Restaurant: Cocoa Island

Location: Maldives. Tel +960 6641818 Fax +960 6641919 Email res@cocoaisland.como.bz

Date: March 16-22, 2012

Cuisine: International

Rating: ?

We head back to Cocoa Island (and its single restaurant) to cover the second meal of the day. If you missed the endless breakfast, find it here.

Here in paradise the view from the lunch table doesn’t suck. One could eat outside there too, but it was pretty hot, like 94 degrees and humid. The food, however, was anything but tepid. It’s highly varied and international with an Indian slant fitting the location.

Tuna carpaccio with arugala and olives. Like nearly everything at the restaurant this was impeccably fresh and tasty.

Caprese salad.

Salad with beets and mozzarella.

An amazing “squid salad” with light fresh squid and a zesty vinaigrette.

Caesar salad with anchovies and spec.

Raddiccio salad. As you can see, there are a few salad options!

This typical frozen mock-tail was amazing for those with a sweet tooth. Strawberry passionfruit!

Spider roll. Fried softshell crab roll.

Some dipping sauces and ginger. The left is soy, the right a spicy mayo.

California roll made with shrimp. I like the wasabi balls.

Grilled blue fin tuna and potatoes. Sort of deconstructed salad niscose. The tuna was again perfectly fresh.

Fried calamari. Crisp and succulent.

A lot of folk went for the burger which had a kind of curried caramelized onions on it and came with salad and fries.

Goan fish curry. Local “job fish” stewed in fresh curry with Naan (house baked) and bismati rice.

Nasi Goreng. A kind of Indonesian fried rice with egg, chicken satay, mixed seafood, cucumbers, and a spicy peanut sauce. Not light, but it sure was good!

Chicken Tikka Masala. Also awesome.

We caught some local fish and they grilled them up.

And steamed some with ginger, garlic, and scallions.

Even this ugly barracuda.

And made these into fresh fish curry!

The bread was great too.

And the fries.

Plus one, day, I ordered this passionfruit semifreddo which was superb.

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, dinner, desserts, and baking!).

For more dining reviews click here.