Le Cinq - Paris
Rating: 18/20
Where: Paris, France
When: Dinner for 2 on 9 November 2019
Cost per Person: Tasting menu 350 Euro, Wine Pairing 220 Euro
Accolades: 3 Michelin Stars
Why: Modern French cuisine in a luxurious environment
Note: This was one of the first reviews that I wrote right after visiting a restaurant, and the rating scheme is on a scale 0-3 depending on how many Michelin stars the dish warranted. I later realized that a more fine-grained scale would be more useful...
Le Cinq is located in the Paris Four Seasons hotel, a few blocks south of the Champs-d'Elysees.
Entering the hotel, one can't help but feel that this is a place of opulence; the style feels 18th century, the guests (at a guess) are predominantly well-heeled foreigners who don't have to think twice about paying for rooms that start at over $1000 a night.
The restaurant, past a lounge, continues in the same extravagant style. Lots of gold, chandeliers, overflowing flower arrangements, ornamentation galore. We are here right after opening time at 7pm on a Saturday night, and the restaurant is still mostly empty. Over the course of the evening, the tables fill up: a British couple celebrating their wedding anniversary, a German couple behind us, a table of two older and two younger ladies (their daughters?) from Hong Kong, a Middle-Eastern family with their child. Presumably all well-off, and presumably none of them living in France.
So this is where the 1% (or maybe 0.01%) eats. The waiter heaps rose petals on the table, while whispering to me "you'll thank me later" - I'm having dinner with my sister, so, um, no. Said sister receives a menu without prices.
Definitely not my scene, but I'm here for the food. Which starts out somewhat inauspiciously: some crackers and nibbles that turn out to be pretty plain. A shell-fish jelly with shell-fish mousse and crab cracker. The mousse is nice, the rest again ok, but not great 0.
The first official course of the evening is cuttlefish with tuna and ground pepper. Presented like slices of bacon, this is the most whimsical that the dinner gets for the night. (This dinner will push noones comfort zone, for better or worse.) The dish is decent, the squid having a nice, soft texture, but not terribly exciting 1.
Next up is a prawn, topped with tomato coulis, mayonnaise and a small crepe. This dish comes together wonderfully, the warm creamy mayonnaise and the firm texture of the prawn, yum! A waiter later confides to us that this is his favorite item on the menu, and I can see why 3.
Our waiter then announces an "onion soup", and proceeds to dribble a miniscule amount of onion soup into a bowl next to some onions. At first, this seems like a soup that's not very, well, liquid. It turns out though that the onions on the plate are hollow and filled with soup - a neat concept. As much as I appreciate the idea, the actual taste is nothing special. I really like good onion soups, but this one has mushy onions and a not very distinctive broth 0.
The second to last savory course is also the only meat course. Duck with a side of (half a) mushroom. I'm not a big fan of duck, and I love mushrooms. So it's a bit ironic to report that the duck was pretty good, tender with not too much fat, while the mushroom was forgettable 2.
The final savory course is eel, next to a potato cube with horse-radish sauce. This dish is excellent, a nice, heavy texture on the eel, with lots of smokiness, the horse-radish sauce adds some lightness (but not much heat). It's not often that you encounter eel in Western restaurants, and even less often as the "main" course 3.
Which brings me back to an exchange that occured at the beginning of the meal: our waiter announced that the main course was eel, and then promptly recommended that we replace it by another fish dish, a turbot. This was an odd suggestion - I'd assume that a tasting menu already contains the dishes recommended by the chef, so why suggest an (unasked-for) change? Definitely a first for me. I can only assume that the eel is "too weird" for the restaurant's typical customer, so they offer to replace it by a more conventional dish.
Well, there thankfully were two of us, so obviously we tried both options. The turbot was also excellent, but with a much lighter flavor profile. You couldn't really go wrong here 3.
After an (optional) cheese intermezzo, we were on to dessert. First was a dish wholly made from grapefruit: grapefruit/sugar brulee on grapefruit sorbet on grapefruit meat on candied grapefruit peel. Very nice 2.
The next two desserts were based on pears and blackberries. They were pleasant, but not outstanding 0. My vote goes to the grapefruit dessert.
Overall: This was a pleasant meal, we left full but not stuffed - probably helped by the fact that most of the dinner was pescatarian. But in the end, this was more like a two-star place. The best dishes were definitely at at a three-star level, but the majority was not, with some even below one-star level. More consistency would be nice. But maybe the average 1%-er customer cares more about the ambiance and less about the food... 18
