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The Women at the Top of the Michelin Star Guide
With the Michelin restaurant guide dating back to the beginning of the 20th century, getting a star is arguably, to this day, the most respected and sought-after recognition that a restaurant can achieve. Reaching three stars, however, is reserved for the absolute highest level of cuisine, and only 145 restaurants around the world hold that distinction. An even smaller club is the one made up of female head chefs on that list of restaurants.
You can count the current members with your hands: Ana Roš (Hiša Franko, Slovenia), Clare Smyth (Core, London), Dominique Crenn (Atelier Crenn, San Francisco), Anne-Sophie Pic (PIC, France), Elena Arzak (Arzak, Spain), and Nadia Santini (Dal Pescatore, Italy). Each of them has followed a very different path to the top of the culinary world.
Whereas Clare Smyth had a more conventional career, first training for years under great names, such as Alain Ducasse and Gordon Ramsay, Ana Roš had no formal training and learned on the job, as she and her husband took the reins of his family restaurant. Some of them, as evidenced by their last name, carried on the family legacy by earning that last star or maintaining the restaurant’s place at the top. And then there’s French-born Dominique Crenn, who immigrated to America to become the first female chef in the United States to get three Michelin stars.
Others have come before them, but very few and far between—just over half a dozen came before the women on this list. Eugénie Brazier was the first female chef to receive three stars, and also the first chef in general to hold a total of six Michelin stars across her two restaurants in and around Lyon, France. She belonged to a different generation of female chefs—affectionately known as “mères lyonnaises” (Mothers of Lyon)—who put Lyon on the map as the gastronomic capital of France, with simpler, homestyle dishes executed to perfection.
Here is a list of 3-Star Michelin restaurants currently helmed by female chefs. They are located in Italy (Runate), Spain (San Sebastián), France (Valence), the United States (San Francisco), England (London), and Slovakia (Kobarid).
6 Female Chefs Currently Leading 3-Star Michelin Restaurants
Ana Roš, Hiša Franko, Slovenia, 2023
At the foot of the Soča Valley in Slavenia, sits Hiša Franko (translating to house of Franko), which received its three Michelin stars in 2023, making its charismatic chef, Ana Roš, the last woman to have reached the food guide’s highest distinction.
“Very few cuisines reflect the personality of the chef like that of Ana Roš Stojan. Her strong, determined, extrovert and contagiously friendly character is perfectly mirrored on a long tasting menu,” the Michelin guide wrote of Franko, highlighting her “inimitable style.”
A self-taught chef and six-language speaker, Roš at one time pursued a career in diplomacy, even getting a degree in international studies. Instead, she decided to join forces with her husband, Valter Kramer (the restaurant’s sommelier), and the pair took over his family’s restaurant.
“When I told my parents that I fell in love with someone who has a restaurant, my mother almost had a heart attack,” she said in a video interview for the Michelin Guide.
For Roš, the Hiša Franko family now extends to over 100 members, she described in another video interview. It includes local farmers, shepherds and cheese makers, people foraging for ingredients in the surrounding Kobarid area, and fishermen on the other side of the mountain. The restaurant has also earned a Green Star from the Michelin Guide, highlighting its commitment to sustainability.
Ana’s Kitchen in Kobarid has also spun off Pekarna Ana, a specialty bakery with sourdough and pastries, and JAZ by Ana Roš, a more casual eatery — both located in Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana.
Clare Smyth, Core, London, 2021
Just over three years after opening her first restaurant, Clare Smith quickly amassed three Michelin stars. Her prompt rise to the top of the guide followed a long career working with some of the biggest names in gastronomy, including training at Alain Ducasse’s Le Louis XV in Monaco and working under Gordon Ramsay for 13 years to eventually become the chef patron at his eponymously-named and similarly three-Michelin-starred restaurant.
Born in Northern Ireland, Smyth moved to England at 16 to study culinary arts at Highbury College. In 2013, she was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to the hospitality industry.
Smyth’s penchant for business has played a key role in her success. Even as a 25-year-old sous chef for Ramsey, she would make it a point to go through the group’s profits and losses, the chef told the Financial Times. And when it came time to open her first solo place, she didn’t rely on a big budget from outside investment, but instead, as she told FT, “a bit of borrowed money from the bank, and some of my own finances.”
“I remember Alain Ducasse – a great mentor of mine – coming in and asking for a sauce spoon, and we didn’t have them. Not because I didn’t know, but because we couldn’t afford them,” she remembered in an interview for The World’s 50 Best Restaurants’ website. “But people didn’t care that we didn’t open up with a £10 million budget, and that’s a really lovely thing.”
Smyth devotes part of her time to helping raise the next generation of chefs, for example, serving as president of the cooking competition Bocuse d’Or and as a judge of the S. Pellegrino World’s Best Young Chef Competition.
