Photo-Illustration: Grub Street; Photos Getty Images
When my friend Chris finished college, he asked his parents for a Le Creuset Dutch oven as a graduation gift. At school, he was often difficult to reach because his phone was usually broken or lost; he never struck me as the kind of person to covet enameled cast iron. He didn’t even cook that much. But every time I visited his illegal Brooklyn basement apartment, his 5.5-quart round cocotte — in a now-retired shade of palm green — was sitting on his stove like a regularly polished trophy. It has been more than a decade now, and not only has Chris’s Le Creuset outlasted relationships and pets but he uses it all the time. “It does what I need so well,” he said when I asked if he’d ever thought about getting another. “Maybe a small one?”
This longevity is the implicit promise made by the European company: Yes, its cookware is expensive (a nine-quart Dutch oven in Cerise Red currently runs $520 at Williams Sonoma), but it will last forever and it’s the only Dutch oven you’ll ever need. You’re not buying a pot; you’re investing in an heirloom.
Something has changed during the past several years, however. Le Creuset’s buy-it-for-life status has softened, and the company’s products have evolved into something people just buy, mostly for clout. They don’t want to cook with them. They want to show them off. These are the superfans who cram into Le Creuset’s official factory-to-table events, ticketed extravaganzas that draw collectors hoping to score “mystery boxes” filled with cookware, as if the pans were little more than very heavy Labubus.
Linda From Buffalo is one of those collectors; in September, she posted a review on TikTok to express her disappointment with one of the factory events in Hartford, Connecticut, noting a lack of items such as petal braisers (“You had to ask for them … that really frosted me even more”) and pizza stones. (Linda From Buffalo’s rating of the event: two out of a possible ten.) “I did purchase quite a bit — just under $2,000. Some items I wanted, some items I bought because I was there,” she tells the camera, standing next to no fewer than a dozen Le Creuset pots. “You did us dirty, Le Creuset.”
Similar disappointment accompanied a subsequent event in Düsseldorf, Germany, where some fans were allegedly allowed to buy multiple mystery boxes — which anyone can tell you is against the rules. One Reddit user was having none of this: “Honestly fuck Le Creuset. I thought after the shitshow in Hartford it couldn’t get worse and then Le Creuset Germany said ‘watch.’”
Everyone needs a hobby, and collectors exist for far stranger things than kitchenware. But Le Creuset itself is hardly blameless in embracing the conspicuous consumption and treating its own products like disposable luxuries. (If I had to pinpoint a moment it all went south, it was probably when, during the COVID lockdown, the company offered to send Mindy Kaling a full line of products ten minutes after she’d tweeted asking for pan recommendations.) The cast-iron production is still overseen by artisans in France, much of it at the original foundry established in 1925. The pots started appearing in American kitchens in the 1950s and became de rigueur as home cooks watched Julia Child, and eventually Food Network chefs, using them. Once YouTube made it possible for anyone with a phone to produce a cooking show, the Le Creusets followed. These days, product expansions and corny marketing tie-ins with the likes of Pokémon and Star Wars all reinforce the idea that these products are timely instead of timeless. (Le Creuset’s home page is currently promoting $450 pink or green Wicked Dutch ovens, which seem destined for Black Friday clearance sales a week after the new movie comes out.)
This approach may be good for the company’s bottom line — its annual revenue is “around $850 million” — but any growth is coming at the expense of Le Creuset’s reputation. “The signature spoon rest I’ve seen on so many wedding registries is the epitome of meaninglessness,” says another friend, who previously worked at Food52. “It’s stoneware, so it’s not actually indestructible — the exterior glaze means it’s only reproducing the company’s iron products in form, not function.” (The rest is also made in Thailand, unlike the Dutch ovens that are manufactured in France.)
With so many direct competitors — to say nothing of the authentic Japanese donabes, Mexican ollas, and copper jam pots that are just as easily purchased online these days — a kitchen full of Le Creuset doesn’t convey the same picture of domestic mastery it did when Barefoot Contessa first aired. These days, shelves filled with unused $400 pots just make people look a little … cheap.
Of course, there are plenty of other options for people who want to use their cookware to actually cook. Strange Delight owner Ham El-Waylly and his wife, the recipe developer and cookbook author Sohla El-Waylly, share four enameled cast-iron pots in their home kitchen. They’re all made by Staub. “I’m not tempted by new shapes or colors,” Ham says. “They are my most-used pots, so they’re purely functional.”
