Le Colonial (CLOSED)

After ten years, this elegant wood-bedecked space is still midtown’s answer to downtown’s enduringly fashionable Indochine. Ladies who lunch get their protein from the grilled lemongrass chicken breast, placed atop cold noodles with a peanut dressing. For the men who adorn them, there’s grilled loin of pork, with mango-and-jicama salad in a passion-wasabi sauce. And they share, shamelessly, the plump grilled shrimp, served on an impressive stump of sugarcane. At night, the blue neon sign serves as a homing beacon for seekers of the rattan-laden, second-floor bar, an elegant salon reminiscent of a Wong Kar-wai film.