Le Meurice
Critics continue to wax poetic over chef Yannick Alleno’s cooking at this bastion of fine dining. A Michelin 3-star.
Practical information
Address: 228 rue de Rivoli, 75001
Nearest transport: Tuileries (1)
Hours: Closed Sunday, Closed Saturday
Reservations: Book a week or two in advance
Telephone: 01 44 58 10 55
Website
View a map of all of our restaurants here.
Average price for lunch: More than 100€
Average price for dinner: More than 100€
Style of cuisine: Classic French
Special attributes: prix-fixe, prestige ingredients, haute cuisine, superior wine list, renowned chef, open Monday, valet parking
Type of crowd: suits, foodies
Interior: elegant & luxe
Atmosphere: romantic
Reviews of interest
- Gilles Pudlowski (2011) “Bref, voilà une maison au mieux de son style, à redécouvrir le midi pour ce menu fortiche qui exalte les saveurs du terroir parisien avec une confondante habileté.”
- Patricia Wells (2010) “Almost too beautiful to eat…”
- François Simon (2010) “L’assiette de Yannick Alleno était dans ce genre de magie poétique…”
- Alexander Lobrano (2009) “… five days after left the table at Le Meurice, I am still savoring that exquisite spring lunch.”
- Food Snob (2009) “…Everything was cooked flawlessly, ingredients were excellent, presentation appealed, but I was just not overwhelmed by deliciousness.”
- Julot (2007)”…Pas de doute non plus que le contrôle qualité, sur les produits comme sur les plats, n’est pas au niveau des meilleurs.”
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I’ve eaten the same exact meal – the menu dejeuner this season – at Le Meurice and it’s an absolute joke. It’s astonishing that a three-star chef would let this go out with his name attached. While I’d like to believe that I went on a bad day, it’s incredibly unlikely that a three-star restaurant could get everything so wrong on one specific day.
The amuse bouche was, actually, objectionable – a barely crunchy, chewy croquette on a mousse that was supposed to involve cepes but actually just tasted like uncooked garlic (seriously!). I couldn’t believe that the restaurant just had a pile of acrid mousse sitting in back, and that the restaurant would use something as flavorless as a thumb-sized portion of dry snail and spinach to attempt to balance this sensation. The entire concept was just baffling. I don’t understand on what level the chef could have been thinking in conceiving on this dish, and the lack of care involved in giving this to every customer.
The “tart au jambon parisienne” is a completely gutless flan on feuille de brick with average jambon cuit and cheese (which tastes like swiss cheese but whose actual origin I’m unaware of) and thinly sliced dehydrated champignon de Paris on top. Unsurprisingly, the mushrooms carried no flavor. There’s no good reason to eat this dish, ever. No savor, no flavor, no satisfaction.
The smoked eel souffle plate, with the watercress coulis, was completely devoid of flavor. You couldn’t taste the eels – you could taste a little scallop in the souffle, and that’s it. The single insipid slice of red beet in the center of the place added nothing, meant nothing, and I can’t possibly imagine that a chef of Alleno’s caliber could be proud of this dish. The coulis had no flavor. The beet was the only thing that had any taste at all.
Finally, the pommes Anna/lamb confit dish was decent. The presentation, especially, was really lovely. It’s the sort of hearty, unpretentious, unchallenging dish that would be more appropriate after having eaten something with flavor. When you welcome a green salad with a vinaigrette as one of the best parts of the meal at a three-star restaurant, however, you start to ask some questions. It felt hollow having followed three absolute duds, leaving one to ask – is that seriously it?
The dessert course, however, was fantastic.
I imagine that Pudlowski is engaging in that annoying behavior of reflexively defending respected institutions. I cannot imagine that he enjoyed or respected this meal at all.
The lunch menu at Le Meurice, as it stands, is a joke. While 95 euros to eat in that sort of setting is a bargain in one sense, you’re not getting a single ingredient that costs more than ten euros a kilo. The total cost of ingredients for my meal was probably no more than seven euros, and there was no brilliance in execution to make up for this.
I have no doubt that the dinner menu is different – I have enough faith in humanity that a meal this poor wouldn’t be rewarded with any stars, let alone three. But don’t go here for lunch – not this season, at least.