Le Colonial (Chicago, IL)

8.0/10

Overview

Right on Chicago’s gold coast, Le Colonial presents itself as a French-Vietnamese fusion restaurant, serving elegant but still affordable food in a very attractive setting. The restaurant has three dining rooms, each decorated beautifully in maximalist style. In general, Le Colonial serves a meal of high quality, varying between solid but unremarkable versions of Vietnamese staples and genuinely excellent dishes.

However, I must remark that Le Colonial is somewhat confused on a conceptual level: it presents itself as a French-Vietnamese fusion restaurant, but there’s not much French about it beside the name. There’s nothing wrong with this per se, but there is slightly less creativity at Le Colonial than you might expect, given its presentation of itself. Also, I note some infelicity in the service, which was relatively inattentive.

NB: Read here for details on my numerical valuation system.

Food

The best dish of the night was the first: Ca Song, or tuna tartare. The bulk of the flavor comes from the tuna and a layer of smashed avocado underneath it. Diced cucumbers are mixed in with the tuna, which provide a little flavor and an excellent texture to complement the softness of the tuna and avocado. There’s also a moderate layer of soy caviar sitting atop the tuna, which provides the interesting and unique texture of caviar without the cost of regular caviar. Overall, this is an incredibly well-balanced dish with robust flavors and interesting textures: 9.5/10.

The Suong nuong (baby back ribs) are a really interesting small plate, with four ribs served atop a bed of slaw, and garnished with toasted peanuts. It’s an interesting Vietnamese version of a very standard American baby back ribs in Kansas City-style, sweet barbeque sauce. It’s a hoisin glaze that fills the role of the barbeque sauce, which has a strong flavor and is actually a little too sweet (words I rarely write). The ribs have an excellent texture—they fall off the bone freely, but still have a little chew to them—and a nice little char: 8.0/10.

The Goi Cuon, or chilled shrimp roll, is a pretty regular instance of its kind, and less exceptional than the tuna tartare. It’s a simple roll, with shrimp, lettuce, and bean sprouts, served with a standard peanut plum dipping sauce. It’s perfectly adequate, but doesn’t exceed expectations in the way the tuna did, although the dipping sauce is a little higher in quality than what I’ve grown to expect from simpler Vietnamese restaurants. This may be simply the limitation of the ingredients, as there’s only so much you can do with lettuce, shrimp, and bean sprouts: 6.5/10.

The Pho Bo is a similar story as the shrimp rolls—good but not exceptional, though here slightly higher in quality than the shrimp roll. The broth has a somewhat deeper flavor than the standard pho, and the beef tenderloin slices are good by virtue of the cut of meat, but actually not that much better than the standard cut you’d usually get at a humbler Vietnamese restaurant. I don’t feel that tenderloin is the appropriate cut to use here, as poaching just doesn’t bring out the excellence of the meat: 7.0/10.

The Goi Bo, or spicy beef salad, is a salad in name but large enough to be a substantial entree of its own. It comes with chargrilled strips of beef, served chilled and rare, and a medley of vegetables all served in a sweet chili and agave dressing. The beef is nicely seared and has a good texture, though the best part of this dish is the flavor of the dressing, which has a subtle sweetness and a moderate but effective spice: 8.5/10.

The chocolate cake is served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and, most interestingly, a bit of flambéed rum, which makes for an exciting presentation. The cake itself is excellent, and made with a dark chocolate (Valrhona Guanaja) that is some of the darkest chocolate I’ve had in a cake before. It has a strong flavor, and the rum adds another strong and interesting flavor to the scene, that might be just slightly too strong. But overall this is an outstanding cake, whose presentation is especially enjoyable: 9.0/10.

Summary

Though occasionally there might be some room for improvement, Le Colonial serves a really enjoyable meal, with dishes such as the tuna tartare and the chocolate cake especially standing out.

Total: 8.0/10.