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Coco Cha Cha
RIP: Date 08/03/03
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| Chi Chi Cha Cha | In memoriam: Jacques & Girrard | |
| Once upon a time,
before the days of the World Wide Web, pervasive cellphones, and laptop
computers, and well before nouvelle Continental restaurants began their
proliferation in the Twin Cities, there was a place in St. Louis Park
called Cocolezzone. I first ate there in 1985; I believe that was
soon after it had opened. I was close to finishing up graduate school
and had come to Minneapolis for a job interview. My host picked Coco
for lunch, and the selection helped seal the deal.
But Cocolezzone was ahead of its time. The opulent modern interior and Italian fare that no Italian mom ever cooked were novelties that Twin Citizens just weren’t prepared for. I can’t recall how long the restaurant managed to stay afloat, but for all its critical success and its patronage by the (small) trendy local set those days it’s still cited around town as an example of the financial disaster that can befall the overreaching restaurateur—one who puts her or his vision above a business plan. We’ve come a long way. These days it seems a new chic Italian restaurant is opening every few months, and business plans are no longer being neglected. In fact, the model seems to be that you open up one place and as soon as it’s moderately successful you open up another, and so on. The owners of D’Amico Cucina, Giorgio’s, Ciao Bella, Prima are now all owners of other establishments as well. The Lunch went to Coco Cha Cha this week, a restaurant in the same space as the old Cocolezzone and brought to us by the Ciao Bella clan (there’s also some overlap between Cha Cha’s owners [investors?] and the original Coco’s). You may wonder, as I do, if the Twin Cities really needs another chi chi Italian place. So it’s a tried and true formula, but can’t we get something different for a change? It was so much more refreshing to see Vincent open up last year, bringing inventive French food to our area rather than following in the footsteps of the trattoria, pasta bar, cucina, etc. crowd. Not that any of the new Italian places are cookie cutter replicas of their owners’ previous establishments. Today’s well-heeled diners are too sophisticated for that, and hence so are the foodies-turned-businesspeople catering to them. In the case of Cha Cha, the décor is quite unique. It’s partly held over from the previous manifestation of the location. The overall layout of a main large dining area and three adjacent separate rooms is unchanged, although one of the side rooms has now been turned into a rather inviting waiting area complete with fireplace. The east wall still has a bench running its length. The marble on the floor appears to be the same as before, although my memory is a bit rusty on that score. But if you glance upward it’s all about a whimsicality that’s entirely contemporary. Large, conical art glass light fixtures with swirls attached to them drop down from the ceiling, and the walls have multimedia evocations of faces via other light fixtures and metal sheets with cutouts. Various artifacts resemble eyes and lips and noses and ears, so that you may think you’re in a Cubist nightmare. The art is a little more representational on the full-length glass panels that separate the main dining room from one of the side rooms: the figures are more readily recognizable as dancers, though whether they’re doing the cha-cha or something else I couldn’t say. The lunch menu is a single long sheet. One side, labeled "Tapagini," lists appetizers, salads, side vegetables, and pizzas. The other side, "O’ Solo Mio," has pastas and seafood and meat entrées. The total item count is over 50, the majority being on the Tapagini side. In fact, the meat and seafood entrée choices are rather limited, the former consisting of two beef tenderloin and two chicken breast preparations plus a pork dish that seemed the most interesting of the lot: "Sautéed pork tenderloin medallions topped with Gorgonzola Dolce cheese, served over Port wine sauce with whipped yams" (the menu’s caps, not mine). The wine list is extensive too, with a dozen reds by the glass and 8 whites. Most of the wines are from Italy, with some U.S. and Spain representation (a Spanish touch is evident in both the design and the offerings). The reds included two Amarones. I ordered one of them, a Farina ($9.50). It wasn’t as dense and raisiny as higher end Amarones, but a good choice for lunch. B and I split an appetizer, the "Fichi e Prosciuttini." Quoting from the menu again, this consisted of "Warm caramelized fig compote, duck prosciutto, mushroom and truffle paté, Fuji apples and Balsamic glaze over ciabatta bread croutons." A lot going on in one plate, and the paté had the texture of a dip, but it was reasonably good. Particularly notable were the bread and the aromatic apple slices—an assessment that’s perhaps a bit of a backhanded compliment? For my entrée, I debated between two pizzas, the Marbella, a Spanish version of pepperoni and cheese, with imported chorizo, Garrotxa cheese, and mozzarella, and the Capricciosa, which included Cotto ham, Gaeta black olives, mushrooms, and baby roasted artichokes. I went with the Marbella—on inquiring from our waitperson, it tuned out that the Capricciosa had each of the four ingredients on separate quarters of the pie, an arrangement that somehow didn’t seem that appealing. My verdict on my pizza: competent but not spectacular. The thin crust was nicely browned but no competition for Chets Taverna’s. The chorizo was in small round slices, each about half the diameter of a pepperoni slice on the typical pizza, and moderately spicy. "Competent but not spectacular" sums up my view of the restaurant as well. By the standards of what the Twin Cities has to offer today, Cha Cha is not notably adventurous or even different. If I seem a bit churlish (competency is hardly a failing, the reader might assert) it may be because I’m writing this on my laptop in Grenoble, having just returned from a restaurant about 20 minutes outside the city. It was competent but not spectacular either, but then it was just a country place with no pretensions (the nearby rumored-to-be spectacular place my colleagues and I had intended to go to was closed). If you’re trying to make a splash—just as Coco did so successfully (at least so many people have fond memories of it and of the sense of excitement it brought to the local dining scene) and as Cha Cha is attempting to do—you have to stand out from the crowd. A |
There is no
escape from hell and there is almost no escaping Eden Prairie. Every
road is congested, people sit on access-ramps, merge furiously into its
highways and no quarter is given or expected. This is a case of nothing
succeeding like excess (or was it success!) and Eden Prairie is all
excess with little thought for civic planning. The motto of the city
might well be: "Why would you want to go anywhere else? And if you
do we’re going to make it darn impossible!" And going somewhere
else is precisely what I was trying to do on a rainy, cold Friday. My
destination, and the restaurant for The Lunch this week, is the new
Italian restaurant, Coco Cha Cha in Golden Valley.
