Okay so you guys know I recently went to Coco Safar and loved it. Alongside the retro, classy atmosphere and unique microbrewery experience, the breakfast offerings were generous and flavorsome. I absolutely loved the combination of flavours as well as the quality of food! So when we were invited to try the new Coco Safar dinner menu, I was intrigued. This restaurant is known for their creativity, flair and adventurous nature when it comes to flavours- so I knew it was going to be an experience and a half!

READ MORE: Coco Safar is a slice of New York on our doorstep

Coco Safar (based in Sea Point) launched their new dinner menu in August. It’s a one-of-a-kind culinary experience which features a range of new signature dishes. The menu is Prix Fixe- for those of you wondering what the heck that means; it’s a set menu at a fixed price with a number of choices for each course.

Coco Safar Dinner Menu Options

The Prix Fixe dinner menu comes in two options. Either the two course (R395 per person) or the three course menu (R495 per person). We had the three course menu which includes two drinks per person, which can either be botanical mixology from their botanical micro-brewery or can be local wines.

The evening starts outside their restaurant at their separate bar with a botanical cocktail paired with a beautifully prepared amuse-bouche. The amuse-bouche was incredibly delicious and delicate; it was the perfect forecast of the quality and elegance of the meals to come.

The amuse bouche was served on top of the prettiest flower-filled glass. That’s something about Coco Safar that you will notice straight away – the impeccable attention to detail. Everything has the most incredible details!

Starters

The starters are all vegetarian options but don’t let that scare you, meat lovers! The options are so interesting and tasty, you won’t even notice the lack of meat. My husband is a “a meal needs meat” kind of guy but he LOVED his starter! For me, I love vegetarian dishes equally to meat dishes so this is no issue for me at all.

For my starter, I chose the Roasted Cauliflower. This is a roasted cauliflower steak with pecorino cheese, leek veloute, oat and olive crumble. They also have a variation of this dish that is completely vegan (I love how accommodating they are!). For my readers out there wondering what a veloute is, it is a savory sauce made from a roux and a light stock. It is actual one of the five ‘mother sauces’ of French cuisine. The veloute was actually one of my favorite components of the evening. It was so unbelievably soft and creamy!

Mains

The main course had a really wide variety of dishes and I was actually a little stuck on what to choose. There was a great variety between meat, fish and vegetarian options. Personally I absolutely love Thai food, so we decided to share the Thai Bass Curry and the Brisket between us.  The bass curry is a Thai style curry with lemongrass, ginger, broccoli, rice noodles and pan-friend fillet of sea bass. The skin of the fish was perfectly crispy and crackled in your mouth as you took a bit. The combination of different textures worked really well together, and the heat level of the curry was perfect! I love that this was served with rice noodles as well. I thought that the portion for the curry was perfectly adequate, and this dish was very warm on a winters evening.

The other main we shared was the Brisket. (One of the best things going with your partner- sharing the dishes!) The brisket is slow cooked and comes with caper pomme puree, braised cabbage, pea puree and pickled cucumber. Honestly I could have taken a takeaway of that brisket home it was so damn delicious! It was so tender, packed with flavours and worked so well with the accompaniments. We were both blown away by this dish and while I can highly recommend both mains – the brisket really takes the cake!

Desserts

For dessert there are two options- Botanical and Tropical. I went for Tropical! Something about the coconut flavors really stood out to me. Tropical is a coconut rice pudding with basil gel, pink pepper mango and passion puree, coconut mousse, lime and vanilla sorbet and topped with crispy rice. The crunch of the rice with the mango and passion puree was just sublime. I loved the coconut flavours in the rice pudding, especially when paired with the tart lime and vanilla sorbet. That dessert was truly a winner!

A surprise end to the evening

Just when we thought our Coco Safar journey was ending, we were informed that a surprise treat was still to come. We were told to head over to the coffee bar.  The surprise was a sweet one! It’ was a choice between different flavours of cakes which is coupled with a coffee from their capsule emporium. These capsules are actually bio-degradable to ensure minimal environmental impact! The coffee is actually poured into the bowl that holds the cake – so the cake soaks up the espresso goodness!

If you’d like to buy some coffee to take home, they sell the capsules separately too. They have a wide variety of flavours and different strength levels- to suit varying tastes. They even have rooibos capsules!

Thank you so much to Coco Safar for having us!  That concludes our superb food journey for the evening – we really had an incredible time. We thoroughly enjoyed our evening, each dish was made perfectly and the different flavors and combinations were a real treat. Until next time!