Lunch

Today being the last day of my extended birthday, we went out to lunch. Lunch was pleasant: we went to Coco’s in South Perth, with M’s parents, J and W. There’s something very enjoyable about being surrounded by office workers on a working lunch when you know you have nothing to do but enjoy your meal, and the afternoon. Neither M nor I had ever been to Coco’s before. It’s one of those Perth restaurants that has had a bit of a reputation for being a ‘good restaurant’ but I’m not sure if it’s been resting on those laurels a bit for some years now.

The service was good, although one of the waiters who served us couldn’t seem to put a plate on the table without a bit of a bang. They did however make sure our glasses of water were regularly topped up, which always gains points in my book.

Certainly the food* was nothing amazing, although it was done well and nicely presented. The Turkish bread we had as our entree was nicely warm and the olive oil accompanying it was beautiful – very fruity. I had Tasmanian salmon on mashed potato, and two oysters kilpatrick. I can’t think of a thing to write about the salmon (I can’t even remember what the sauce was, apart from the fact that it was green!), but the mash was creamy. The oysters were a bit overdone, and quite overwhelmed by the bacon.

M had the char sui (sic) chicken, which he enjoyed, but the sauce was very rich and I think the meal, which was served with a medley of veg including bean sprouts and slivers of capsicum, could have been improved by the addition of some carbohydrates, like rice. He had a side dish of broccoli with an almond butter; I wasn’t impressed by the price tag – $7.50 for around 6 florets?!

J had an unusual asparagus, hazelnut and avocado salad with raspberry sauce – she didn’t like it very much because she was expecting warm asparagus, but the whole dish was cold. W had smoked salmon which he did enjoy. The salmon was billed as Fresh Mohr Smoked Tasmanian Salmon, which I assume means it came from that Sydney fish institution, Mohr Fish. (Cherry, I still remember eating in that tiny whole in the wall restaurant and loving every bite of the amazingly fresh and flavoursome fish. How many years ago was that?)

After the meal we enjoyed a cheese platter. This was quite good because none of the cheeses (blue, camembert, cheddar and a softish cheddarlike one) had that just-out-of-the-fridge feel and taste, and the quince jelly they served instead of the usual dried fruit was very tasty and complemented the cheeses very nicely. I do like a good cheese platter.

I didn’t mean to go on and on about lunch – and this for a lunch that wasn’t that spectacular in terms of flavours – so I will leave my tale about our excursion to the Perth Zoo, where we went to walk off lunch! – for the next post. I had a great afternoon.

*Note that the online menu is not an accurate listing of the actual menu that we had today. It’s sad that they haven’t bothered to keep it current.

Categories: food, review, Perth, Western Australia