Best Kept Carmel
A Coastal Village Under Michelin Stars
The Chez Noir kitchen is gleaming. Immaculate brass light fixtures spotlight a spotless prep space that is windowed from the candle-lit dining room. It's like a stage for culinary performance. Except this is not a performance. This is intimate, artful cooking rooted in centuries-long traditions.
Executive Chef Jonny Black carries an arms-length-long Black Cod to the prep space, and precisely, almost reverently, begins breaking it apart. There is a dexterity to each movement, a deceptive simplicity to each slice, that suggests mastery.
This is a Michelin Star kitchen. And in laid-back Carmel-by-the-Sea fashion, if you had no idea it was here, you might have walked right past it. Housed in a Craftsman-style home, behind a vine-draped patio, the only tip that this restaurant has received one of the highest honors in the culinary world would be the square, red "Michelin Star" emblem at the restaurant's front door, barely seen from the street.
That Chez Noir received a Michelin Star only months after opening is a remarkable feat. But Jonny and Monique Black, both veterans of some of the most widely recognized Michelin Star kitchens in the world, want to make it clear that Chez Noir is nothing like the likes of Atelier Crenn, Quince or Per Se, where they have worked in the past.
"Monique and I have both worked in all these Michelin star restaurants, two- and three-star restaurants, but this restaurant isn't that. It's not a super fine dining restaurant," says Jonny Black. "For us it's just a really great restaurant, which means the food is going to be really nice. You're going to have good service, but it's not as stuffy and as forced sometimes a two and three story, one to still feel very, very relaxed and very honest, and you're coming into somebody's home."
One-Square-Mile of Michelin Meals
Chez Noir isn't the only Carmel-by-the-Sea restaurant to receive Michelin recognition. Aubergine, an intimate culinary experience within the L'Auberge hotel, has its own Michelin Star recognition.
The Michelin Guide raves about Chef Justin Cogley's creations, starting with the "first bites that arrive nestled in a sort of seascape jewel box" and continuing to the "triple-seared dry-aged ribeye."
Having two Michelin Star restaurants within steps of each other in a tiny seaside village isn't a fluke. Carmel-by-the-Sea has been attracting and inspiring culinary creatives and master chefs for generations.
"We're really spoiled here," said Jonny Black. "I think we have some of the best products in the world. You have farmers coming to you. You can go to the markets. You have fishermen coming right from the docks."
