Michelin-Starred Manhattan Restaurant to Open Bakery at Domino Park

Pecan sticky bun ice cream, one of several flavors from Renata Ameni’s “Icons of Pastry” event at Crown Shy.

The pastry chef behind the Michelin-starred restaurants Crown Shy and Saga is opening a bakery on the Williamsburg waterfront this fall. Renata Ameni, as a part of James Kent’s Saga Hospitality Group, will run a 3,000-square-foot cafe at the base of the renovated Domino Sugar Factory, which reopened following a decade of renovations last fall.

The ground-floor bakery is geared toward office workers and locals. It will serve cakes, croissants, and danishes in the mornings, plus salads and sandwiches during the day. The plans include a takeout window that overlooks Domino Park, where Ameni will serve the ice creams she has become known for at Crown Shy.

The bakery is the group’s first restaurant in Brooklyn. Two Trees Management, behind much of the development in Dumbo, purchased the Domino Sugar Factory in 2012. The landmarked building reopened in September as a 15-story, 460,000-square-foot office building that Architectural Digest called “a perfect synthesis of new and old.”

Ameni is one of several pastry chefs leading a new era of desserts in New York. “I’ve always been a little more about taste than looks,” she said of her style last fall. “I like desserts with familiar flavors.”

She learned to bake at a French pastry shop in her hometown of São Paulo. Over the last decade, she has worked in several of the country’s top restaurants, including Jean-Georges in Manhattan, and Manresa, which recently closed outside of San Francisco. She met Kent, the owner of Crown Shy and Saga, while working in the kitchen of Eleven Madison Park.

Kent opened Crown Shy in 2019 with his business partner, Jeff Katz. (The duo has since gone separate ways.) In 2021, they followed up with Saga, a fine dining restaurant on the 63rd floor of a Financial District skyscraper. The restaurant was awarded two Michelin stars the following year.

In addition to the Brooklyn bakery, Kent and Ameni have a seafood restaurant coming this fall to 360 Park Avenue South, at East 26th Street.