A Vietnamese restaurant success (finally!)

I was super excited for dinner tonight because a) it was a trip to San Francisco and b) it was Le Colonial, a Vietnamese restaurant. Thanks to my latest obsession, Open Table, I was able to get in reservations for 8:30 pm, which meant that there was time to shop around Union Square! We parked the car at the restaurant and attempted to walk to Union Square, but we had quite a difficult time trying to get there. Let's just say Jim and I have very different philosophies when it comes to directions. I'm all about relying on my visual memory or asking someone for directions. Jim would rather use GPS. Yeah, it makes for some really nice fodder for a fight. Somehow we managed not to kill each other and make it to Union Square. We hit up Anthropologie, and they were having 40% off of sale home furnishings. Very exciting, although all I found was a candle. Actually, to be honest, I found a pair of plates that I loved, but one was cracked, and there's no real point in buying a single plate with no matches. I also managed to find a couple of tops.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand (I tend to get very distracted when describing my acquisitions), the restaurant is in an alley, hidden off the main street. It's absolutely adorable and much larger than it appears from the outside. The place is one of those that you'd probably just walk by and not look twice at, but as soon as you go inside, you're completely floored. A diamond in the rough, if you will. They had an inner courtyard with a few diners before entering the main restaurant, which was absolutely packed for the time. Every table was full and the place was hopping. The couple in front of us had a "misplaced" reservation, which I found odd, especially since as soon as Jim talked to the hostess, we were seated. Literally no wait. We were smack dab in the middle of couples country--the back perimeter of the restaurant was set up for booths of two, so we sat in between two other couples.

I had previously cheated and checked out the menu, so I already knew pretty much what I wanted. I had to try the cha gio (Vietnamese egg rolls) and the spring rolls (cold, wrapped in rice paper). Jim doesn't care for much that's cold or raw, but even he admitted they were decent. Of course, of the eight pieces, he ate one and I had the rest. To make up for that, I let him eat 4 of the 6 cha gio. Both were so freaking good! The spring rolls had tofu and portobello mushrooms in it with the usual mint and other veggies. The peanut dipping sauce was the perfect complement. In fact, Jim approved of the sauce, which is extremely rare, since he generally thinks peanuts don't belong with any other food (excluding Snickers). I may be slightly biased, since I don't think there's a Vietnamese spring roll I've ever eaten that I didn't love. I could seriously eat those things by the truckload. Plus I consider them absolutely guilt-free food. The cha gio were the traditional tiny size, about two inches long. It's funny, because at home I'll tend to skip the usual Vietnamese pairings of lettuce, mint, cilantro, basil, etc., but here, I'll load 'em up. It's partly because the lettuce cuts through the grease, and at home, I have the liberty of blotting and re-blotting. The hot egg rolls came with a ponzu dipping sauce, which was amazing. Secretly, I actually found them both to be better than The Slanted Door's versions.

Our appetizers came out very quickly, but there was quite a lag between that and Jim's lobster soup. The waiter brought out the bowl and then poured the soup out of a coffee pot. The smell hit me immediately, and I wanted to gag. It was really, really strong, even with me being all congested. However, Jim couldn't even wait for the stuff to cool down before inhaling it. It had a coconut milk base and lemongrass accents.

After the soup, there was yet another lag. This isn't to say that we were ignored during this time. The service was pretty much excellent, especially if you consider how busy the place was. But I was so excited to see our main courses that the wait seemed like forever. Jim ordered (surprise, surprise) the filet mignon. It came tossed in a garlic soy sauce, Yukon gold potato chips, and watercress. I was rather impressed at the valiant effort Jim made at eating the hated salad greens. He complained that he felt like a rabbit afterwards and was then surprised at the large remaining pile. Needless to say, every piece of steak was gone. I got a vegetarian clay pot, which turned out to be fried rice with tofu. It was very good, but I was a little disappointed--I was hoping for something more exotic. Oh well. It was still delicious. And we also got an order of green beans, which were stir fried with garlic soy sauce and had shiitake mushrooms and sliced almonds. I was surprised at how much Jim liked the green beans since they were very Asian-style prepared, and he historically hasn't cared for them that way. Jim comes from a home where vegetables come out of a can. In fact, my first (and only) experiences with the canned variety of vegetables are when I eat dinner at his parents' house. The first time I tried them, I thought I was going to yak. First of all, the green beans were so pale, they could have passed for lima beans. Then the texture was mushy, like what I would imagine the consistency of baby food to be. And the taste? Horrible! Salty but bland, and completely unrecognizable. The label said green beans, so I guess I have to take the can at its word. I've tried them in dreadful green bean casseroles, which helps improve the going down, but let me just say for the record that it's torture to eat the stuff. I really don't get the canned vegetable phenomena. I mean, green bean casserole tastes five million times better with frozen ones. It's not like frozen ones are harder to find or more expensive.

But I digress. Le Colonial's green beans were fresh and crisp, exactly the type of vegetable I was raised on and love. Of course, these were ten thousand times saltier and drenched in sauce, but the texture was the same. And they were absolutely to die for.

We selected cinnamon apple beignets for dessert, which are cinnamon battered deep-fried slices of apple. It came a la mode with Tahitian vanilla ice cream, caramel sauce, coconut, and walnuts. I could have done without the coconut and Jim was cool with the walnuts, but we both very much enjoyed the dessert (Jim more so than me). Since I'm not a big chocolate fan, we generally end up getting some sort of apple dessert, since Jim loves apple too. For me, other than creme brulee, you can't get better than apple something with vanilla ice cream for dessert.

I really want to come back here. There are several other dishes I'd like to try. Maybe next month we'll come back . . .