Elena Arzak, Arzak, Spain, 1989
Part of another culinary dynasty, Elena Arzak joined the family restaurant in the 1990s after years of training abroad in some of the most prestigious restaurants across France, Italy, and Spain — including a stint at the iconic El Bulli. Then she returned home to San Sebastián.
“I had to find my identity at Arzak, otherwise I wouldn’t be useful. I worked in each station of the kitchen to relearn what happens in my house. Also, I studied many books of Basque cooking to learn more about my roots,” she told The Guardian.
In the late 2000s, Elena became joint head chef along with her father, Juan Mari Arzak. She has since progressively been taking the reins — and has done so “in magnificent fashion,” the Michelin guide noted.
Father and daughter have often spoken in interviews of their harmonious relationship in the kitchen and how their individual strengths have helped keep Arzak at the top over the years. While keeping in line with the traditions of the basque cuisine and the style of cooking that brought Arzak its three Michelin stars in 1989, Juan Mari welcomed Elena’s own ideas.
“I think my father thought, ‘If I don’t allow Elena to make her new things she will get bored and leave’, but he also knew that if I introduced a tandoor, ginger, a mole from Mexico, it would work with the tastes of my region,” she also told The Guardian.
Along the way, Elena has won her own accolades, including the Chef de l’Avenir Award by the International Academy of Gastronomy in 2001, the National Gastronomy Award by the Spanish Academy of Gastronomy in 2010, and the title of top female chef in the World’s Best 50 Restaurants list in 2012.
Dominique Crenn, Atelier Crenn, California, 2019
French-born Dominique Crenn became the first female chef in the United States to get three Michelin stars — a title she still holds to this day.
Growing up in Versailles, Crenn’s grandmother first introduced her to cooking. Both of her parents came from farming families, and her dad was a painter. The love of art they shared bled into her restaurant, Atelier Crenn, which Dominique has dubbed a “workshop for art.” The menu reads like a poe,m and some of Crenn’s father’s paintings decorate the walls.
Crenn moved to the United States at the age of 21, without formal cooking training, with hopes of pursuing a career in gastronomy.
“French women did not head restaurants back then, and we certainly weren’t invited to dream of doing so. It goes without saying that it made me incredibly sad to have to leave my home, but I refuse to be exposed to those kinds of limitations,” she told CEO Magazine.
She got her start in the culinary world at the then-renowned San Francisco restaurant Stars. She then went on to work at the Intercontinental Hotel in Jakarta, where she became the first female executive chef in Indonesia. Back in San Francisco, at the helm of San Francisco International’s Luce, Crenn earned her first Michelin star before eventually opening her own restaurant.
Crenn survived breast cancer just a few years ago. “Through cancer, I had to peel the layers off myself and when you get back to yourself, then you’re able to give back to others,” she said in a video for the World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
Nadia Santini, Dal Pescatore, Italy, 1996
Husband and wife duo Nadia and Antonio Santini are the third generation behind Dal Pescatori, which his family has run since 192 — back then called Vino e Pesce.
With Nadia at the helm, the restaurant earned its third Michelin star in 1996, a distinction it has maintained to this day. “Nadia Santini’s cheffing expertise has lifted the restaurant to the highest of values,” said a statement from the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards in 2013, when they named her Best Female Chef.
Nadia didn’t get any formal culinary training, but instead learned from her husband’s grandmother, Teresa.
The fourth generation of Santinis has also stepped in, with Nadia and Antonio’s son Giovanni in the kitchen and Alberto helping at the front of the house alongside Dad.
Anne-Sophie Pic, PIC, Valence, France, 2007
The fourth generation in the Pic family’s restaurant legacy, Anne-Sophie managed to regain the eponymously named restaurant’s third Michelin star in 2007, more than a decade after her father, and former chef, passed away.
But that was only the beginning of her chapter: not only did Anne-Sophie return Pic to its former glory, she also turned the family name into an international group with multiple locations across continents. That includes Dame de Pic in London (two stars), the Anne-Sophie PIC restaurant at the Beau-Rivage Palace (which also earned two stars), and Dame de Pic Dubai (one star).
Across the multiple locations, Pic has collected about ten stars, which puts her in the top ten of the most Michelin-decorated chefs in the world. She did so with no formal culinary training, having earlier in her career turned away from the family trade. It was not until the passing of her father, in her early twenties, that she reconsidered.
In 2016, she opened André, a more casual eatery in the same building as the original Pic in Valence. Named after her grandfather, the restaurants brought back some of the family’s classic recipes.
Words by Catarina Moura
Feature Image: Elena Arzak | Photo by Sara Santos
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