January 21, 2010 - Le Colonial

Le Colonial in Union Square in San Francisco, CA
http://www.lecolonialsf.com

Dine About Town, SF's version of Restaurant Week, is on and I'm all about it. In an attempt to keep track of the three meals I've scheduled in as many days, I'm doing our blog's first-ever review-on-the-night-of!

Tonight I went to Le Colonial with some people from my research program. It's on a random street right next to Union Square. I didn't actually pay attention to the outside when we got there (reason: my heels were already killing me, and I'd only walked a total of 3 blocks in them. This is why heels in San Francisco are stupid). The inside was nice though -- it looked like an old (colonial, I'd imagine) house, with a little covered outside area with chairs that probably would've been a great lounge area if it hadn't been raining. Inside it looked kind of like a casual but nice hotel -- big open room, lots of wicker chairs, busy. It felt like the kind of place I'd like to walk into after a nice day on the beach. They accommodated our one extra guest without a problem, which was great.

More...

The first course was pork belly with a savory caramel sauce, parsnip puree, white truffle oil, Hosui pear, pickled bok choy and quail egg. Um, yum yum yum yum yum yum and yum. Actually, all the appetizers sounded good (they also had pho and papaya salad options) but I couldn't say no to any of those ingredients, let alone all of them together. It was super delicious -- my favorite part was the quail egg, which was somewhere between soft and hard boiled to perfection. There was a very generous portion of pork belly, and all of the fruits/vegetables were pickled deliciously. In fact, my only complaint would be that the caramel sauce slightly drowned out the fruits and vegetables. And I am not really a huge veggie fan, so I'm telling you these vegetables were really worth something.

For the main course, I chose the coconut-marinated pork chop with "onion cut" rice (not on the online menu, hence the much vaguer description). My pork chop serving was gigantic! (One of my friends thought his was quite a bit smaller, but he still had plenty of food.) The pork chop was really good -- it verged on dry, but managed to stay just this side of moist, and was flavorful. Its sauce was absolutely delicious, though I wish there had been more of it. Somehow the rice was remarkable. I don't know how you make rice interesting, but this was almost like fried rice without any of the unpleasant fried-ness. And once again, the pickled veggies on the side were delicious. I guess the secret to my vegetable heart is to pickle things. (Except pickles. I don't particularly like pickles.)

If you're thinking of judging me for ordering a pork appetizer and a pork entree, by the way, I'll have you know that half of our table did the same thing. The other options were a vegetable curry and lemongrass chicken. I tried my friend's lemongrass chicken and it was super moist and flavorful, but it didn't look like she had a lot of side stuff to go with it. In fact, perhaps that's a small point about the pork too: could've used more side stuff. The portion of rice was actually really small, particularly compared to the giant pork chop cut. Anyway, the menu sounded so delicious that I literally could've had any combination of the offered appetizer and entree and probably been happy.

There was only one dessert option, the chocolate flourless cake. I actually wasn't overly impressed by this, although I thought it was a nice touch to have three sauces on the side (cream, chocolate, and strawberry). The whipped cream was also very good. But overall, it was a decent chocolate cake but didn't stand out to me, and I kind of wished it were warm (maybe I was kind of wishing it were a molten chocolate cake or a souffle or something, though).

Afterwards, we briefly went upstairs because we'd heard live music coming from up there. And it was, indeed, live music. It was a very cool bar area with comfy couches, again reminding me a little bit of a hotel bar in the Caribbean or something. There was some pretty good live jazz going on with a singer, and people were actually dancing, which was fun to watch, including this guy who reminded us of Dick Tracy complete with a gangster-style suit and fedora/cowboy hat. Also, apparently, this man and woman were talking, and then the woman slapped him in the face and then went to the bathroom in tears! and the man stood there chagrined for a moment and then kind of shrugged and went on his way! and then she left like 5 minutes later alone, wiping the tears from her face! I have to say "apparently" because I only saw her leave, but one of our friends saw the rest of it. So -- good people-watching is possible here too.

Overall, I was very pleased with our choice to come here and we each escaped for about $50-$60 per person, which is totally not bad. True, if you think about a $35 prix fixe menu erupting into $60, it kind of makes you cringe, but overall their prices are very high so I'm still okay with getting to try their menu for this price. The portions were very generous but I didn't think it was disproportionate the way it sounded like it was at Chef Vola, and I really liked the atmosphere of the restaurant and the upstairs bar.