Controversial Bay Area restaurant has abruptly shut - after being accused of racism

A 'canceled' restaurant in San Francisco has shut for good.

Le Colonial, which had been open near Union Square since 1998, served its last customers on September 1.

The restaurant and its food paid homage to Vietnam during the French occupation in the 1920s.

But critics said the depictions of Vietnam's culture could be gimmicky and played on stereotypes, and decorations were often items from other south-east Asian countries.

It lead to accusations it was celebrating colonialism, and Le Colonial was dubbed racist in a now infamous review by a restaurant critic from the San Francisco Chronicle in 2019

'We basically were canceled, in a sense, with a lot of the local media,' executive chef and general manager Geoffrey Deetz told the Chronicle this week.

'It was just too much to overcome, between that review years ago and Covid. It put us in a situation where we couldn't dig it out.'

He was referring to a review of the restaurant in 2019 by the Chronicle's then food critic Soleil Ho. 

'Le Colonial's theme is covered with the sticky film of racism - but compounding this insult is the fact that the food isn't well-executed or particularly exciting,' it read. 

San Francisco is a city that is home to one of America's largest Vietnamese populations outside the country itself. 

Deetz and his wife Quynh Nhu, a pastry chef, took over Le Colonial in 2021, and were tasked with shaking off its questionable image. 

In an interview at the time, The Chronicle described Deetz's task, saying he had 'to try to bring respect to perhaps San Francisco's least-woke restaurant.'

'When I walked to the bathroom and I saw Buddha, that was really unacceptable,' Nhu told the Chronicle in the interview.

'Some pictures on the walls were nice and some looked scary and just not right.'

She told the publication that some of the pictures, with their depictions of Vietnamese people in the 19th Century, made her cringe. 

'They may see this funny white guy cooking their food, but the passion that this restaurant is trying to portray is to really celebrate Vietnamese culture,' Deetz said in the 2021 interview. 

'I want to create an environment where Vietnamese can feel at home in a place that used to be so offensive and detached from modern America.' 

The view of locals in the city is that the couple did improve the image of the restaurant, but - with the added problems caused by the pandemic - it was too late. 

'It was just an uphill battle,' Deetz concluded last week. 

Generally, restaurants across the US have been struggling after the pandemic as they deal with increased costs for food and labor. There have been a slew of closures and bankruptcies. 

Red Lobster was the highest profile to file for bankruptcy, and its $20 endless shrimp deal was named as a factor.  

Popular Italian restaurant Buca di Beppo filed for bankruptcy in August - just days after it abruptly shut 13 underperforming locations. 

World of Beer Bar & Kitchen was named among the fastest growing restaurant chains in the US in 2013. 

It also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August, saying it owed suppliers as much as $50 million. 

National coffee and upmarket grocery chain Foxtrot said at the start of April it will shut all its stores with immediate effect - leaving staff and customers stunned.

Companies are battling falling sales as Americans increasingly eat out less after two years of punishing price rises.