This is a deliciously damning review of Le Cinq in the Guardian.
The language he continues to use is a delight to read.
Great review.
And now I feel better about wasting $ and time at the mediocre, overpriced deli I ate at (and reviewed) this morning.
Damn. That was pretty harsh (and apparently necessary).
I do like Jay’s turn of phrase and having had some of my experiences backed up by his own subsequent reviews I reckon we are on the same wavelength.
Needless to say I shan’t be paying this establishment a visit.
My favourite bit from the review is
I greatly enjoyed Jay Rayner’s book The Man Who Ate the World, subtitled In Search of the Perfect Dinner, wherein Jay searches for said dinner across Las Vegas, Moscow, Dubai, Tokyo, New York, London, and of course Paris, entertaining us along the way with both praise and of course his usual caustic criticism. So creatively does his wit turn to scathing venom when Jay is displeased that Penguin put out a short book in which Rayner expounds on the subject of My Dining Hell, this one subtitled Twenty Ways to Have a Lousy Night Out which cites 20 of his worst restaurant experiences culled from his restaurant reviews. Needless to say both are highly entertaining, but the first one chronicles quite an interesting quest for the best food in the world.
Here, in his blog Jay Raynor talks about the differences between the photos supplied by the restaurant and those he shot himself, using a cell phone camera. The “gratinated onions” in particular look awful.
I remember reading several similarly caustic reviews of NYC restaurants in the New York Times.
“Nieces.” Yeah, right. 
It’s France. I understand mistresses are quite the norm over there.
I rarely pay attention to critics in general, but NEVER read restaurant critics.
Look, even if Le Cinq is really as awful as this review claims, I’ll never know it. There virtually no chance I’ll ever have the opportunity to eat there. At least when I read a stupid review by a Robert Christgau or a Roger Ebert, I know I’ll have a chance to hear the recording or see the movie for myself. But I will almost certainly never eat at Le Cinq. So, this review may give me a laugh, but it tells me nothing useful.
What about reviews of reasonably cheap restaurants near you? Depending where you live, there are such things. For instance, The Washington Post frequently reviews lower-cost restaurants and says that they’re very good for the price.
Never mind that; just enjoy the language. The article itself is a work of art.
Agreed, this is one well thought out condemnation.
You might not but I can well imagine that someone who is interested in fine dining but is not wealthy might save up for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Paris and, as part of that, plan a rare, expensive dinner at what’s supposed to be one of the finest restaurants in one of the most food-obsessed cities in the world. And for them to have a similarly shitty experience in a three-star Michelin restaurant in one of the fanciest hotels would be a real shame.
Plus I like to imagine the screaming match the morning the review appears, as the owner, chef and so forth argue over who is at fault.
What if they all agree the food is great and Raynor is just a contrarian jerk?
Given that the place has won three stars, they might as well have had an off night. But at such a high-end restaurant, charging what they do, there shouldn’t be any such thing as an off night. Plus the photos he includes in his review and his website suggest really awful food.
The problem with restaurant reviews is that they can quickly become dated with ownership or chef changes, and they can also reflect an anomalously bad experience although as noted, in a really top-tier restaurant that shouldn’t happen. Yet as noted in Rayner’s book that I mentioned upthread, it does happen – usually not in the form of really awful food, but in the form of food that is surprisingly mediocre for something so expensive and sometimes worsened by being coupled with bad service.
Anyway, I’m a big fan of Jay Rayner because I enjoy his writing and I can experience vicariously things that I’m unlikely to experience in real life, as I’m not likely, as per the aforementioned book, to embark on a mission of traveling to seven cities in six countries in search of the best food in the world. Still, most of us do on rare occasions wind up in upscale restaurants, whether while traveling or on special occasions, so his reviews, both good and bad, describe experiences most of us can identify with, whether or not they are directly “useful”.
But he’s not. He is perhaps a bit on the curmudgeonly side, but he can be as lavish with praise as he is caustic with criticism. And in fairness to him and to all food critics, they can only report on what they’ve experienced, so if others have different experiences, c’est la vie, and one can at least be alert to the possibility that either the place may have changed or that it lacks consistency.
BTW, some of you are misspelling his name – it’s Rayner, not Raynor.
Here’s a profile in The New Yorker of the NYTimes food critic, Pete Wells: Pete Wells, the New York Times Restaurant Critic | The New Yorker
It features overviews of his hilarious takedown of Guy Fieri’s Times Square lowbrow food emporium AND his clutch-your-pearls drubbing of food god Thomas Keller’s Per Se. Demoting it from 4 stars to 2 in the NYT was a big deal maybe 18 months ago.
I enjoy a really sharp crank as much as anyone - but I’m a wee bit skeptical of these later-day Oscar Wildes and their devilish ripostes and bon mots when it comes to reviews. The danger is that they are walking around with lines pre-written just waiting for an opportunity to use them. So, the review is not always coming from a place of open minded evaluation. That is only a suspicion on my part, but it is a trap that IMHO a reviewer should avoid.
I doubt that such lines are pre-written, but remember that no one gets the job of restaurant reviewer at a top newspaper like this without having previous journalism or reviewing experience, so presumably he has some writing ability.
I’m with you. I take colorful condemnation with a huge grain of salt. Articles like this to me smack too much of authors in love with their words. The iPhone pictures on his webpage particularly put me off. No shit it looks terrible under the flat and dim lighting conditions of a restaurant. I’m a photographer and I know how easy it is to take horrible pictures of food. If he at least took those pictures somewhere with nice window light I could at least see if he has a point as to the presentation. The pictures as taken tell me little. It smacks of a reviewer with an axe to grind. I may completely be wrong, but I’m almost immediately put off by this style of criticism.