Le Crocodile: French fine dining birthday dinner in Vancouver

For my birthday dinner, my boyfriend and I made reservations to eat at Le Crocodile.

Related: Read where I took him for his birthday dinner.

Le Crocodile is a French restaurant in downtown Vancouver that has been operating for over 30 years. This place was recommended to me by my sister, who raved about their tomato soup.

Parking

If you live in Vancouver, you’ll know that trying to find parking downtown can be quite stressful. I am still on crutches so transiting by skytrain or parking far are not desirable options. We used Parkopedia to find a parkade that is right beside Le Crocodile. It is $8 CAD for evenings after 6 pm.

Le Crocodile does have valet parking.

Interior

From the outside, the restaurant doesn’t look very large. There is a door greeter/valet in a full suit to greet us as I hobble over with my crutch. We enter the restaurant and it is warmly lit with paintings on the wall and tables scattered across the dining room.

Tables are placed within close proximity of each other, but never once did we feel like we were too close to another table or that they could hear our conversations.

The table is set nicely with a cute little flower and candle. They ask us what kind of water we want before the server arrives with our menus.

Drinks

I don’t remember the name of it, but we order a 0.5L of white wine for $35 CAD. This is the cheapest one – the other ones are $50+.

The server arrives with our wine, pours a little of it in my glass and asks me to taste it. I swirl it around for a few seconds, pretend to smell it, and drink some. I nod. Yes, this is wine.

This is the beginning of the dawning realization that this place is too fancy for me because I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. Anyways, the server gives us a little ice bucket table, pours more wine into our glasses and leaves.

Another server comes by a little later and refills our glasses. He accidentally refills it with another table’s wine, which was also a half liter of some kind of white wine.

My boyfriend and I giggle evilly like the spawns of Satan we are. Why, you ask? One thing we notice in the restaurant is that most of the other tables are filled with older folks who wear really nice suits and jewelry. I am glad I made my boyfriend wear a button-down shirt for once and we assume the other table (surprise- they are an elderly couple wearing fancy clothes) ordered one of the $50 wines.

We clink our glasses together and taste the wine. We look at each other and nod, “Yup this definitely tastes different. This must be more expensive wine!”

To which our original server comes back, apologizes for the mistake of giving us someone else’s wine. She then adds, “But don’t worry. It’s the same wine.”

We are idiots. We definitely couldn’t taste the difference.

Food

Appetizers

We order 3 appetizers: the tomato soup, quail and foie-gras, and bone marrow.

Some kinda tart

The very first thing we ate is complimentary from the chef (it makes you feel special but everyone gets this). It looks like a Chinese egg tart or some sort of quiche and seems to change depending on what ingredients they use. Ours has goat cheese, chives and (maybe) mushrooms.

It is savoury and soft, a nice little way to start our meal.

Bread and butter

Nothing special about this but I thought I should include it so you know you will get free bread.

Soupe de tomate au gin et creme fraiche

This is the tomato soup. I want to add the actual french title into this post because now you might know how I felt trying to decipher the menu.

The tomato and gin soup is a “Le Crocodile Classic”, says my server and also my sister whom I have never seen drink tomato soup before in my life.

I do have to say it’s probably the best tomato soup I’ve ever had. Often times, tomato soup is sour but Le Crocodile’s tomato soup is sweet and savoury and isn’t too watery or too thick. If you watch Master Chef Kitchen Professionals like I do, then you too will get excited about having creme fraiche in your dish.

Would I order it again? Probably not. For a $14 soup and my sister’s hype, I expected more – not sure what, exactly – but more. My boyfriend sometimes makes tomato soup with grilled cheese and that can of soup is $1. Still yummy. Maybe we should add creme fraiche.

Caille grillee et foie de canrd poele, reduction de calvados

This is grilled quail and pan-seared duck foie-gras with a reduction sauce ($26).

For some reason, we both thought we ordered quail eggs but it’s quail meat.

The grilled quail tastes like something my Chinese mother has made me before, but the green sauce that is paired with it is delicious. I wasn’t sure how to eat it though without using my hands.

The pan-seared duck foie-gras is a new taste for me. The foie-gras I’ve ever tasted was pate style spread on some sort of a toast. Pan-seared foie-gras has more flavour, feels more rich and all the juices explode into my mouth even if I only put a tiny piece in my mouth.

Os a la moelle au four servi avec salade de saison, fondant des tomates, petite tranches de pain grillees et fleur de sel

This is bone marrow ($21)! It is oven-roasted, served with a side of salad and fried onions, tomato “fondant” and crostinis.

We ordered this because we saw how massive it is at another table’s and we were not disappointed. It turned out to be our favourite appetizer and we thought it was worth its price.

The bone marrow tastes very rich (a common theme to today’s tasting) and also strangely remindes us of our mother’s Chinese soups (that use bone). The salad ias a nice contrast to the rich flavour, which can get overpowering if you eat 2 crostinis in a row. The tomato “fondant”, which is more like a salsa sauce, is also a nice sour flavour to contrast against it.

