Golden Poppy is a restaurant from star chef Dominique Crenn inside the Fantasia hotel. Her Paris outpost takes its name and inspiration from California, the state in which Crenn resides and runs her three-star Atelier Crenn. The menu and decor are wild and the experience is mixed. Given the high prices (small plates run from 18-48 euros) and the overall “meh?” feeling that followed our meal, it’s not a restaurant that we’re urging you to visit.
GOLDEN POPPY
24 Rue Cadet, 75009
Open every day for lunch & dinner
Reservations online or at +33 1 55 07 85 10
Their Instagram / Our Instagram
OUR PHOTOS OF GOLDEN POPPY
IN OTHER WORDS
- Eater (2023) “Slaying a slew of negative local stereotypes about American food, the return of one of their own is proving to French diners that there’s actually some spectacularly good food in the United States. Chef Dominique Crenn moved from France to San Francisco in 1988, trained with Jeremiah Tower, and became the first female chef in the country to earn three Michelin stars at her restaurant L’Atelier Crenn. Now she’s opened Golden Poppy, named for the official flower of her adopted state, as a very personal homage to California cooking, all presented in trippy, through-the-looking-glass Victorian conservatory decor done by trendy designer Martin Brudnizki.”
- Financial Times (2023) “Designed by Martin Brudnizki, the hotel’s interiors are a fanciful cultivation of pattern and colour based around a horticultural theme (rue Cadet is named after 16th-century master gardeners to the royal court). The ground-floor restaurant Golden Poppy resembles a Beatonian sunroom, and gives onto a leafy terrace and garden. It’s an apt backdrop for Crenn’s gastronomic concept – Californian cuisine showcasing the global flavours that drive West Coast food culture, but using local French produce.”
- CNTraveler (2023) “The restaurant’s unlikeness to Paris—and the distance Crenn has traveled to get here—is what makes this venture, her debut in France, so full of possibility. Thirty years after leaving to see what she could become, she has returned with a Bay Area brightness, an unapologetic slow-food ethos, and a menu that honors the rich immigrant cuisines that constitute California’s culinary vernacular while using the best French ingredients.”
- Town & Country (2023) “Is Golden Poppy Paris’ Next Great Restaurant?” (published a month before opening)
- Fine Dining Lovers (2023) “On the plate, the Breton woman promises to return to her young years in France and her love for California, which conveys open and sharing values and reactivates the link between the table and nature.” (published seven months before opening)
I had already made my reservation before your review. I considered canceling, but the staff was so helpful with the reservation that I went anyway. Your experience was far better than mine, and I was left with the impression that there’s something fundamentally wrong here. And I agree, so much, “Why this with that?” I hope they can get it together and improve.