Le Cinq
Le Cinq Review at-a-glance
Awards: 3 Michelin stars
+Luxury ingredients abound. I visited in January, peak black truffle season, and nearly half of the courses included truffles.
+Some truly world-class dishes, particulary the savory side. Le Squers cooking is a modern take on French food.
-All the luxury ingredients come at a cost, the tasting menu price among the highest in the world
-FOH started off strong but lapsed into inattention
Rating: 95/100
Verdict: The classic dishes of Christia Le Squer have stood the test of time. I came for the Spaghetti La Timbale and Grapefruit dessert and they did not disappoint, both being among the best dishes I had in 2020. Not far behind was a piece of Turbot packed with truffle and a simple but flawlessly executed dish of truffle and soft cooked egg. Why not a higher score then? Some meals are greater than the sum of their parts; this was one that was less. While I think fondly of the individual courses, my memory of the overall experience is marred by an indifferent front of house, mediocre desserts, and a big bill.
Price I paid: €360
Value: 9/20
Le Cinq Background
Le Cinq is a 3 star Michelin restaurant in one of the grandest (and most expensive) hotels in Paris, the Four Seasons George V. As you would expect for a restaurant sitting in a Four Seasons, everything was expensive here - an 8-course dinner menu clocks in at a whopping €360 while the lunch menu is €175-225 depending on if you go for 4 or 6 courses. While not out of line with pricing at other Parisian three stars it puts the lunch menu at roughly the same price point as the full tastings at German 3 stars like Waldhotel Sonnara (€225), Atelier (€245) and Gastehaus Klaus Erfort (€225). Wine by the glass started at €19 and went up quickly from there with most priced around ~€30 and marked up roughly 125% of the cost of the bottle. If you have the GDP of a small nation Le Cinq has an extensive wine cellar with over 50,000 bottles including many rare vintages.
The chef at Le Cinq is Christian Le Squer who joined the Four Seasons in 2014 with the sole mission of earning 3 stars, a task he completed only two years later in 2016. Le Squer joining the Four Seasons came at a time of musical chairs among the best chefs in Paris, Le Squer himself abandoning his three stars at Ledoyen where he was replaced by Yannick Alléno of Le Meurice (who himself earned three new stars only a year after replacing Le Squer).
Quibbles on the value aside, the food at Le Cinq was excellent. Le Squer’s cooking is hard to describe - it is certainly French but a much more modern interpretation than say L’Ambroisie or Guy Savoy. Courses alternated between good and outstanding with there being more outstanding than good. I threw all financial prudence aside and ordered the full dinner tasting. The restaurant kindly let me substitute the meat entree (Venison) for Le Sqeur’s spaghetti dish with no upcharge despite the spaghetti costing €40 more on the a la carte.
What we ate at Le Cinq
The meal started off with a trio of amuse bouches from the kitchen all fine enough but not particularly memorable. I am not sure I really understood why they chose to serve these on top of a red cabbage ring - it did not appear to connect to any of the amuses or have any purpose besides looking kind of cool. These were followed by a more substantial amuse of scallop and black pudding which was finished off with a mushroom consomme poured table side. A step-up from the previous amuse, the consomme had a fantastic depth of flavor and the black pudding having a nice texture. Bread came in three varieties - “cereal”, classic baguette, and buckwheat. The cereal and baguette were excellent while the buckwheat was incredibly dry and a waste of stomach space.
The first proper course was lightly cooked egg with lardo di colonatta and black truffle. A simple dish but one that required a high degree of finesse to execute at this level - pitch perfect seasoning and texture on the eggs. Even better was the large chunks of the black truffle, adding an earthiness and contrasting texture to the creamy egg. Eating the large chunks of truffle was a completely different experience than the more common shaved variation. My notes said 3 star comfort food and further reflection did not change that assessment.
Blue lobster with savory avocado crepes kicked things up a notch with the lobster being barely cooked and having great sweetness and texture - no small feat when I am used to eating Maine lobster which I find to be sweeter and softer than its french cousins. The lobster paired excellently with the avocado puree and the light sauce which had a hint of Jalapeno. One of the better lobster dishes in quite some time.
Foie Gras Like a Pebble was a bit of a miss of me. Foie gras poached in an iodized broth, plated to look like a pebble with a bit of cranberry and a mustardish sauce on the side. I am a lover of foie gras but this particular interpretation did nothing for me - the cranberry cut the richness of the dish nicely but the foie gras itself was not exceptional from texture nor taste. This has been a staple on the Le Cinq menu for quite some time so perhaps I missed the point of it but it was my least favorite savoury course of the night.
The disappointment of the foie gras was quickly washed away with the next dish, meunière style Turbot infused with black truffles. Calling this dish infused with black truffles is a bit of an understatement - the fish was placed in a pool of truffle sauce and then had a heap of matchstick shaped slices of truffle on top. I suppose there were other components in here but I can’t recall much other than the heady aroma of truffle combined with world-class turbot. A fine dish.
The meal continued to climb higher, with one of Le Squer”s signature, Spaghetti, Ham, mushrooms, and truffle “spaghetti”. Intricately assembled, the dish consists of a rectangle of spaghetti molded together and filled with a decadent morel cream mixture. This spaghetti structure was then topped with batons of black truffle and ham and served with a truffle cream sauce poured tableside. To finish off everything they added a welcome bunch of fresh shaved black truffles coming from a huge specimen. Hedonism at its finest and one of the best things I have ever eaten. The a la carte price of this dish was €170 and while I question if any dish could be worth that price tag this came about as close as possible. Halfway through the dish I couldn’t help but plot a return in my head - perhaps next Autumn to enjoy it with Alba white truffles instead of the Perigord black?
The indulgent “spaghetti” was followed up by another Le Squer classic, the refreshing Grapefruit three ways (raw, caramelized, and preserved) - a symphony of textures combined with a beautiful balance between sweet and bitter. The rare dish that served as both a palate cleanser and a fantastic dessert in itself.
After the back-to-back-to-back highs of the turbot, spaghetti, and grapefruit the meal couldn’t possibly keep climbing higher and it inevitably letdown with the last two courses. Preserved “Passe-Crassane” pear, pear sorbet and chevril root cream was a bit of a throwaway course for me. While it is merely personal preference I didn’t enjoy the texture of the pear much and the other components did not make up for it.
This was followed by the last full course of blackberries cooked in their juice and crunchy coffee mousse. A pleasing enough dessert without anything being particularly remarkable or memorable. The blackberries worked well with the coffee but neither the sourcing (it has to be hard to find truly remarkable blackberries in January) or cooking technique made them stand out, leaving them a league below the best berry desserts I have had (Frantzen and Louis XV).
Stray thoughts
Service started off attentive if a bit clinical but lapsed over the course of the meal. By the end, the army of servers dwindled and the ones left behind focused more on setting up tables for dinner than checking in on the remaining guests. Water was not topped up and empty wine was whisked way without an offer of a glass to go with the main course.