Le Veau d'Or
Le Veau d’Or is French for “the golden calf”. Making reservations for 2 for this was incredibly difficult as it gets sniped the moment the reservations come up. Luckily I checked a random time, and I noticed there was some 5:00 PM slots opened on a Wednesday. This is one of the hottest restaurants in the city because it’s a revived restaurant from the Frenchette and Le Rock chef/owners, Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr. The food is expected to taste much better than the restaurant’s previous life.
Ambiance & Service
The interior of the restaurant is pretty small, with just a handful of tables. Because the acoustics are in a short area, the noise level can get a little bit high, especially if there is a table with a lot of loud guests.
The service was superb as the waitress helped us translate and recommend the dishes based on our preferences. I am usually an adventurous eater, but I decided to not go way overboard in case.
Food
The Prix Fixe is $125 per person for 3 courses: appetizer, entree, and dessert. It also includes salad for the table.
The Casino ($24) came with pisco, maraschino, mandarin, and absinthe. My partner thought this cocktail was just OK and not really notable.
The Beaujolais-Villages ($19) came from Alex Foillard, 2023. This is a natural wine with Gamay grapes. The resulting flavor is fruit forward and on the lighter side. It was very easy to drink and matched well with the ravigote and duck.
The bread was delicious with their butter. It was served room temperature.
The Les Escargots Provençale was served with 5 pieces and had a lot of garlic, parsley, and butter flavors.
The Tete de Veau Ravigote was a “calf’s head” served with a ravigote sauce. The calf’s head was served boneless, and it was similar to a hot pate of meat and tendons. The tendons were cooked very thoroughly, so it had this gelatinous consistency that was quite tasty with the pastry skin on top. The ravigote sauce is a light acidic sauce that helps cut through this rich delicacy.
The Poulet au Vin Jaune, morilles, creme fraiche came with a creamy braised chicken with morel mushrooms on top. The creme fraiche sauce was superb. This dish also came with a side of rice, which my partner used to soak up the sauce. The chicken was very tender and flavorful.
The Duck Magret aux Cerises came with duck breast and cherries. The duck was cooked beautifully and tasted delectably with the cherries.
The side of fries ($16) was fried and cooked perfectly. The seasoning was a little salty, but with the aioli and the duck, it was very good. I’d love to try this again.
For some reason, we had to ask for the salad even though it was included as part of the meal. The salad was tossed with crispy fresh lettuces and a subtle vinaigrette. It was a good complement to a rather heavy meal because it was very uplifting, fresh, and crispy.
The Fraises et Sabayon came with strawberries and sabayon. Sabayon is a foamy dessert made of egg yolks, sugar, and some wine. The strawberries were very sweet, and it matched beautifully with the sabayon.
The Ile Flottante, otherwise known as floating island, was a delicious soft meringue on top of a sweet cream. This was really good and reminded my partner of their time in Marseilles where they were served this dish in French homes.
The French beignets came with dusted powdered sugar. We were told by the waitress to save some of our desserts’ sauce, but it was too late for me. Either strawberry sabayon sauce or floating island sauce was a match made-in-heaven.
Overall Impression
Le Veau d’Or is a fantastic prix fixe French restaurant that isn’t too expensive compared to other French restaurants in the city. The food here tasted very good, and you won’t feel hungry afterwards because of the richness of the foods. Definitely check this newly revived restaurant from the Frenchette team if you can secure a reservation.
Yelp Jabs
Lunch prix fixe is less of a value than dinner. The options are disappointingly not the same as the dinner menu (lunch menu does not seem to appear on the website) and does not include salad or dessert. Food is fine, just not a good value at all, no wonder there were empty tables.
Because it’s unlikely people want to get stuffed during lunch, lunch menus are typically lighter in nature and not the full experience of a restaurant. For me, I always try to scope out the menu to see if I can accept the lunch vs. dinner options.
mixed green salad ~2/5. Pretty boring and was a bit weird as a pre-dessert course.
This Elitist didn’t realize that the salad could be requested along with the main meal. Regardless, it’s also sometimes used to reset palettes before dessert, so it’s not uncommon.
We ate here several years ago, another couple of sheep who actually believed Bourdains sweetheart review. We made a reservation, on a mid week evening, looking forward to the experience. It all went south the moment we walked in. The greeting and service could not have been more rude, the waiter barely acknowledged us. The food was mediocre at best and although the regulars seemed to rate first rate service, we were pretty much persona non grata. Maybe its better since the change in ownership but, for us, it may as well closed up and went away. Never again. As a sidebar, we have been to Paris several times and even there, the service was better.
The food overall from many anecdotes is much better than before. The service is just OK, and it seems very typical of mid-tier French restaurants. The issue with Bourdain’s review is that it was for a different team. Yes, you can go to a restaurant based on a name, but the people backing the restaurant will have a large impact on how the restaurant operations and food presents itself.
Revisions
- Apr 16, 2025 - Initial revision.