Two things I really want to highlight about this dish:

1. Look at all the crostinis they gave us!!! I was so happy. Usually fancy places give you like 3 crostinis for your tartare and you’re like ? How do I eat all this tartare on 3 crackers?
2. Bone marrow is good for my broken knee lol

Entrees

Pom poms? Frites?

The next item is another freebie from the chef – thinly sliced potatoes deep fried. Our server calls them pompoms (or something of the sort) but I think they are just fancy french fries?

They remind me of the hickory sticks chips I used to get from vending machines after swim lessons. Very yummy snack that every pub should add onto their menu.

Nouilles fraiches au homard et crevettes grillees, brunoise de legumes

This is a seafood fettucine dish ($35). It comes with lobster meat and grilled tiger prawns, served with a brunoise of vegetables, olive oil and fresh basil.

This isn’t one of the recommended dishes our server listed (although he said everything is delicious… of course), but we both really enjoyed this pasta dish. It looked refreshing and it tasted refreshing!

After several rich appetizers, this pasta felt light and the sauce really helped to lift it up instead of having a thick cream sauce. The lobster and prawn tasted fresh and there is nothing hiding its own fresh flavour.

Even though it’s not a very “French” dish, I would recommend this dish for anyone who loves pasta and seafood, or who is starting to feel too full from the richness of other french dishes.

Magret de canard et foie gras poeles, reduction au cidre de pomme

This is the roasted Fraser Valley duck breast served with pan-seared foie gras and an apple cider reduction ($40).

This is one of Le Crocodile’s signature and most popular entree. I don’t eat duck a lot, but I was excited to try this.

By this time, I actually don’t feel like eating the foie-gras, which is the same pan-seared one as the one we had in our earlier appetizer. It is still delicious and rich but my stomach also feels like it is going to explode and fall onto the floor like a splattered egg.

The duck breast is tender and easy to cut. It tastes great with the slightly sour apple sauce.

This entree also comes with a side of cooked vegetables on a separate plate. These are also nice pairings and I enjoyed tasting the different vegetables with each piece of duck breast.

Dessert

Pear sorbet

Another complimentary item and this is a godsend. It is sour and refreshing and exactly what we were craving for after our entrees. The server also explains that it helps clean our palettes.

Grand marnier souffle ($12)

We weren’t going to order a dessert originally because I had already ordered a cake from somewhere else and also we were both so full. But we saw the souffle other people ordered and we caved in and decided to share one.

When I ask what flavour the souffle is, the server replies with, “Ah madam, it is the grand marnier souffle”. I just nod but my boyfriend says, “We don’t know what that means.” (LOL)

He explains that today’s souffle flavour is orange and cognac (alcohol?).

Another reason we wanted to order a souffle is because souffles were featured in episode 1 of Master Chef Professionals. Anyways, it was risen beautifully and they wrote “Happy Birthday” with some chocolate sauce and gave me a candle.

This restaurant definitely doesn’t care about your Instagram because before I could even take a photo of it, our server stabs a hole into our souffle with a spoon and starts to pour warm white chocolate inside. The souffle seems to gobble this up and rises even more and I feel like I was watching a baby take its first breath. So lovely.

This is our first souffle and to be honest, we didn’t like it as much. I think we just don’t like souffles because it was certainly well done – soft and fluffy, no holes inside and super creamy. We were thankful for the lightness of this dessert because we were both so full, but on a normal day it might be too bland for us. It gave off a strong egg-white taste.

Chocolate crocodiles

Just when we thought we could leave with our bellies 3x larger than when we first came in, our server presents us with the last complimentary dish from the chef – chocolates in the shape of crocodiles. One is dark chocolate and the other is milk. We are somehow able to eat those too.

Final thoughts

Our final bill came to around $230 CAD including tax and tip. It was definitely not a cheap meal, but everything from food to ambiance to service was excellent.

The food was rich. It was grand, it was fancy. Everything was delicious. We don’t eat French cuisine a lot and we were expecting smaller plates. Portions were generous and flavours were high. We were definitely not hungry after this meal.

I thought all of their complimentary items were smart. They go well no matter what appetizer or entree you choose and fulfills some sort of purpose each time, whether it’s for you to nibble before your entree, reset your palette, or something else.

Atmosphere was romantic. All the servers were attentive and made sure our wine glasses were never empty. They were happy to answer any questions we had and most of them had French accents, which helped add to the feeling of authenticity to the restaurant.

Important to note that I also came in with crutches and they were very helpful, giving me enough room and time to hobble around. They kept my crutch at the front and was able to provide it whenever I asked. The restaurant is all on one floor so no troubles with stairs and they had a ramp at the entrance. On a wheelchair it might be a bit more difficult because there’s not a lot of room in between certain chairs and tables, but if you let them know beforehand I am sure they will be able to provide a table with more space around it.

They wished me happy birthday and a quick recovery. My boyfriend and I both enjoyed this dining experience and wouldn’t mind coming back to celebrate another special occasion. We definitely can’t eat like this on a regular basis. We will die.

Sincerely, Loewe