We have so far stayed out of the debate about the fancy, high-end restaurants in the city, except for the occasional snide remark. Snark is cheap: We just make cynical jokes when Michael Bauer decides which places are worthy of his attention or not, or when chef Daniel Patterson complains about the lack of culinary imagination of the leading restaurants. We sat on the sideline too long, and it's time to toss our hat in the ring.

Bernard Loiseau was a sad casualty of a similar debate: this French chef committed suicide, alledgedly because the Michelin was going to take his third star away (on a scale of three). His cooking focused on the simple preparations meant to bring out the essence of the ingredients, and was deemed to conservative compared to what others were doing, at El Bulli or at the Fatted Duck.

Loiseau's name was on the menu when we went to La Folie, one of the ultimate French restaurants in San Francisco, in homage to his inspiration for one of the dishes. Thus we knew on which side of the divide we would find ourselves. La Folie is a large square room with floor-to-ceiling mirrors making stripes with large swaths of peach colored fabric on the walls. There is a smaller adjoining room in a blue-ish tone. We sat in the main room at one of the two tables by the window, a wonderfully romantic nook.

The waitress enquired about our choices in a warm manner, answering precisely all our questions, cracking the occasional joke; when we were concerned of ordering too much foie gras in our first dishes, she said "is that ever possible?" Ha! Unconvinced, we ended up staggering our foie gras over several dishes.

We were quickly brought some bread and butter, the bread unfortunately not fresh enough. Then a little amuse showed up, a cauliflower mousse in a shot glass, with a heady truffle scent and bit of raw crunchy cauliflower, a delicate starter for the parade of dishes to come.

We opened with a foie gras soup. A scallop ravioli served as a platform for a thumb size lump of luscious foie gras upon which the waiter poured a the soup, which tastes like a broth made of the deglazed jus from the pan, rich with foie gras flavor. We expected more of a creamy veloute, which in retrospect would have been way too decadent. It turned out delicious nonetheless. We also had a pig feet, sweet bread and lobster terrine, still warm, where the three very different meats meshed together perfectly. It was served on a slightly vinaigrette'd bed of Puy lentil with bits of bacon and firm cubes of carrots, a perfectly crunchy background to the mushy terrine.

The quail and foie gras lollipop followed, the half quail is stuffed with foie gras, and presented deboned with the two drumsticks. It was accompanied by a leek and wild mushroom canneloni, the blanched leek wrapping the mushroom like a sushi roll. At the same time, we had a frog legs lightly battered and fried with a parsley/spinach puree and a garlicky cream. This was the dish named after Loiseau, and it was indeed quintessentially French.

The feast continued with white sturgeon with sauteed vegetables and oxtail on polenta and a butter poached lobster with apple salad (shreds of apple with frisee) on a butternut squash sage ravioli. One of our favorite dish of the meal then showed up, a trio of rabbit, served on a large plate with a leg of rabbit stuffed with mushroom, a loin of rabbit wrapped again as in a sushi roll with carrot, spinach and garlic inside, and a rack of rabbit. This plate must have been amazingly labor intensive, and the palette of savors was indeed incredibly rich.

The venison with a potato-prune cake on the other hand was our only disappointment: the meat was not as gamey as we would have liked, and the potato-prune cake did not work. It needed salt, and the pruneau would have worked better with a fattier meat like pork.

Desserts-wise, after cleansing our palate with a shot of mango-lime-champagne refresher, we had a fondant au chocolat, with ice cream in the middle oozing as you eat the cake like lava out of the volcano, and cream of coconut and tapioca lined with a basil infusion, with a coconut tuile and a scoop of passion fruit sorbet. The meal ended with a plate of mignardises: miniature lychee pate de fruit, hazelnut chocolate cake, cannele de bordeaux, a macaron, etc.

We came out sated. Every dish was purely conceived and perfectly executed, but to live up to the folie, that is madness, of its name, we would have liked to be more surprised, or more challenged. We would have loved more of that emotion we had when piercing our hot cake we hit a gold mine of ice cream, this "how did they do it?" feeling combined with another anticipation: 'Will it taste good? ....Oh yeah!"

La Folie
2316 Polk street @ union
776-5577

Dinner price: 3 course, $65; 4 course, $75; 5 course: $85
Wine pairing: $55 for 5 course