Yeah, the place’s name is literally “La Coloniel”.
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Yeah, the place’s name is literally “La Coloniel”.
That said, when I lived in the Bay Area, I’d go there as often as I could afford. Really great food and ambience. I guess it was a different time.
This controversial S.F. restaurant was accused of celebrating colonialism. Now it’s closed for good — San Francisco Chronicle
Le Colonial, a longtime, controversial French-Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco, has permanently closed. Geoffrey Deetz, executive chef and general manager, said the Union Square restaurant shuttered on Sept. 1. It was due to a cumulation of factors, he said: a slow summer and lacking post-pandemic recovery in the neighborhood.
(apple.news)
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@bennomatic I don’t think they were canceled as much as they never found what they were offering in a very modern environment with lots of options. Liholiho is next door. Cheap Pakistani restaurants abound around them. They were neither high end nor low, and their food and environment was fussy and strange.
SF has a lot of room for ‘fusion’ stuff. If they’d changed the name and done a better job with the food, I would have gone. But it always seemed worse than the $10 TL spots
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I get it. But you know how some jerks on the Internet say "facts don't care about your feelings”? The place I'm coming from is the exact opposite.
The times I went there, I just felt like I was in a different place, living a different life. The food was good, but as you suggest, definitely not the best in the area.
But at the end of an evening there with friends, co-workers, or loved ones, I felt like royalty.
My feelings don't care about the fact that better food's available.️
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@bennomatic I respect that it must have felt that way at the time!
Very likely, the food and ambience and probably service declined significantly, like many restaurants have over time. All part of the biz. I have a few places I love that I would never tell someone to go to!
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@skinnylatte Another place I used to love when I lived there was Bissap Baobab. Are they still around, lo these 20 years later? And have you eaten there?
My recollection is that the food was outstanding there, and the ambiance far less pretentious than La Coloniel, although the last time I went, it'd gotten very popular so it seemed a little overwhelmed and overwhelming to go there.
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@bennomatic they closed and just reopened. i haven't tried the food in about a decade. you're right, they are very crowded and popular now. apparently they have a shitty neighbor who keeps filing noise complaints and other things at them!