Lela

First of all this place is beautiful. Very clean,
Love that we can see the chefs cooking.
We were greeted right away, the waiter was very nice.
The restaurant is pretty empty maybe four tables. We put our order in and it’s taken 45 minutes to get our food and we ordered soup, with a pork chop. They have 5 chefs and it’s taking 45 minutes?
When we did receive our food, mine was cold in the middle and not that great. :(I would have chosen Applebee’s before this one. …
But sometimes people are off their night so I always give the benefit of the doubt.
Our drinks (Jack and Coke) were 10.00 a drink. But made very well so we don’t mind paying for that.

The atmosphere is inviting and classy and the dishes have a lot of great and unexpected variety. I will certainly be going back! Definitely the freshest gnocchi I’ve ever had.

My honey and I have declared this dining destination our restaurant! Colette Bistro & Bar was our favorite restaurant to celebrate birthdays and such, we were shocked when we came into town and it was gone! How pleased we were when we sat at the chef’s counter and watched the crafting of our EXCELLENT dinner. We’ve been a few times since the first. The change is fabulous and the fare is still on par with the finest in the cities. The ambiance is sophisticated and accessible. Dress in your finest or your nicest jeans –it still feels on time! The general manager is gracious and we intend to return for years to come! (Try the lamb chops!!! –Chefs suggestion for rare is RIGHT ON!!)

Great lunch, especially on a Sunday when many restaurants may not bring their A game. Lela was on point today. We sampled the interesting lunch menu, mostly focusing on seafood dishes to pair with our Chablis. The only less than stellar dish was the crab cake but it was certainly competitive with most other venues. Like most restaurant crab cakes its needs more LUMP crab to really shine. Loved the Yellowtail Crudo and Peruvian Ceviche! Even the smoked turkey sandwich showed a little creativity. Everything was super fresh. Like the roomy modern layout that still has cozy areas. Service was crisp and enthusiastically helpful. This is suburban friendly with urban class and professionalism. Nice addition to the mostly boring 494 corridor.

Lovely place to meet a friend for breakfast! Love their new look. We had to start with a chocolate croissant and moved onto eggs benedict. Drank enough coffee to last for awhile. The new bar area is gorgeous!

Food and menu selection was great. I also liked the service. It’s four stars only because the prices are unjustifiably high.
Wine list is nice, but again…, overpriced.
The place is quiet. You can sit at the bar and watch a game or choose a table.
I recommend it if you feel like spending some extra $$$.

We decided to come try this place out based on a recommendation. Dined on a Monday night, around 7pm. The place was maybe ¼ full. No hostess to greet us so we sat ourselves in the bar at a table. After 5 minutes a gentleman brought us menus. About 20 minutes after that, a server finally came up to us asking for a drink order. No «hello» or asking us if we’d dined here before or specials. I asked about a specific Pinot Noir and the server said, «All Pinots are the same.» To which I replied, «I guess you are not big wine drinker.» He simply replied he was and asked the others for their drink order. For a place that has such an expansive and expensive wine list I expected a better response.
After taking our drink order he didn’t come back. About 15 minutes later, after watching our wine sit at the end of the bar, I stopped a manager and asked her to check and see if that wine was ours since we had been waiting for so long. Sure enough, it was! She simply came over and poured it into our glasses without any apology.
Not sure how long it was after that when the server finally came back to take our order but I will say our wine was almost gone. I don’t want to drag this out but he also screwed up the order and didn’t order my friends entrée. She eventually did get it.
I gave this 2 stars vs 1 star only because my 2 friends thought there pasta dish was fine. I would not order mine again (corn ravioli). I will say the server did ask if I liked my dish since I pushed it to the end of the table with most of it still uneaten. I told him I didn’t enjoy it and he was kind enough to take it off the ticket without me asking. I did appreciate that. However, it does not make up for the BAD service we encountered for most of our visit.
They did a beautiful build-​out and its a nice looking place. The open kitchen is nice but watching the staff touch their face & hair and then bring out my food out was not so great. I believe in giving places a 2^nd chance and may go there again someday for drinks but not anytime soon.

