I remember being given a Le Creuset casserole dish for my 40th birthday. I’m 62 and it’s still going strong, though I dropped it on the stone floor in the kitchen and the handle broke in two. It’s also gone a little black inside, and no longer scrubs up as nicely as it did. Twenty-two years’ service from a pan isn’t bad. But I have never really understood why so many are prepared to pay so much for a Dutch oven they could get at a quarter of the price – if only they were prepared to overlook the fact that it’s not the top named brand.
Fifty per cent off is a good deal, but it’s still astronomically expensive
This weekend, there were huge crowds and a four-hour queue to buy half-price items at an industrial estate in Hampshire that is home to the Le Creuset warehouse. Inside, shoppers were going berserk, doing their very best to stack a matched set in the trolleys before anyone else got in first. Fifty per cent off is a good deal, but it’s still astronomically expensive. The regular price is £2,200 for a full set, but I reckon even in the sale it is unaffordable for most. I decided to buy a couple of square baking dishes from Le Creuset recently because I couldn’t believe how relatively inexpensive they were. But when they arrived, each was the size of a butter dish.
The image of the typical Le Creuset purchaser is a wealthy middle-aged woman living in the Cotswolds with an Aga and a brace of children called Oscar and Chloe. She’s married to a man in red corduroy trousers and the fridge is stocked only with Waitrose. There is Bugatti cutlery in the drawer, and four pairs of expensive matching wellies in the hall.
In 1997, to much media attention, the novelist Jeanette Winterson claimed that, when she first arrived in London as a 20-something lesbian, she had sex with married women from the Home Counties in hotel rooms off Knightsbridge and Sloane Square, for which they paid her in Le Creuset. Winterson has said the story was ‘blown out of all proportion’ but admitted that she does ‘have a lot of pans’. Perhaps Winterson really is pansexual – or maybe she was wildly exaggerating because it’s a good yarn and she had a book to sell.
A recent trend is that Le Creuset products appear to be popular with Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) who like to show off their purchases on social media. I can’t imagine anything more boring and can only suppose it symbolises solvency. But let’s have a look at alternatives to what’s been called the Rolls-Royce of pots and pans. For example, two years ago, Habitat launched its own version, with prices around 90 per cent cheaper. A shallow cast iron casserole dish from there cost me £30, whereas a very similar pan from Le Creuset would have set me back £270. Aldi also sells Le Creuset-inspired cookware for a fraction of the price.
As we become more obsessed with home cooking, it is important to have good tools. But how much of it is status symbol, rather than practicality? It’s not true that you can’t burn anything in Le Creuset – in fact it takes a while to heat because of how heavy it is, actually facilitating burnt food. They come with a lifetime warranty, but they do break – otherwise, my handle would still be intact.
My favourite pan is my off-brand cast iron skillet, which takes some looking after, but cost a fraction of the price, and cooks like a dream. My pots and pans are destined for the stove top and occasionally the table – not Instagram.
Le Creuset has relied on its name for too long, and other contenders on the market cost nowhere near as much. Surely, bragging about owning a full set is now an affectation.
These items may be status symbols – but they hardly make you a member of the aristocracy. I would never feel guilty for spending a fortune on something top quality, or on an item I really love. I use my casserole dish around twice weekly, making anything from soup, to baked chicken, to chilli. But I am about to branch out and try some other Dutch oven, as the old one is starting to look a bit battered and bruised. And I certainly won’t be spending hundreds to replace it.
Perhaps Le Creuset will end up seeming really chav, or gauche, like Burberry or Maclaren pushchairs? With designer knock-offs on sale in all good department stores, soon there may not even be a market for fake Le Creuset on Oxford Street in the Christmas rush.
Comments