After Cafe Claude, we decided to get a real meal at Le Colonial, a French-Vietnamese place with a great open-air veranda. Since it was such a beautiful day it was great to enjoy a drink and a few appetizers on a comfy couch on a veranda above street level. Duck Confit Spring Rolls $10 Tasty, if a tad greasy. Panko Crusted Calamari with Sweet Chili Sauce $9 A bit too bready for us, but we liked that there were so many tentacle pieces. The sauce was also too sweet and had a bit of a snotty texture. Overall, not bad though. Crab Asparagus Soup $7 This was a much brothier, less gelatinous and oddly sweet version of this soup. It was...
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From the moment you step inside Le Colonial, (on the first-time, difficult-to-find, alley street, Cosmo Place in the Union Square/Tenderloin section of downtown), you know that the evening will be a special one.
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Le Colonial has a great, enveloping atmosphere. Dark, with an old stamped-tin ceiling, it's decorated with accents that successfully take the diner out of San Francisco. They've even got an outdoor eating area with heat lamps which is fantastic on warm nights. We started our evening upstairs in the bar for some drinks, where I noticed two things. One, the by-the-glass wine selection was remarkably small - something like 7 bottles. The second was that their Mojitos, which I've been partial to in the past, are a little over-soured. I can't tell if they were actually using sweet & sour, or just a pre-made lime juice mix, but the flavor of the rum really didn't come through. On the other hand, they have a marvelously large selection of specialty alcohols, including vodkas, whiskeys, and rums, and a reasonable selection of sipping rum ain't something you see very often. I had a Cruzan single barrel selection that was warm, smooth, very caramel-y, and with a long rich finish. We also had the Vietnamese spring rolls which were tasty and nicely crispy.
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This is French Vietnamese at it's best. The location is great, off of Cosmo alley - rockin' street name. The old Trader Vics from the 50s used to be here. The two best parts of this spot? The bar (surprise, surprise) with it's Saigon feel (read rattan chairs, slow spinning ceiling fans, palm trees, you get the picture), and the outdoor walkway that's covered and heated. Grab a table there if you can but watch out for some tool blowing cigar smoke in your meal, yuck.
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