It is great to have a high end restaurant in the area. Lela has a fantastic wine list too. The diver scallops were seared to perfection. The bone in filet is the best in the TC. Wow. Wow. Wow. See you again very soon!

Amazing new restaurant by the newly renovated Sheraton hotel. Food is wonderful, never disappoints, and the wine & drink list is great too!

This place was lovely. We started with a couple of cocktails and their beef tartar. The drinks were good, also very stiff. The beef tartar was awesome. I would for sure recommend it.
We picked out two other items to share. One being the tagliatellini, which was very good. Second choice was the beef tenderloin and that was amazing. It was cooked perfectly and was incredibly tender. The entire cut was juicy and deliciously seasoned. We were very happy with everything.

Flavorful destination to your pallet. What an ambiance and food is to die for. After my first experience at this place, I can def. Say that Chef knows what he is doing and whatever he is doing, he is just nailing it.
Based on our super friendly server «Tyler’s «recommendation, we ordered Sirloin Tartar (Is to die for), Meatball, Halibut and Truffle gnocchi. Wow! The food is OUTSTANDING.
I have tried 3 Micheline star restaurant so far, and from my opinion I can really relate Lela’s food flavor to the one I tried before.
Glad we decided to try this place. We are going to be here very often now :)
I will def. Recommend this place.

I was NOT pleased. The bread was ok and the drinks were extremely expensive! I had the Onion Bisque. It was not a bisgue! It was lumpy and did not have any onion in the soup like a Shrimp or Lobster Bisque. It would have been a good bisque if it were smooth and had small chopped carmelized onion floating in the soup.
I will not visit or eat there again until they lower prices and fix their food.

Wow ! This place is amazing ! We are foodies and know quality and service. This is our new favorite place. I can’t wait to go back and try more !

Stop in here for HH and enjoy a crafted cocktail; and some great appetizers. The food was good and cocktails were very tasty. Bartender was fun and our group had a great visit here.

Went here on short notice Saturday night. Got in without reservations no problem. This place is attached to the Sheridan Hotel.
It was newly renovated and very nice inside. Service was generally good with friendly staff — no complaints. The food was very good. We had a couple appetizers and a couple entrees — all very good.
With all that, you’d think it would be a no brainer to come back to Lela. That’s where there’s a catch. Food prices aren’t low, but they are totally acceptable. The wine prices however are insanely high. So high, I started looking them up. They seemed to average about 3x retail. For restaurants, it’s reasonable to expect 3x wholesale, not 3x retail. This example is consistent with the 7 – 8 I looked up and the many others for which I was familiar with the retail pricing: Justin Cab Paso Robles 2012 on the menu for $ 76 — this wine is $ 23-​$ 29 retail. I routinely see this on wine lists at other nice restaurants for about $ 50.
For context:
We really enjoy drinking nice wine with dinner. We have a wine cellar at home and are usually fine with restaurant prices when we go out. We routinely get $ 75-​$ 125 bottles when we dine out. We had a bottle of Insigna from our cellar with dinner two nights ago.
For us, the wine prices were just too high to make us feel good about ordering wine, and when that’s the case, we’d just as soon pass. Their wine menu is on their web site. I’d recommend checking it out.
As mentioned, this is attached to the Sheridan. If Lela’s goal is to just service hotel patrons, they are probably ok. If they want to get good traffic from locals, I think their wine prices will be an obstacle for many potential diners.
With reasonably priced wine, I would have given it 4 – 4.5 stars.

The new Lela Restaurant is a delight — the décor is updated and pleasing. The staff was very attentive without being overbearing — special kudos to the GM (Haykel Arfaoui) and our wait staff. And the fare was truly spectacular! We had the fortune of sampling a wide variety of the menu and every item delighted the palette — the halibut, garganelli, lobster gnocchi and veal chop are all highly recommended!

