On our trip last weekend, Carolyn and I were stuck — I believe that is an accurate way to put it — dining at a Coco's Restaurant and Bakery. That was the only late night option in an area where every other place to eat was either closed or (worse) Carl's Jr. I've eaten at Coco's — in fact, at that Coco's — before and while I never thought it was great, I didn't think it was as bad as what we experienced Sunday night.
Carolyn started with a cup of vegetable soup. She took a sip and sneezed. She took another sip and sneezed. She took a third sip and sneezed. By that point, the pattern was clear: Something in there was making her sneeze. She exchanged it for a cup of their Chicken Tortilla Soup without the tortilla chips and it was the kind of thing you only eat when you're as hungry as she was. Even then, she only got through about a third of it. Her entree was a piece of broiled fish that came with unannounced breading and variable levels of defrosting. Portions were overcooked. Portions were near-frozen. At one point, she turned to me and asked, "Should the tartar sauce be bubbling like that?"
I ordered a cup of tomato bisque soup, a top sirloin steak and mashed potatoes. My soup, to be fair, was okay. Not great but okay. The steak, I think I recognized. In the early eighties, a Sizzler Restaurant in Santa Monica burned down and I believe someone fished this particular steak out of the ashes and had it laminated and preserved so it could be popped into a microwave for fifteen seconds and served to me in a Coco's on Sunday evening. I'd ordered it cooked medium rare but I'd foolishly neglected to specify a decade. Which brings us to the mashed potatoes.
I know I've said this before here but I don't know why there is such a thing as bad mashed potatoes. Several companies make instant mixes where you boil water and sometimes butter and/or milk, then you mix these little flakes in and stir…and voila! Mashed potatoes. They're not great mashed potatoes, mind you, but they're edible and a child of twelve can make them.
That should be the minimum standard. A place that calls itself a restaurant should be able to improve upon that. If they can't, they should just make that.
I am not a great cook. I am to recipes what Sarah Palin is to facts. There's something really, really wrong with a dining establishment that can't cook better than I do.
I'm not sure if the mashed potatoes at Coco's came from a mix but I think not. I think actual potatoes were involved, though perhaps not cooked 'n' mashed on the premises. I also suspect that whatever was done to them and wherever it was done, it was not on the same day or even in the same month they were served to me. They could have been from that Sizzler in Santa Monica.
The server was a cheery lady and when she asked how everything was, I couldn't bring myself to tell her. What was wrong seemed beyond her ability to rectify. I didn't see the point of saying to her, "No, could you arrange for a much better restaurant to be built in this area? And make sure it's open late." I did think of sending her over to the Carl's Jr. for a to-go order for us but that might have been rude. It also would not have been an improvement.
Coco's is famous for their pies and they did look good. If I ate that kind of thing, a slice might have possibly redeemed the meal a little. When she asked us if we were interested in pie, I came very close to perusing the menu and asking her, "Hmm…which kind would you recommend for throwing in the chef's face?"