06 - Le Cheval - Oakland

Le Cheval - 1007 Clay St. (between 10th St & 11th St), Oakland, CA 94607 (510) 763-8495

Last Visit: June 20th, 2008

Le Cheval's Home Page


It was the first day of summer this year when I returned to Le Cheval's Vietnamese restaurant. To say it's fusion is using the term loosely, but I think they have clientele that say it's not Vietnamese enough to call it just Vietnamese. It's the third time being here, and once there was no line.

We sat down in the back of the room, under the paintings of horses. Naturally, horses were the theme of the restaurant. The ceilings are high and their only countermeasure against the heat were old ceiling fans. I must admit, we drank a lot of water. The room was remarkably loud with chatter; perhaps it's the acoustics of the room, but it did kind of remind me of restaurants in East Asia. I wanted to sit closer to my girlfriend because it was kind of hard to yell across our menus.

We ordered the spring-beans and chicken and the caramelized snapper fish clay-pot dish. They were both good, and I have to say most dishes here are pretty good. We skipped the appetizer because we were in a rush, but I do recommend the calamari salad, one of my favorite salads. The orange beef is done well here, if you're into red meat.

A friend of mine told me that they had margaritas the size of fishbowls there, but I looked on the menu and only saw margaritas on the rocks. I guess he must have been talking about some other place. I instead took a beer, Tiger from Singapore. It was nothing to rave about. I realize I've been trying a lot of "international" beers, but none of them stick out. Anyone have a good recommendation? The girlfriend had a lemon drop, but she gave me the face of disapproval for it. We packed up the food and left for the evening.

My thoughts tangent to this topic, what are the lingering affects of the French colonization of Vietnam? I mean, over a 100 years of political dominance must have trickled down to some food rules. I know that the drip coffee came from the French, and probably the patte. Now what else is there? Must be an essay being written about this now.

Yelp's two cents