Le Colonial Review

Le Colonial slowly served us good Vietnamese food with a few dishes that truly impressed us -more so in the appetizers and desserts than the entrees-, all delivered in a setting that made us feel as if we weren't in San Francisco. All the dishes were supported by nice garnishes (e.g., lettuce, spinach, mint, cilantro, basil, cabbage, bean sprouts) and some by sauces, all good. We left pleased.

We ordered two types of rolls to start the meal: 

• Goi Cuon (fresh spring rolls with shrimp, rice noodles, and herbs). Fairly unexciting since they were mostly rice noodles. The peanut dipping sauce helped liven them up. We'd rate them as average for a good quality restaurant.
• Cha Gio Vit (fried rolls with duck). Really good. Filled almost entirely with duck. We were instructed to wrap the rolls in lettuce and dip them in the sauce. People said these were the best fried rolls people have in quite a while, maybe ever, and would be the highlight of the meal no matter how the rest turned out.

With appetizers, one person ordered a glass of red wine and the other a strawberry mixed drink that's best described as weird, with an odd licorice flavor that came from star anise.

For our main course, we had: 

• Bo Luc Lac (cubes of beef tenderloin in a garlic and soy sauce). Quite good. Similar to but not as good as the shaking beef at the Slanted Door. Like the Slanted Door, one could taste the quality of the meat. It was moist, though one person did complain it was slightly overcooked. But lest you think this is a negative review, even that person claimed the dish was still good. Tossed with some wonderfully fresh, vibrant cherry tomatoes, even more surprising given the time of year. Slanted Door had a bit better sauce. This dish was served with cilantro and potato chips, which someone pointed out were undersalted.
• Ca Nuong (sturgeon kebab). Decent/good. We ordered this expecting a lemongrass dish, but the lemongrass was so subtle only half the table could taste it. We were instructed to take a chunk of fish off the skewer with a bit of cilantro and basil and dip it in the cucumber-vinegar sauce. The whole dish tasted vaguely middle eastern to me, but that might be from the whole grilled skewer aspect.
• Cuu Nuong (lamb chomps). Okay. Dry and somewhat fatty lamb chops. They may have been better had we remembered to use the provided dipping sauce. Served with taro chips, which I preferred to the potato chips. The lamb chops had a mush underneath that tasted fatty with strings of what-looked-like fat. I'm guessing it was a thick stock made from lamb trimmings? In any case, as the only one that tried the mush, I'm not endorsing it.
• Dau Dua (green beans in garlic soy sauce). Side dish. Fairly good, with a wonderful crispy garlic aroma. Still slightly crisp, though personally I'd have preferred crisper.
• Banh Xeo Tom (crepe with lobster and shrimp). Listed under appetizers. Served with an oil-based dipping sauce. Easily the worst dish of the night. Not because it was bad but simply because it was boring. And, to top it off, it was hard to eat -- everything kept falling out of the crepe. One of the items in the pile of garnish looked like a cross between a bean sprout and a mushroom and elicited some brief comments.

For dessert, we had: 

• Beignets. In short, good "fancy donuts." Three circular, hole-less donuts, a bit more doughy than most donuts (but I think this is the tradition for beignets). Topped with whipped cream that looked like ice cream and with different toppings: apple, chocolate, and strawberry. (The apple and strawberry were mashed into a bit of cream; they weren't in chunks.) Our favorite was the strawberry.
• Vietnamese flourless chocolate cake. Very good. Rich, sweet, fudgy, and served slightly warm. While it wasn't the best we've had, it was definitely in the top few. Came with a cookie/cracker that apparently those crazy Brits call a biscuit.

