Le Bordeaux – San Francisco (North Beach)

I love it when a new place comes to North Beach and it’s not touristy Italian. I was thrilled when Nua came (but unfortunately too sophisticated for the locale). Now, another new restaurant, Le Bordeaux has stepped onto the scene, but will it make it? Located at 524 Union St between Grant and Stockton (up the street from Tony’s Napoletana), Le Bordeaux serves lunch and dinner.  For being the only French restaurant in North Beach, it’s only current challenge is getting it’s liquor license. Currently it’s a BYOB place with no charge for corkage.

The owner Sylvain Castet moved from Bordeaux, France in January to open his dream restaurant which he labels a French Steakhouse. The fresh meats can be seen in an open refrigerator case on the side of the bar. It serves brunch on Saturday & Sunday from 11am-2pm prix fixed at $29 and lunch and dinner Tues – Sunday.

Here’s what we had:

Hors d’oeuvres (appetizers)

• Salad with hot goat cheese on toasts and honey – a little too much food for an appetizer and not really a salad. There were 2 medallions of cheese and the toasts were french baguette which made it a little tough to cut into. The salad was deconstructed with cherry tomatoes, red onion, strips of bacon and one large leaf of lettuce drizzled with balsamic. It was tasty, looked pretty, but could use some refinement.
• French salad had hard boiled egg, olives, feta cheese, cherry tomatoes in a light dressing. Exactly what you’d see in a French Brasserie in Bordeaux.

Main

• Ribeye was under seasoned and cooked a little unevenly on the ends, but once you got to the parts that were cooked it was very good. Topped with a pat of pesto butter which went nicely with the steak you also got your choice of a sauce ranging from bernaise to creme fraiche with horseradish. The steak came with a side fries, but they were steak fries, not the traditional pomme frittes that I’m accustomed to in a French restaurant.
• Fish of the day which happened to be grilled White Alaskan Sea Bass served with pickled onion relish on top and a carrot and leek hash on the side. The fish was a little dry, but tasted good and also a really large piece of fish. The carrot and leek hash was delicious and really added flavor to the whole dish.

Dessert

There isn’t a dessert menu yet, but everyone gets a french macaroon of their choice: chocolate, pistacchio, strawberry, raspberry, etc. Which were a nice finish to a decent meal.

Summary

All in all, I think this restaurant will get even better after it has a few more weeks under its belt and refines a few things.  The quality of food to price is very good. Note: This review was written within a week of the soft opening. I’ll be back to review it again in another month or two because I think it’s slightly unfair to review a restaurant in the first week, although this one did pretty good and way better than Benu.