Imagine this: you’re in a fancy restaurant, but the food is terrible. Not just bad, but horribly bad, and the waiters are clueless about the disaster they’re serving. This is what happened to me at Le Cinq, the flagship Michelin three-star restaurant at the George V Hotel in Paris.
For 18 years, I’ve reviewed restaurants, and I’ve never encountered anything so atrocious in terms of value for money and overall experience. Le Cinq is, unfortunately, a champion in a category I’d rather not win.
A Glittering Façade, A Dismal Reality
My plan was to visit a classic Parisian gastro-palace to understand what people pay for when dining in the lap of luxury. I envisioned an observational piece, full of delightful moments. After all, money can buy you a good time, right?
I chose Le Cinq, headed by Chef Christian Le Squer, named “Chef of the Year” by his peers in 2016. Surely, this would be a whimsical, perhaps even outrageous, experience. I never imagined I’d encounter cooking so shamefully bad it would make my jaw drop.
A Room Designed for the Guilt-Free
The dining room itself was a grand space, with high ceilings, thick carpets, and a decor that screamed “I have more money than sense!” It was a room designed for people who have never had to worry about money, where guilt is a foreign concept. There were even special stools for handbags, just in case you needed to rest your valuable accessories.
Prices That Bite Harder Than the Food
Menus the size of a small book arrived. My companion, who had booked the table, was initially given a menu without prices. The waiters looked bewildered when we protested, but eventually, they replaced it. Let’s just say I understood why they might prefer people not to see the eye-watering prices. Starters and mains ranged from €70 to €140, which translates to about £121 for a single dish!
A Symphony of Disappointments
Le Cinq threw in a whole lot of extras: canapés, amuse-bouches, pre-desserts, bread, and a side of serious attitude. Surprisingly, the most enjoyable items came from the pastry section: a flaky brioche with salty butter and a tart with whipped chicken liver mousse and cornichons. These were the only bright spots in a culinary storm.
But then came the molecular gastronomy disaster. The first canapé was a clear gel sphere on a spoon, looking like a tiny silicone breast implant. It was supposed to be a “spherification,” a technique popularized by Ferran Adrià at El Bulli. This particular sphere popped in our mouths, releasing stale air with a hint of ginger. My companion likened it to eating a used condom left in a dusty greengrocer’s.
Other dishes continued this theme of ill-conceived and unnecessary spherification. Another canapé, a tuile enclosing scallop mush, showcased the kitchen’s unrefined obsession with acidity. It wasn’t the refreshing, light acidity of yuzu, but a harsh, unrefined sourness that felt like it was trying to polish dull brass.
The amuse-bouche was a halved passionfruit filled with a watercress purée that tasted solely of bitter greens. My lips curled in disgust, like a cat’s behind that had brushed against nettles.
A Descent into Culinary Chaos
The cheapest starter was gratinated onions, supposedly with the flavor of French onion soup. It looked like nightmares and felt like the sticky floor of a teenager’s party. We longed for a simple bowl of French onion soup.
A dish of raw scallops with sea urchin ice cream tasted overwhelmingly of iodine. It was the most innovative dish of the meal, but hardly groundbreaking. Sea urchin ice cream was already a thing back in the 90s!
The pigeon main, requested medium, arrived so pink it could have flown away with a little help from a few volts. It came with brutally acidic Japanese pear and more of that flavorless watercress purée. A heap of couscous with a tiny portion of lamb for €95 tasted of absolutely nothing.
Dessert was a mixed bag. Frozen chocolate mousse cigars wrapped in tuile were alright, if you could ignore the elastic flap of milk skin on top, like something that had fallen off a burn victim. The cheesecake with frozen parsley powder, however, was a culinary abomination. The parsley tasted like grass clippings and was completely inappropriate for the dish. We were so horrified by the cheesecake that they removed it from the bill.
An Expensive Lesson Learned
With all this, we each had one glass of champagne, one glass of white, and one of red, chosen for us by the sommelier from a wine list that included bottles for €15,000. The drinks alone set us back €170. The total bill came to €600. Every single thing I ate at the restaurant Skosh, for a sixth of the price, was better than this.
I’ve spent similar sums on restaurant experiences before and have not regretted it. We all have our own ways of creating memories, and some of mine involve expensive restaurants. But they have to be good. Le Cinq will leave me with memories, but they are bleak and troubling. I hope one day I can forget them.
An Expensive Culinary Nightmare
Le Cinq is a testament to the fact that money doesn’t guarantee quality. While the decor and service might fool you into thinking you’re in for a special experience, the food is a disastrous mess. It’s a shame that such a prestigious restaurant, with a world-renowned chef, can produce such terrible food. If you’re looking for a truly memorable culinary experience in Paris, I suggest steering clear of Le Cinq.
