La Folie

My four best meals in San Francisco have all been at La Folie, a temple of great French cuisine. The ambience is formal without being over-bearing or self-indulgent thanks to the light-hearted elements of harlequins and circus colors, as the name of the restaurant suggests. The service is always professional and polished. But the food is what truly shines - great food, served consistently well, in surprisingly healthy portions (healthy implying large, not small). The menu is divided into five sections, each with 5-10 choices, from which you can select 3, 4, or 5 courses. The prices - $60, $75, $85 - reflect good value considering the kind of fanciful crap you're likely to force yourself to eat at comparably priced venues where the only relief is the tiny portions.

I was at La Folie this past weekend to celebrate a special occasion and the restaurant was still in outstanding form. My beet salad had just the right amount of meatiness that was balanced by a light earthy flavor. My friend noted that my scallops were the most properly cooked he had ever had. I agreed, and aggressively guarded my plate so he couldn't swipe another bite. Jerk. The scallops were placed on top of a generous mound of summer vegetables including carrots and peas in a pea-lobster froth. The warmth of the dish was enough to loose the knots in my shoulder from a long work week. There was no question what I would select for my poisson course: lobster. Lobster served three ways - lobster tail on corn, carrots, and peas; petit lobster sandwich with bacon; lobster claws and roe rapped in leeks. Is there anyone who is so adept at preparing lobster? Eating his lobster isn't an acute revelation. Rather, it sneaks an assumption into your brain that there is no other way to prepare lobster. It makes you question why everyone else makes it taste so bad, rather than why chef Roland Passot makes it taste so damn good.

I was stuffed by the time my fourth course arrived - quail wrapped in potato sheets, stuffed with squab and wild mushrooms, in a truffle jus. It was a battle between my desire to consume something so delicious and the fibers of the stomach wall beginning to tear (and if you know me, you know how elastic my stomach is). I have to admit that the desserts weren't as inspired as the other courses - but hell if that or a few rips in my stomach lining keeps me from finishing my dessert. I had their Valrhona chocolate croquettes, which to my delight had perhaps the highest cacao content out of any chocolate based dessert I've ever had. One final note about the food (or rather, the drinks): I can't drink very much alcohol, so I take special note of the water served. La Folie has what must be the best water in the world: Badoit. Badoit falls under the "effervescent" category of sparkling waters - and the bubbles are so tiny you'll wonder if it really is sparkling water or just amazingly refreshing still water.

The funny thing about La Folie is that I've always been able to book reservations the day of the reservation, and this utterly boggles my mind when a mediocre restaurant like Quince can be booked solid for a month. There are two restaurants I place on the same league as La Folie: the French Laundry, the only restaurant to which I would assign a higher food score, and Bastide, where although the food isn't quite as good, the service and ambience is unparalleled ANYwhere I've dined. But why bother with making reservations two months out (if you can even get past the busy signal all morning) or flying down to Los Angeles when Roland Passot is, without so much fanfare, cooking something so fanfare worthy right here in the city?

During truffle season, La Folie used to (and may still) pass around at the beginning of each seating a basket of the fragrant bulbs for their guests to smell, like truffle sniffing pigs - an appropriate foreshadowing of how you will feel at the end of what I promise will be a near perfect meal.

http://www.lafolie.com