In the Kitchen with a Michelin Star: Our Day Cooking with Chef Yannick Crepaux in Crans-Montana — and the 2026 Stars Are In

There are dinners you remember, and then there are days that rearrange what you think a restaurant can be. Ours happened in Crans-Montana, in the kitchen of LeMontBlanc at LeCrans Hotel & Spa, standing at the pass in aprons next to Chef Yannick Crepaux.

We didn’t just eat at his Michelin-starred table. We spent the day with him.

Crepaux — who trained with Guy Martin and Christian Constant — calls the experience table d’hôtes, and it is exactly that: the chef’s table taken all the way into the kitchen itself. In his spotless kitchen we donned aprons and received a culinary education step by step, taste by taste, the way only working beside a master can teach it. Together we created his savory brioche French toast — a dish that sounds humble until a mound of aromatic shaved truffles lands on it and you understand you’re in the hands of someone who thinks in layers. Then he seated us in the perfect spot to witness the magic of expertise and culinary artistry as service unfolded around us.

The day kept unfolding. We joined the wine director and sommelier in the lounge for a tasting of hand-selected wines — two sommeliers being poured for, for once, and happily taking notes. And then it was time to dine: escorted to our table beside the snow-covered, tree-lined view, with an open fire burning in the lounge bar and the Alps doing what they do outside the glass.

Dinner ran five hours. Yes, five hours — and we would not give one of them back.

Course by course it arrived, presented with exemplary service: the savory French toast with its truffles; the Swiss and Alpine specialties — fondue, raclette, tartiflette — each carrying Crepaux’s signature creative flair; French classics from steak frites to coq au vin; pasta and seafood; and for the finish, Swiss chocolate fondue, crème brûlée, and espresso as the snow kept falling outside. A global list of fine wines ran alongside it all. It was gastronomic artistry, but it was also something rarer: generosity. A chef at the top of his craft opened his kitchen, his cellar, and his whole day to two journalists from Las Vegas, and treated our curiosity as an ingredient.

Crans-Montana gave us the other star, too. At L’Ours — the restaurant of the Hostellerie du Pas de l’Ours — Chef Franck Reynaud joined us at our table as his kitchen’s Michelin artistry arrived course by course, and we got to know a chef who has never forgotten his Provençal roots. Two starred kitchens, two chefs who cook the mountain they live in. That’s the Haut-Plateau in one sentence.

Which is why the news out of Crans-Montana this week made us cheer out loud. With the announcement of the 2026 MICHELIN Guide, Crans-Montana has confirmed its standing as one of the great gastronomic addresses in the Alps — and both of our chefs are on the list again.

Both starred restaurants retain their star for 2026: L’Ours, Franck Reynaud’s kitchen at the Hostellerie du Pas de l’Ours, and LeMontBlanc, Yannick Crepaux’s restaurant at LeCrans — two chefs keeping their stars with brilliance, on the strength of fine local products and a technical mastery that no longer needs proving.

The confirmed Bib Gourmand — Michelin’s distinction for refined cooking at a gentle price — stays with Edo, faithful to its values and a favorite for exactly that quality-to-price magic.

And the Guide warmly recommends four more establishments that make up the richness of the Haut-Plateau table: Le Partage, FIVE, Le Bistrot des Ours, and Byakko — each with a strong identity of its own.

Two stars held, a Bib Gourmand confirmed, four recommendations. For a single mountain resort, that is a feast of a list — and having cooked beside one of those chefs and dined with the other, we can tell you the distinctions are earned the slow way: product, rigor, creativity, and teams who cook like the mountain is watching. Because in Crans-Montana, it is.

Bravo,  Yannick. Bravo, Franck. The next time we’re back on the Haut-Plateau — and there will be a next time — we’ll be at your tables. Preferably starting in the kitchen, aprons on.

Sources: Crans-Montana Tourisme, “Culinary excellence endures with the MICHELIN distinctions” (2026 MICHELIN Guide, announced Nov. 3, 2026); our earlier coverage, “Crans-Montana Switzerland Offers an Exquisite Way to Spend a Winter Holiday” (Cuisineist, 2018) and our Valais journey (Cuisineist, 2017).