Le Cinq

Maggie and I had a lot to celebrate this February. My birthday was on the 1st, our 3-year anniversary fell on the 3rd, and of course there's Valentine's Day. Instead of making a big deal out of each one in turn, we decided to make a really, really big deal out of all of them together by treating ourselves to an exquisite meal at a Michelin Guide-starred restaurant. After a great deal of research (notably on foodie forum Chowhound) we chose Le Cinq, the 2-star restaurant of the Hôtel Georges V, one of the most luxurious hotels in Paris. (It's one of the few to rival the Hôtel de Crillon in sumptuousness.)

Now, normally celebrations take place over dinner. But dinner at Le Cinq starts around 250 euros (~$340) per person, not including wine. And that, my friends, is rich. Too rich. So we went for lunch, which has a very reasonable "three-course" menu at 78 euros per person. I put "three-course" in scare quotes because it was actually more like an 8-course meal. Really, what you end up paying for is the overall experience, and ours was worth every euro cent.

The experience starts when you walk in the room. We were impressed at how tastefully decorated the place was: not nearly as much gilt and marble as we expected, lots of natural light (one good reason to go for lunch), a good balance of ancien régime (aka Louis XIV through Louis XVI) style and clean, modern touches. The white lilies, so fresh and . . . well, white, constituted a theme that ran throughout the hotel. But enough about décor, let's get to the food!

Course #1: Lightly battered fried shrimp and calamari drizzled with fresh lemon juice. Since pretty much anything fried tastes good, we weren't inordinately impressed by the taste of this little amuse-bouche. On the other hand, I for one was awed by the triton-like utensil crowned with a V (for Vendetta?) that we used to spear the little guys. Also, how beautiful is that plate? Very beautiful.

Prior to our second course, I received the wine menu. It weighed 30 lbs, easily. And of course I ended up just asking the sommelier to recommend something anyway. I started to explain what we had ordered, and he already knew. That's service. He suggested that Maggie try a Madeira with her entrée (appetizer), which we'll get to in a second. I tried a white wine "à l'aveugle" (blind taste test), which turned out to be a Cabernet Sauvignon from New Zealand. Yummy. We also ordered water. I was very careful to ask for "de l'eau du robinet," which means tap water, mostly because we didn't want to pay the exorbitant price we knew would be charged for bottled mineral water, but also because we oppose bottled water in general. Still, whether due to a miscommunication or the possibility that Le Cinq refuses to serve tap water, we were brought a 100 cL bottle of Evian. 12 euros. Only bémol (slip up) of the meal.

Course #2: Not pictured is our palate-cleanser between amuses-bouche - a single slice of country bread that we were instructed to dip in some kind of special extra extra extra virgin olive oil (EEEVOO). You may not consider this a "course," but there was a whole ceremony around it, more so than around the delivery of the fried shrimp. So there.

As in any restaurant, we were brought a basket of bread - from which we each chose one out of several kinds - and butter. As you can see, the butter was infused with herbs and came in a very refined-looking, bell-shaped container. We want one for chez nous (our place).

Course #3: Three more amuses-bouche, on an awesome trapezoidal plate (modern touch!). From right to left:

A) Spinach-goat cheese "ravioli" over (what we think is a painter's stroke of) squid ink. Not sure what that spice dusting the top is. We were a little surprised to have two fried bits in such close succession, but didn't mind at all, since they were so different, and since the spinach-goat cheese combination tasted so, so good.

B) Watercress soup. Striking color, creamy texture, delicious!

C) Sautéed squid, flavors reminiscent of East Asian food, topped with chives. Interesting spoon.

Satisfied with the offerings so far, Maggie beams in anticipation of what's to come. All this from the couch she was sitting on, which made her want to lounge as if that afternoon were different from all other afternoons. 

Course #4 (Louis): Coeur de saumon extra-frais en sashimi aux condiments, pommes tiedes / pamplemousse (Extra-fresh salmon "hearts" à la sashimi with "condiments," warm potatoes, and grapefruit)

You know you're at a nice restaurant when translating the menu into English doesn't help you understand the nature of a dish. Basically it was really, really tender raw salmon over single slices of potato and single chunks of grapefruit. Unfortunately the restaurant's description leaves out all the extra, most creative touches: the green, gelatinous disks on each side, topped with Ikura; the little sticks of apple between each piece of salmon, as well as the crunchier yellow sticks whose origin I couldn't identify; and of course the little sprigs of greenery so carefully placed all over the plate. The ensemble was quite impressive.

Course #4 (Maggie): Foie gras de canard des landes au gingembre, crème de lentilles du Puy, anguille fumé au Sansho (Warm duck fois gras from Landes with ginger, creamed and whole du Puy lentils, smoked Sansho eel)

We were fascinated by the composition of this dish. First of all, we'd never had warm foie gras before, and it was excellent. Second of all, foie gras with lentils??? But actually it makes sense - the lentils replaced bread as a substantive base on which to perch morsels of foie gras. This was probably the richest dish of all, but not overwhelmingly so. When it was time for Maggie and I to switch plates (so we could each experience as much of Le Cinq's food as possible - very American), the servers rushed over and executed the switch for us. We basically weren't allowed to do anything for ourselves the whole time. We were ok with that.

Nothing between the entrée and plat, but tant mieux (so much the better), since we were both pretty much already full. We took some time to check out our surroundings. And then . . .

