Restaurant Review: Chez Cocó
One thing I can tell you about Chez Cocó is that it is very pretty and über comfortable, as is the wont of Barcelona design guru Lázaro Rosa-Violán who seems to do everything these days. Here, he’s split the uptown, ginormous space into comfortable sections that allow for anything from business lunches, to girlie dinners, to illicit trysts. Ours was a tête-à-tête so the long banquette of closely packed little tables where you can see and be seen would not do. We quickly moved to the larger, Cerulean blue booths modelled on first class train carriages and watched what we could from there—an important someone’s birthday party in one corner, a dead-ringer for Carme Ruscalleda cracking open the champers with her grown-up kids in another, and wasn’t that Joan Roca moonlighting as the maitre’d?
That’s the great thing about casual dining done well, as fans of Chris Corbin and Jeremy King’s Wolseley and Colbert, laid-back, café-style-restaurants in London will tell you: it’s the kind of place where everyone could be anyone, yet your comfort level and sense of ease is such that all you feel is extreme, well comfort. And the food, in all its delicious simplicity, does not distract from the heady bliss of spending time with those you love.
Here the service is swift and sure-footed, the food solid and unpretentious. I had chicken and chips. Seriously. It’s what I fancied and take note, dear readers, because poultry is what Chez Cocó is all about. Behold the chicken’s glistening and oozing juiciness as they turn on the spit at the entrance, on a backdrop of copper pans hanging just so, grey-blue modernisme tiles on the floors, chandeliers glittering overhead and yes, those delightful train carriage banquettes. It is brilliant for a date, even better with an old mucker to gossip and giggle long into the night with.
For God’s sake woman, what of the food, I hear you mutter? Surely it’s not just chicken and chips. Forewarned if forearmed. Do not do as I did and pre-plan what you want from the online menu, because when you arrive you will be disappointed to discover that the menu has changed. I had my heart set on cauliflower cheese made with Compé and artichokes with a salsa verde. Instead, I puzzled over an odd assortment of starters and sides infuriatingly lacking in vegetables and salads. Burgundian snails? I think not. Baked pasta. Definitely no.
We settled on a funny little thing described as a ‘salad’, but comprised a thin sheet of pate de campaña stuffed with raspberries, mushrooms and watercress and folded up like a sausage roll. Weirdly, it actually tasted quite good, but in all my years of eating in Barcelona restaurants I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It was the kind of thing that only the late Fanny Cradock could have come up with. That, or the was chef stoned.
My pal’s cassoulet was alright. “Tastes like Bovril,” she said after a mouthful or two. “Duck, sausage and beans in a Bovril bath… want some?” I had a token nibble, while secretly congratulating myself on having ordered the chicken and I promise you, if you do not deviate from this, you’ll walk away a supremely happy bunny without doing too much damage to your wallet.
Yes, you can get a whole roasted Lumagorri or Bresse chicken, or a more local Dels Casals for the table (€55-€85 with sides) and you might want to if you’re a table of four to share it. Or, you can do what I did and have the pollo Tomatero (€15), which comes as a whole, baby roast chicken (a picantón), a copper pan full of the crunchiest chips and a crisp green salad. Your large, oval plate will be piping hot as it’s set before you along side a little jug of lemony chicken juices. You probably won’t be able to eat it all unless you’re very greedy, but you’ll give it a good go because it tastes that good, and you’ll rejoice because roast chicken is one of the greatest foods on earth and won’t care about the starters, because really, who needs them when you have friends?
You might have an indecently rich and delicious choccie thing for pudding, and treat yourself to a fabulous bottle of wine (we drank a beautiful cherry-red Furvus, D.O. Montsant, which at €28 is at the cheaper end of the wine list), and then maybe have a G&T on the terrace because its lovely out there and by now you’ll be avoiding going home.
Yes, you could spend a fortune in this place if you wanted, but the great thing is you don’t have to. More importantly, is it worth that Friday night reserva with someone you adore? Oh, I should coco!
Avenida Diagonal 465, Eixample. Tel. 93 444 9822 www.chezcoco.es. Open Mon-Sat 1pm-midnight. Closed Sun. With careful ordering, two courses with wine from €35.
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