A $700 meal in Paris: "This one will also leave me with memories. They are bleak and troubling. If I work hard, one day, with luck, I may be able to forget."

From the article.

Perhaps this review isn't quite up to the lofty timelessness of Pete Wells' immortal (and savage) take-down of Guy Fieri.

"It doesn't matter whether Guy Fieri's new Louisville restaurant has good beer because none of us will be going there anyway."

Still, Jay Rayner piles on the laughs as he reviews Le Cinq, a three-star Michelin restaurant.

There'll be just a few zingers in the pull. Brutal stuff. Positively brutal.

Le Cinq, Paris: restaurant review (The Guardian)

It was supposed to be a joyous trip to one of France’s famous gastro palaces – what could possibly go wrong?

Le Cinq, Four Seasons Hôtel George V, 31 avenue George V, 75008 Paris (00 331 49 52 71 54). Meal for two, including service and modest wine: €600 (£520)

There is only one thing worse than being served a terrible meal: being served a terrible meal by earnest waiters who have no idea just how awful the things they are doing to you are. And so, to the flagship Michelin three-star restaurant of the George V Hotel in Paris, or the scene of the crime as I now like to call it. In terms of value for money and expectation Le Cinq supplied by far the worst restaurant experience I have endured in my 18 years in this job. This, it must be said, is an achievement of sorts.

And:

The dining room, deep in the hotel, is a broad space of high ceilings and coving, with thick carpets to muffle the screams. It is decorated in various shades of taupe, biscuit and fuck you.

And:

Other things are the stuff of therapy. The canapé we are instructed to eat first is a transparent ball on a spoon. It looks like a Barbie-sized silicone breast implant, and is a “spherification”, a gel globe using a technique perfected by Ferran Adrià at El Bulli about 20 years ago. This one pops in our mouth to release stale air with a tinge of ginger. My companion winces. “It’s like eating a condom that’s been left lying about in a dusty greengrocer’s,” she says.

And:

My lips purse, like a cat’s arse that’s brushed against nettles.

And:

The cheapest of the starters is gratinated onions “in the Parisian style”. We’re told it has the flavour of French onion soup. It makes us yearn for a bowl of French onion soup.