I started by going north on 169 and east on 62 to try and reach 100. Big mistake -- 62 backed up to kingdom come. Doubled back on 62 to resume northern course on 169. Traffic snarled. Started going east on Highway 7, hoping to resume a northerly direction on 100. No dice, 100 backed up. Stayed on 7 to France to Wayzata blvd. and you get the picture of my crab-like passage. All the while I was listening to Science Friday on NPR. The subject was diet and cardiovascular health. Doctors with competing theories and research doing their best to sound like guests on a Jerry Springer Show: carbohydrates vs. fats; vegetarian diet to reverse heart disease, etc.. Not the best topic for a self-professed gourmand with borderline cholesterol levels on his way to a rich Italian meal. I was late and A was already seated with a glass of Farina Amarone perusing the menu. The restaurant is located in the spot formerly (ten years ago, possibly more) occupied by Cocolezzone (more about that later). The layout is still reminiscent of the prior tenant: marble – reputedly imported from Italy – floors and Roman style (fake) pillars. But today the décor takes a more Latin American twist or should one say Cha Cha Cha! There is a dance motif to the place and hence – I suspect – the name. The walls are decorated with artwork that reminds one of large masks. The dining area is open with a huge fireplace, all in all a very pleasant spot. We were lunching late (1:30 PM) but there was still a reasonable crowd. The menu is extensive divided into two sections: O’ solo mio, the entrées, described by our very helpful waitress as being for the larger appetite. The flip side of the menu is labeled Tapagini and consists of lighter fare. The appetizers are excellent with a great variety. Zuppetta di funghi: mushroom soup (reputedly Mussolini’s favorite); Tortelli Calypso: spicy black bean fritters with chile habenero (can’t see that being big in Rome); Cocktail Sanchez: lobster, shrimp, octopus and sweet peppers; and another ten more that I am not listing here. There is also a wide selection of salads and pizzas. The main entrées are a little more mainstream, divided into pasta, seafood and meat dishes. There are eight pasta dishes varying from spaghetti alla napoletana , your basic spaghetti, to linguine alla nizzarda, a combination of Italian tuna, capers, olives and garlic. The wine list has offerings from Italy, Spain and the United States. There are twelve reds by the glass and eight whites. The list has sublime wines like Acinum Amarone ($12.50/glass) to a mediocre Beringer White Zinfandel ($5.25/glass). I ordered a glass of the Tommasi Valpolicella red, a deliciously fruity wine smelling of black currants. We shared the fichi e prosciuttini appetizer. This is a remarkable dish, consisting of warmed caramelized fig compote, duck prosciutto, mushroom and truffle pate, Fuji apples, and balsamic glaze over ciabatta bread croutons. So many competing tastes but they work well together. The pate eaten with the bread was excellent. For my main dish I ordered the fish special, which on this day was a halibut served on mango sauce (mango sauce in an Italian restaurant! What would Silvio Berlusconi say?). The fish was cooked to perfection, if somewhat bland. The mango sauce albeit interesting didn’t give it the zest I’d hoped for. A had the Marbella pizza and I tried a slice. The pizza was tasty and remarkably free of grease considering the contents: Spanish chorizo and Garrotxa cheese. The service was good and our waitress was most attentive. We rounded our meals off with cups of espresso. The final bill came to $54.00. Before I finish I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my earlier forays in to what was then Cocolezzone, the neighboring American Café and Ruperts night club. These places represented what was the best and worst of the decade (80s) that we’d all like to forget. I was a young and single lad then, recently moved here from Texas. I used to come here frequently with another friend of mine and we used to go by the name of Jacques & Girrad – two (fictitious) French men, dressed like Robert Palmer. We made up wild stories to meet women. Sometimes we were visiting RFI (Radio France International) journalists, other times my friend would pretend to be a deserter from the Swedish army (why Sweden!), and yes in hindsight it’s pretty pathetic but the memory can still make me smile. B
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