By the time Antoine Chemel was in middle school, he had wheedled his way into after-school prep work at his father’s now-closed fine dining restaurant. This month, the 22-year-old opened a new cocktail bar.
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Height marks of Antoine, son of chef Bruno Chemel and wife Christie, are seen on a locker at the Michelin two-starred Baumé in Palo Alto in 2018.
Stephen Lam/Special to The Chronicle
Bar Antoine Lounge is now open on the mezzanine level above Le Parc Bistro Bar in the Galleria Park Hotel in Union Square.
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The Chemel family was planning a renovation of Le Parc’s upstairs dining room this year when they decided to turn it into a bar instead.
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Cocktails include the Le Parc Lychee, left, and the Green Iguana, with tequila, Midori and lime.
Santiago Mejia/S.F. Chronicle
When Antoine Chemel says he grew up in his family’s French restaurants, he means it literally: A locker in the kitchen of the now-closed Baumé in Palo Alto was scored with years of his height marks.
By the time Chemel was in middle school, he had wheedled his way into after-school prep work at Baumé, the luxe restaurant that once held two Michelin stars under his father, chef Bruno Chemel. In one of the family’s home movies, an 11-year-old Antoine can be seen diligently sautéing spears of asparagus. He also learned to precisely slice vegetables, bake bread and plate dishes for Baumé’s 15-course tasting menu, which was served with a mandatory wine pairing that started at $398 per person.
“I tried to kick him out of the kitchen, but he kept coming back,” said Bruno Chemel, who at one point ran Baumé with his wife, Christie, and no other employees besides their young son. “They called it the two-and-a-half kitchen team, because he was the half.”
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Before he left for college, Antoine Chemel rose to sous chef at his family’s Le Parc Bistrobar, a more casual bistro that opened in San Francisco’s Union Square two years ago. Now 22, Chemel is returning to the family business with a larger role, opening his own cocktail bar on the Le Parc Bistrobar’s mezzanine level.
At the new bar, Chemel serves a spin on Baumé’s salmon mousse in a bamboo steamer basket, called “Dim Saumon” ($22).
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For Bar Antoine Lounge, which opened earlier this month, the younger Chemel has developed a selection of “bar bites,” including escargots croquettes ($12), truffle gougeres ($20), beef brochettes ($38) and macarons filled with hazelnut ice cream ($9). The bar will serve the same French-leaning cocktail list that Christie Chemel created for Le Parc downstairs. Bar Antoine Lounge, lit by sconces against dark wooden walls, has room for 80 seats across the bar, leather banquettes and colorful velvet armchairs.
Frequent transformation has kept the Chemels’ work from ever becoming boring — or easy. The family made Baumé a mom-and-pop operation in 2015 so they could oversee every element of the high-concept fine dining restaurant themselves. They maintained Baumé’s Michelin stars until 2021. Bruno Chemel, who once said he hoped to earn three stars and kept a collection of vintage red Michelin books at Baumé, claims he spent several years asking for the restaurant to be removed from the guide, declaring its coveted award a “distraction.” The Chemels then converted their Palo Alto restaurant into the more casual Bistronomie by Baumé, which closed the following year. In the summer of 2024, they opened Le Parc at the Galleria Park Hotel.
The family was planning a renovation of the upstairs dining room this year when they decided to turn it into a bar instead. “Antoine wanted to open a bar,” Bruno Chemel said. “And we have some customers who come to the restaurant and say, ‘Oh, can we have a drink after? ’ We didn’t know where to send them.”
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From left: Christie Chemel, Antoine Chemel and Bruno Chemel at Bar Antoine Lounge.
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Bruno Chemel helped his son develop the menu and counseled him through his first few weeks as chef. But beyond that, he’s confident in his son’s ability to steer the bar on his own, even if Antoine has only been of legal drinking age for about a year: “He’s ready,” he said.
Antoine Chemel wasn’t sure if he would stay in the restaurant industry when he left to study business and economics at De Anza College in Cupertino. Then he stumbled on the video of himself cooking asparagus as a precocious, pre-teen chef. After “some more thought and some more eating,” he decided to return to the family business.
Chemel doesn’t mind having both his parents for coworkers. Growing up, he’d get scolded in the kitchen for “taking a really big chunk” out of everything he was offered to taste, sometimes spooning pans of sauce into his mouth like soup. Now, Chemel and his father work together like a four-handed chef, he said.
“We call ourselves a great duo,” Antoine Chemel said. “We can read each other’s minds at times. We don’t have to say too much to know that if I’m cooking something and I’m about to plate something, he can take over the cooking. We mix and match what we’re doing.”
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Antoine Chemel, 22, will steer the new Bar Antoine Lounge.
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It’s not uncommon for the children of restaurant titans to find themselves at the helm of their own business at a young age. In New York, outspoken Balthazar founder Keith McNally’s 23-year-old son George opened his own restaurant, Faux, this month. Shake Shack founder Danny Meyer’s daughter Hallie started her successful ice cream business Caffè Panna in 2019, when she was 26. At 27, Kathy Fang opened Fang in San Francisco alongside her father, Peter Fang, owner of the famed House of Nanking.
Bruno Chemel said he had no anxiety about handing over his restaurant’s upper floor to his son. For Antoine, the experience was nerve-racking at times, but easier with his parents’ support. He’s inherited his father’s exacting standards, he said, applying them to the dishes he makes “his way” — like a spin on Baumé’s salmon mousse that Antoine serves in a bamboo steamer basket, dubbed “Dim Saumon” ($22). “More of the pressure is just me on myself,” he said.
