Restaurant: Cocoa Island
Location: Maldives. Tel +960 6641818 Fax +960 6641919 Email res@cocoaisland.como.bz
Date: March 16-22, 2012
Cuisine: International
Rating: International Flair
We head back to Cocoa Island (and its single restaurant) to cover the last meal of the day. If you missed the endless breakfast, find it here or the spectacular Languorous Lunch.
Usually we ate on the beach. Even at night the temperature hovered around 80.
This is our jumbo long table.
For dinner, the restaurant has two common configurations. Seafood BBQ and ala carte. The BBQ isn’t available every night but the menu is.
The BBQ consists of a number of stations plus the above grilling station. You can order up as much of whatever variety of sea creatures you can stomach.
There is also a “salad” table.
This includes basic sushi. The variety might not be up to LA sushi standards, but the quality of the fish was very high.
Oysters on the half shell.
Various oyster sauces and little shooters of ceviche.
Crab shooters.
A seafood salad.
Papaya and mussel salad.
Another seafood salad. In general these were very light.
Broccoli and almonds.
Potatos.
Grilled vegetables.
Greek salad.
A grain salad.
Raddichio salad.
Classic prosciutto and melon — and this in a country that is supposed to have no ham.
Cheese and fruit.
Crackers.
Then we come back to the seafood grill. There are fish, lobsters, big prawns, tuna slabs, etc.
Any of them could be grilled up on command served with various sauces.
Then there was the regular menu.
This was a gazpacho.
Served with avocado.
“Cold smoked yellowfin tuna, oyster cream, apple & mint.” Lovely presentation.
“Duck liver parfait, spiced oranges & toasted brioche.” This was as good as any chicken liver I’ve had. Yum.
They had lovely breads here, particularly the naan.
“Black ink noodles with sautéed squid, chorizo & chili ink sauce.” Good stuff!
“Roast tomato, buffalo mozzarella & basil risotto with lemon & shaved fennel.”
“Baby chicken Biriyani with mint raita, tomato & red onion salad.” Chicken pot pie, Indian style. Inside, under the crust, was a a mixture of rice and chicken. It was pretty delicious.
“Basil oil poached snapper, bean, olive, caper, lemon & dill salsa with Jerusalem artichokes.”
The dessert menu.
This is actually a kind of flan with spiced pears and a homemade ice cream. It was darn good.
Homemade ice cream, always good.
One of us wanted some whipped creme, so they whipped it up to order.
It’s pretty amazing that a restaurant can do this breath of styles with such excellent execution, but they did. Everything I had was great, and the same 2-3 guys in the kitchen did it all (even the breakfast, lunch, desserts, and baking!).
For more dining reviews click here.
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