With dessert, two people ordered drinks: 

• a Vietnamese coffee, done in the traditional manner of slowly dripping it onto sweetened condensed milk. Sadly, it dripped so slowly that by the time it was done, the whole mixture was lukewarm.
• a regular coffee. Said to be "fine."Climbing up the stairs, walking across the outdoor courtyard, and entering the restaurant's series of dining rooms that, with open windows or mirrors between them, have the feel of a colonial plantation, makes one feel like one's left San Francisco. The crowd, unusually well dressed for San Francisco (mostly in suits), supports the feeling. One participant really liked the stamped tin ceiling. I enjoyed the quality, reusable, nicely calligraphed chopsticks.

Service was good, with fast replacement of utensils and plates, refilling of water, and, for some dishes, explaining the best way to eat it, but with one notable and very important exception: it's slowness. We ordered rolls soon after we arrived, before we'd even decided on the rest of the meal. They took something like an hour to get to us. This delay made us pick at the piles of lettuce and other vegetables in the garnish, nibbling until they were gone. (This was actually pretty good, as most of the garnishes had some form of dressing.) And dinner was similarly delayed, so much so that we were once again looking at our watches. The waitress at one point came over to tell us it was almost ready. Thinking back, the evening reminded me a bit of the Vietnamese coffee, simply waiting for time to drip by.

One again speaking about differences between British and American English, at one point we talked briefly about meat markets, as in a place to find and date other pretty people. Our British friend said, "did I tell you the first time I heard 'petting zoo,' I was really confused?"

Incidentally, in another dinnertime observation, one person stated the obvious: we had a cute waitress. Apparently, however, her cuteness rose and fell during the night.

Total was around $50 per person including tax and tip but not including drinks.

Original Announcement

Tomorrow we'll try Le Colonial, a sophisticated Vietnamese (read: French Vietnamese) restaurant, a few blocks west of Union Square.

http://www.lecolonialsf.com/

It has a dine about town menu

http://www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com/dineabouttown/enhanced_listings.asp?id=258

We'll decide if we want to use it based upon my research about what is supposed to be good.

Please tell me if you plan to come.

Comments from Other Attendees

Di Yin and I returned to Le Colonial about five years later, on January 30, 2013, as part of SF Dine About Town.  Apparently in the meantime the head chef changed.  On this trip we tried:

• Pho Ga ("Traditional chicken soup with poached chicken, rice noodles, bean sprouts, crispy shallots, Asian basil and cilantro") - good, a soothing congee with quality chicken and enough other things for highlights.
• Cha Gio Vit ("Crispy duck rolls with taro, jicama and ginger dipping sauce") - quite good.  Take the crispy fried rolls, add some of the provided herbs (cilantro, mint), wrap the whole thing in a lettuce leaf (the leaves they were provided were lovely natural circles), dip, and eat.  Not much duck filling yet nevertheless these rolls were tasty on their own and better wrapped and dipped.
• Bo Luc Lac ("Wok-seared filet mignon, sweet garlic-soy sauce, pickled red onion, crispy shoestring potatoes, Kaffir lime dressing") - decent.  High-quality meat, cooked properly to medium-rare as requested, tossed with greens, onions, and crispy shoestring potatoes.  The last was unexciting.  The lime dressing was novel.  I liked it but couldn't decide if I liked the steak better with it or not.
• Marinated (fried?) tofu squares topped with "grilled erringyi mushroom and stirfried chard" and more - good.  Maybe it should've come in a broth but Di Yin told them she was allergic to garlic and I think they decided not to serve it to her.
• Flourless chocolate cake - very good.  A lovely dark chocolate cake, a nice combination of bitterness (from the chocolate) and the sweetness.  The decorative sauces on the plate (one was raspberry; I don't remember the other) added wonderful highlights, though one had to be careful because they were sweet.  Hard to eat the whole thing because of the sugar rush.

The atmosphere was the same as before: a Vietnamese plantation.  I felt like there were fewer plants around than before.  Di Yin thought the wooden fans hanging from the ceiling were integral in conveying the atmosphere.  The long walk through an old building, up stairs, across a long patio, to the spacious dining rooms also helped convince one that one was entering another world.

Feel free to add remarks here.