Le Grand Restaurant - Jean-François Piège — Restaurant in Paris

Let me begin by reminding readers that:

This restaurant has 2 Michelin Stars An abridged menu, and wine pairing, with coffee, costs 516 Euros.

Any evaluation has to be based on the above premises. And I have to say that I have NEVER been more disappointed by ANY restaurant on the Michelin Guide as much as I have been by Le Grande, let alone one rated 2 stars by Michelin!

To begin, let's talk about portion sizes. I have never experienced such appallingly small (almost non-existent) portion sizes at ANY fine-dining restaurant. It's an immediate pathway to annoy someone who is paying north of 500 euros for a dining experience. I have never left a fine-dining venue hungry, except this one. Literally, if you come here, you need dinner after this.

Second: this is perhaps the only venue I have been to where bread and a spread is counted as a course. What a joke! Several (every single one that I have been to in Switzerland, for example) Michelin star restaurants give you choices of different types of home-made bread, with different spreads, without even writing it on the menu! Instead, here, they rip you off by using bread as (at least one, and I would say two, if you dissect the menu carefully) course(s)!

Third: You will be paying for the chef's collectibles, in part. They will show you his collections of salt and pepper containers, steak knives, etc. Instead of attending to provide a culinary experience to remember, they will try to impress naive people with silverware! If you do an audit of their pricing structure, they will surely include this as part of the experience, somewhere in their accounting.

Fourth: probably the biggest--and one that I alluded to before--the price, and the value you get for it! By God's grace, I am one of the fortunate ones for whom money isn't an issue. Yet, for many people, such fine-dining experiences are once or twice in a lifetime! And if you choose this place, based on the Michelin Guide, boy, will you be disappointed, feel CHEATED, and left with a bitter taste in the mouth towards the fine-dining industry! To me, this is a disservice and a disgrace to the outstanding chefs out there, who really do provide out of this world experiences to people who step inside their venues!

Let me give context here, so that people realize what's going on, and why I took the time to write this.

Take a train trip of 4 hours from Paris, and reach the town of Lausanne in Switzerland. Take a bus to Crissier, and you will find a 3 Michelin star restaurant: "Restaurant de l'Hôtel de Ville de Crissier". Make yourselves a booking there! For a full menu, wines, and coffee, you will pay 489 CHF. And I cannot even EXPLAIN the difference in experiences you will get! At Crissier, you will remember the experience for a LIFETIME; you will be treated to one substantive course after another; there will be unlimited (diverse, flavored) bread--NOT counted as a course; and boy, will you feel satisfied after the last dish has been served. And I cannot even begin to describe the taste, presentation, and things of that nature here!

Another expensive city in the world: San Francisco, USA. Take yourselves to the 3-star rated Atelier Crenn, or the 2-star rated Acquerello or Californios. You will see that it is literally a NIGHT AND DAY difference. And all three cost LESS than this place!

To Michelin: WHAT IS GOING ON WITH YOUR QUALITY CONTROL? How does a restaurant like this get 2 stars? You need to check, as to how much bias exists in your ratings, when it comes to Paris! Send the SAME judges to the restaurants I mentioned, and have them provide a comparative rating. Take price into consideration! This place does not even deserve to be on the guide, let alone have 2 STARS! The Michelin Guide used to be "sacred" to me till this day, as ALL the restaurants I have been to before (several that I don't even have space to write about in detail here) are above a VERY HIGH bar! How does a cheat of a restaurant like Le Grand get into such a coveted list? It's a pathetic outlier; a disgrace to...

My wife and I had dinner here the other night. My wife has a unique allergy and we had a modified 5 course dégustation. We also chose the wine pairing option from France to go with it. This 2-Michelin star was good but wasn’t exceptional. Their presentation was immaculate and our service was good, also not exceptional. However I noticed a few things which other 1-Michelin star restaurants were more switched onto. Delivering food to a table whilst 1 person was walking back to the table was a little shocking to see. Also when they cleared all of the dirty plates from our table one was missed and only collected once we had started eating our next course. Yes they gave us each a unique knife for the night and they were lovely, however it was blunt and cut like a butter knife and also never changed so every dish was mixed together with flavours from the last dish. The other issue I found they gave the smallest bit of bread I’ve ever seen. I would’ve liked more as I like to soak up the remaining sauce with bread. I did asked for more and they gave an equally small piece again. I left a little piece for the chicken dish but when I returned to the table the bread was gone. Rather disappointing and I didn’t feel comfortable asking for it back. Their food was presented exceptionally, and the mushroom reduction we had in the kitchen was phenomenal. I feel they did miss the mark with a couple of dishes and the flavours just didn’t go. I feel the sommelier has missed mismatched our wines (possibly because we had a modified menu and the wines weren’t modified). We had all white dishes (seafood and chicken) and they chose a couple of reds, alone they were exceptional, however together with the dish just didn’t work for our palette. This was the most expensive restaurant we have ever been to and to see a few avoidable mistakes which you would expect from a normal restaurant not a 2-star Michelin is disappointing. 2x wine pairing and 5 course degustation total of €1236.00

We were on our honeymoon and are very grateful for the Polaroid photo they took of us which was signed...

#77th in my Paris Michelin stars challenge, I tried Le Grand Restaurant de Jean-François Piège. Follow me to discover my challenge

So what’s interesting here? First you need to know about JF Piège. He’s famous in France. Tv famous. So famous that he can open a restaurant nearly in front of the Élysée (the French president palace where he worked ) and not be out of place. I admire the fact that he revitalized “la poule au pot”, an old school French restaurant near Les Halles (I did the review when it had it stars and then it lost it). So he’s very present in the French culinary scene. It does have an impact on the crowd. But why famous? Besides being super active and opening several restaurants and having worked in palaces? He’s masterful. Simple yet refined. For example, I had black lentils. Very simple. But perfectly cooked (and not the normal way of cooking, no… just perfect yet different). No caviar or truffle needed. Just simple. Yet so refined. For a foodie, French or visiting, it can be extremely interesting to try. I guess you need to also try some more conventional and some more fancy to better appreciate his subtle art.

An top tiers two stars. A lesson and a reminder of what French cuisine is and was.

Update 2023: Another great lunch at the Grand Restaurant. The striking thing with him is that he goes to the essence with a focus on the flavor (the road to the essence of a dish is the flavor, that’s the path is following). Last year, I was taken aback by his lentils. This year the exercise on the frog was bluffing (and you do not need to eat a frog). And you have “Mon blanc à manger” his signature dessert that adds a little playfulness. It’s definitely a restaurant to try when building a French gastronomy culture. It’s a very...