Forty quid doesn’t get you much these days. Five pints and the right to stand outside The Devonshire. One and a half Domino’s pizzas. Half a tank of petrol and/or half an hour in an Uber. Sandwich, crisps, and a drink at Euston Station. Tom Kerridge’s fish and chips. A Deliveroo for one along with the general warmth of knowing the restaurant will see almost two-thirds of that. Right now forty quid feels like the kind of sum we forget we’ve spent on the day, wilfully pissing it into the air on public transport, coffee, and a couple of pints to finish. So when the guys sitting next to us at lunch suggest that The Cocochine suckers you in with their forty quid lunch, we agree wholeheartedly. We are here purely for that forty quid lunch. Forty quid in a plush Mayfair restaurant doesn’t happen very often. It feels like a bygone era.
So now I’m going to explain how the three of us spent a lot more than that in the quite gorgeous four story Mayfair town house. First there is water, followed by the iPad wine list that we may have just turned off when we went downstairs and selected the £145 burgundy. Back to the seats we get a comté gourgère that has good cheese flavour but is a little heavy, followed by a dense and salty onion and pandan brioche (£3) that immediately answers the question of why this restaurant doesn’t have a Michelin star at this point. Sophie and I both get the lobster and prawn raviolo covered in a surf of lemongrass and lime sauce. We liked it; the pasta could have been more delicate, but the filling is well handled and the foamy sauce has more than enough acidity to cut through the richness. Lizzie has the burrata with tomatoes so that she can send the picture to a burrata WhatsApp group. She struggles to locate said burrata. This is why she never gets invited anywhere.
The girls (can I lumber them together like that anymore without recourse?!) both get trout with lobster vinaigrette, with a fennel and orange salad. It’s a tiny thing that packs a punch, with a portion that would sit somewhere between three and four on a big tasting menu instead of a main course at lunch. Coming in at four or five on the same tasting menu is my small square of lamb shoulder, beautifully and softly cooked so that the fat wobbles and the meat blushes, with a tomato concasse and a lamb jus spiked with more tomato. There is flavour here, but also the realisation that without the chips and the jersey royals at a tenner each that this simply isn’t enough food.
This theory is confirmed by the scoop of soft things we each get as dessert. Sophie and Liz both get the mango sorbet with chilli and a little fresh mango salad, whilst I get a vanilla ice cream with jaggery caramel. Good, but surely developments in the pastry department are required if this restaurant is going to get the star it so desperately craves. Our bill is over three hundred and is mostly a present from Lizzie to my wife. I’m not sure they succeeded in hooking us in for that more substantial return visit. Afterwards we head to The Devonshire, then Termini, The French House, and Cato, proving that in this part of the capital forty quid gets you very little.
6/10
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