poppy will represent.”

So far, Golden Poppy has received mostly positive reviews, even from French publications. France’s Le Point declared that Crenn’s new restaurant “lives up to the buzz and expectation”; Yonder rated it a 9 out of 10.