Course #5 (Maggie): Noix de Saint-Jacques de Normandie dorée au lard de Saint-Yrieix façon carbonara, chou fondant à la truffe (Normandy scallops browned in Saint-Yrieix bacon à la carbonara, "melting" cabbage with truffle)

Maggie used to dislike scallops, but thanks to this plat at Le Cinq, she is now a fan. It helps that the cabbage was superbly prepared - a slight bitterness, literally melting texture, went perfectly with the scallops. And then the truffle flavor and chunks of lard (not exactly bacon, but close) enriched the overall taste in a surprisingly nuanced manner (usually there's nothing nuanced about anything that tastes like bacon). This picture doesn't really do the presentation justice, but you can kind of make out the mounds of sea foam (écume), the snowflake-like drizzles of cheese, the texture and color of the creamy sauce that everything seemed to float on. This plate shows why Eric Briffand, Le Cinq's chef, is one of the most highly regarded in France.

Course #5 (Louis): Friton de ris de veau et crevette Carabineros, risotto de seiche au safran / chorizo Iberico (Fried veal sweetbread and shrimp, cuttlefish saffron risotto and chorizo Iberico)

Let me say how incredible everything about this dish was. Presentation: A+. Texture: A+. Taste: A+. Quantity: Way more than I could handle at this point in the meal. It was probably the second-heaviest thing we ate (after Maggie's foie gras), and wasn't nearly as complex in conception or in taste as many of the other courses, but as a bright, warm winter dish, I can't imagine doing much better. 

We didn't get a cheese course with our meal (which was probably a good thing, considering how much we ate), but were impressed enough with the mode of transportation and cheese selection that we figured it was worth a picture.

Course #6: Sugar cookie over vanilla ice cream over finely chopped mango and pineapple over chilled cream. This was intended as a palate-cleanser between the plat and the dessert, and it did the trick - but only for me, since Maggie is allergic to pineapple. By the time I got down to the chilled cream at the bottom, the juices from the mango and pineapple had soaked in, producing an unexpected but delightful taste combination.

Course #7: Banane poêlée à la vanille/Kalamansi, meringue noisette, cigare de marscarpone à la banane, sorbet banane caramélisée (Banana pan-fried in vanilla and Kalamansi, hazelnut meringue, banana marscarpone "cigar," caramelized banana sorbet)

I basically have no words to describe this. It certainly beats my lame attempt at a banana-based dessert. Banana mascarpone is my new favorite thing in the world. I didn't know you could stack things like that. I didn't know you could spiral caramel around a cylindrical object like that. I didn't know a lot of things, but now I know where to go for the most creative dessert anywhere.

Course #7: Tarte aux noix de pecan et sirop d'erable, crème glacée à la cacahuète (Pecan and maple syrup tart with peanut ice cream)

Not your grandma's pecan pie, this really, really tasted like it was made of nuts rather than karo syrup. And that dollop of peanut ice cream? Also tasted like nuts - actual peanuts, not some manufactured Jiff-scented simulacrum of peanuts. Honestly, though, at this point in the meal we had consumed so much deliciousness in the savory category that we almost, almost didn't want to spoil the memory with a sweet treat. 

When we first saw this cart go by, we figured that it would go the way of the cheese cart, passing by our table, never to rest close enough for us to steal one of the tiny morsels of sugary goodness it carries. But then we decided to "just look" at the coffee/tea menu, and then we decided we'd just get coffee, and then miraculously, the cart ended up standing right next to our table. The server described all the possibilities, then asked what we'd like. After every piece we took, he'd ask, "Avec ceci?" which is also what they ask at the boulangerie to find out whether we've finished our order (it's the French version of, "Do you want fries with that?"). So we kept taking, and taking . . .

Course #8: Coffee and mignardises, which are all these mini-desserts that come with coffee at nice restaurants. In the center is a vanilla macaron, at 1:00 is a tartilette framboise (raspberry tartlette), at 3:00 is an opéra (almond cake layered with buttercream and chocolate ganache), then from 6:00 through 11:00 are four different chocolates, flavored with squash (interesting), caramel (excellent), dark and milk chocolate (excellent and excellent). After we finished getting mignardises from the server, he snarked, "It's almost as if you hadn't just eaten lunch." Oops. Luckily he was extremely good-natured, and gave us each a box of caramels-to-go (seen in the background of the picture below).

Meanwhile, the coffee wasn't just any regular coffee. Maggie got Kenya, which was full-bodied, complex, and single-origin (as opposed to a blend), and I got Jamaican Blue Mountain, which was mild, not at all bitter, and easily the best coffee I've ever tasted. Along with the coffee came a second bottle of water (we cringed when we saw it), which turned out to be complimentary (along with the coffee, another pleasant surprise). The server introduced the water, called Wattwiller, as one particularly well-suited to accompany our coffees. Normally we're not too partial about our water, but this stuff actually tasted like it deserved to be in a funky-looking bottle. 

Our menu de luxe devoured, every corner of the lavish dining room etched into our memories, every other lunch guest departed, we finally left almost 3 hours after arriving. Our short walk from the Hôtel Georges V to its eponymous métro station symbolized our descent from the gastronomic heavens to the harsh, earthly reality of the everyday, where we will probably be eating rice and beans for the rest of our trip. Goodbye, finest-of-the-fine dining! Until next year!