I’m giving this place a solid 4. 4.5 if I could.
This is a total transformation from the old but yet classic dining experience from Colette Bistro & Bar. There is no resemblance whatsoever from the old. Nothing, I mean nothing was carried over from the old restaurant which I personally think is a HUGE positive!
This new dining area is elegant, classy but doesn’t feel stuffy. It’s light, airy and bright compared to the old scene. It is exceptionally inviting. If you like what Colette had to offer, you will love this place and yearn for it when you’re not here. Prices are fair as this is a fine dining restaurant so they do command a higher fare on some dishes, especially on the steaks.
My first time there, I was lucky enough to dine at the chef’s table which is where you can see the chefs and cooks at work. It’s as if you’re in the kitchen with them. It’s a very unique experience in which I highly recommend trying. I did take notice of the awkward placement of outlets right across the chef’s table which distracted me a little. It would have been a lot nicer if the entire wall panel was flush with no outlets. Also, one of the outlets were being used for printing tickets. I personally think it detracts from the view from the chef’s table to the kitchen. If I sat at the chef’s table, I would want a clear shot of the kitchen and wait staff’s interaction and nothing else.
Plating is creative, delightful and fun. Sharing is encouraged with how everything is laid out (also negative explained later). The beef tenderloin tartare was flavorful and light with the insanely fresh meat. The Yellowfin Tuna crudo and fried oysters were scrumptious. I wish I had more to gobble up. Utensils is a bit on the awkward side (the knife they use requires a certain grip and it doesn’t sit well with me for some reason. It’s pretty to look at but from a ease of use standpoint, I’d be satisfied with a standard polished knife with a classic design. Although the steak knife that was presented to me was perfect.
The spoons that are used for sharing requires more than just scooping the food off the plate or bowls. It seems as if it requires too much work on my end just to get a morsel of this or that. Take the fried oyster bites for example. They sit on a bed of fennel jam and trying to grab one whole bite was not an easy task. Upon contact with the spoon, the jam moves, shoving the the oyster further and further away from the spoon. So my advice is, to use a finger or your fork to clamp everything down in one place. Something so simple should not be this challenging and I can see that being an issue for some guests.
My two favorite dishes of the evening were the main courses of the evening, the Colorodo Lamb Rack and strip loin which were both perfectly executed in terms of temperature and flavor. The intense crazy butter flavor was evident. It was pure heaven when it melted in your mouth. I expected nothing more than just ok with their steaks but boy was I shocked when that first piece of steak went into my mouth and did the macarena in my mouth. It was that delicious!
Portion sizing with the pasta was an issue I had a problem with. The ingredients like lobster and truffle are expensive and the prices show for it, however, when the Lobster Gnocchi came out, I was astounded by the sheer amount of gnocchi or lack thereof. There were literally 6 gnocchi bites in the pasta dish. If I was to order a pasta dish for dinner, it would not be enough. I understand this dining experience is made for sharing but if you have a table of 2, 4 or 6 guests. How do you share 6 pieces of gnocchis among the guests??? The gnocchi, however, was AMAZING! The best gnocchi I’ve had bar none. I just wished there was more if it. The lobster atop of the dish was a bit overdone in my opinion but that did not take away from that damn fluffy pillowy gnocchi! The wild boar Garganelli was one of very few dishes I did not thoroughly enjoy here. The boar meat was tough and chewy. It threw the whole dish off. The seared scallops entrée was a bit on the sweet side. I would probably choose a steak next time I visit.
Service was attentive, informative and resourceful. Our waiter was knowledgeable in the menu and created small talk which I enjoyed a lot. I really hope that this trend continues as they continue to find more waiters. This, being, a new restaurant is still in search for new staff and they have to be top quality if they want service to bolster up this new restaurant to new heights along with the already great food.
This new restaurant caters to a wide variety of occasions. It’s a fine place for a date. The ambiance is warm, light and captures and enlightens you when you first walk in. All in all, a solid 4 despite all the cons I noticed. Incredible transformation from the old to the new. I dined at the old and now dined at the new. I have to say, I was blown away by some dishes both positive and negative but all in all, food and service was top notch!

The atmosphere is sophisticated, yet relaxed. The prices are reasonable. The service is great. The food is phenomenal; the stake tartare and lobster deviled eggs were amazing.
It’s a great place to enjoy a meal.