COCO500 Review

COCO500, a Californian-Mediterranean restaurant, served us quite good starters/appetizers and decent desserts.  Main dishes comparatively disappointed.

One appetizer was battered-and-fried green beans.  The batter was thick, tempura-like, and had the right amount of salt.  The dish was good, though the mustard-based dipping sauce was not universally appreciated.

Our other appetizer was "truffled squash blossom flatbread" with parmesan cheese.  This was also good.  S thinks this is a "must get" dish: fancy cheese on toast.  The parmesan had a strong, oily tingle.  The truffles bothered Oj, as expected.

We also shared a heirloom tomato salad (both thick slices of large tomatoes as well as cherry tomatoes) with cucumbers, olives, and feta cheese, and dressed in a lemon vinaigrette.  We liked this nicely-dressed salad, and I appreciated that the feta cheese was mild.

We ordered a beef cheek as one entree.  It was a round beef thing with fried skin that was soggy--people didn't like the skin--all doused with horseradish.  The meat was like really tender, really fatty brisket.  The dish came with a decent frisee salad.

We also shared a roasted chicken with a panzanella (bread salad).  The chicken had good skin, nicely seasoned, though was a little tough.  The panzanella included strange croutons, pungent gorgonzola, radicchio, tomatoes, and balsamic vinaigrette.  We preferred the frisee salad, but that's not a strong endorsement of it.

One of our desserts was a "chocolate ecstasy cake", which included chocolate sprinkles and chocolate sauce.  It's best described as a brownie cake.  While I complained it was dry, S liked it, and Oj wanted it to be warm.

Our other dessert was "vacherin (swiss meringue, chocolate, coffee gelato, and candied almonds)".  (Basically meringue filled with stuff.)  It looked fancy, like a mushroom.  We decided the meringue was store bought, though nevertheless declared it not bad -- better than we expected.  The almonds we all agree were good, and we took Oj's advice to simply eat ice cream + fudge + almonds.

Though the tables and benches are wood, the place has a modern, bistro feel.  There were candles on the tables, and a single-candle chandelier.

The hostess was nice, sliding the table out and back for us.

The total was $39/person including tax and tip.  We didn't order any drinks.

Original Announcement

Tonight we'll head to COCO500, a Californian-Mediterranean restaurant that sounds similar to Zuni: a rustic bistro setting and a menu that, besides flatbreads/pizzas, emphasizes grilled or roasted items.  It also supposedly serves excellent cocktails.

http://coco500.com/

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