Coco Louco Restaurant in St. Louis: A Review

Now that I have discovered N. Euclid Ave in St. Louis, I can't stop going there. It even reminds me of Montreal a little in spite of being as empty as the rest of the city. And that's the highest compliment I can pay to a city. So yesterday we went to a Brazilian restaurant called Coco Louco. In the reviews I read before going there, people almost unanimously agreed that the food there was fantastic while the service was abysmal. In my experience, however, the food at Coco Louco could be a lot better while service was impeccable. (It's not like I'm doing this on purpose, people, but I never manage to agree with the popular opinion on anything.)

As you can see, the restaurant was pretty empty.
It was a Sunday, of course, but I
find it impossible to believe that there are
people in this city any day of the week

Our waiter's name was Benya and he turned out to be a Russian-speaker. That's one of the things I love about this country. You go to a Brazilian restaurant in the Midwest and get served by a Russian-speaking waiter. How cool is that?

As for the food, one thing that I can recommend highly is the appetizer plate for $14. Here it is:

The appetizer plate contains these great meat and cheese filled pastries that are called "pastel." The best kind is the beef pastel. It as so good that we ordered several extra ones to take home with us. As for the main courses, I wouldn't say that the ones we tried are really worth the price. I had the red snapper that you can see on the picture here:

It is quite good but it really didn't feel like it was worth the $27 the restaurant charges for it. 

Then, there was espeto mixto wihich is different kinds of meat grilled on a skewer. Brazilian cuisine is almost as famous for its meat as the Argentinean, but this meat was quite a disappointment. It was simply mediocre and unworthy of the famed name of Brazilian meat. You can see the skewer with some remnants of the espeto mixto on the picture here:

The dessert was really good. It's a mango mousse and we got it on the house. Here it is:

Overall, we had a splendid time because we always enjoy discovering new restaurants. The food, however, didn't really do justice to the great Brazilian cuisine. If the weather is nice next weekend, we will probably go back to St. Louis, and I will share with you a review of an Indian restaurant they have on N. Euclid.

Lunella Ristorante in New York: A Review

If you've never been to Lunella Ristorante in New York's Little Italy, consider yourself truly blessed. That restaurant is a complete disaster. The food it serves is not really Italian. It might have stood on the same shelf in the refrigerator with real Italian food but that's as close as it ever got to anything Italian. The service is abysmally poor.

I ordered seafood risotto. Ordering risotto is the best way to figure out if a restaurant is worth visiting again. I have ordered all kinds of risotto at a variety of restaurants across the continent. Some are good, some are bad, some are indifferent. Lunella's risotto, however, is not a risotto at all. It's rice with seafood. It isn't a bad plate of rice, mind you, but it should not be called risotto when that isn't what it is.

Now, I wouldn't bitch about a plate of food that was far from spectacular if that were the only thing that's wrong with Lunella. However, the service at that place was so horrible that I still feel traumatized. When we received the handwritten bill that wasn't easy at all to decipher, we discovered that a 22% tip had already been included. This is a very strange practice that we hadn't been warned about at any point during the bill. Many people pay the restaurant bill without reading it in detail (especially a handwritten bill that is difficult to understand). Just imagine how many people just paid the amount requested and then left a tip on top of that.

When we asked the waiter why the restaurant was doing this, he became extremely aggressive. First, he insisted that this was a common practice in New York, which is a patent lie. Then, when we disagreed (very politely, I might add), he screeched, "I don't give a fuck!" and threw the bill at us. This wasn't a matter of money for us because we were going to leave a good tip initially but such attitude was simply shocking. The manager came up and refused to acknowledge that the conduct of the waiter who yells profanity at polite customers might not have been entirely appropriate. The waiter, in the meanwhile, was lurking in the background, banging food trays, and showing his discontent in every imaginable way. Since I left my country 12,5 years ago, I haven't witnessed such naked and unjustified displays of aggression  from complete strangers. Even the criminal who mugged me several years ago was less scary than this waiter. Which is not that surprising, given that he is, in all probability, a compatriot of mine.

So my advice: whatever you do, avoid the horrible Lunella restaurant in New York at all costs.

Midwestern Eating Habits

So yesterday we went to celebrate the first day of classes at this really nice restaurant here in town. The food was great and the service was good, albeit way too friendly for my liking, as is common here in the Midwest.

The only thing that was very weird to me is that at 9:30 we were practically pushed out of the restaurant, even though we kept ordering expensive drinks. This is one of the Midwestern habits that people from Europe find very hard to adapt themselves to. You are supposed to have dinner at surprisingly early hours, and just when the fun is supposed to begin, you are asked to clear out. My friends from Spain who normally dine at 11 pm always suffer greatly because of this strange habit.

One of the hardships of existence in small American towns is that they practically die out at sundown. This is why life feels so tedious and gloomy in small-town America.

Complexity of Presentation

My recent visit to Essence restaurant in downtown Montreal reminded me of an important maxim: the fussier the pressentation, the poorer the content.

This restaurant serves food on some of the most inventive plates I have ever seen. They come in the weirdest, most unexpected shapes and sizes. Arranging them on the table without knocking anything down takes some effort. The food, however, is bland, tasteless, and a bit stale.

The same happens with conference presentations. In literary criticism, the best presentation is one that needs nothing but words to bring across the point. Words are what we analyze, so we should dominate this medium pretty well. The presenters who rely on handouts, slides, powerpoint presentations and other extras, usually have very little substance to their talks. Since they don't have any real information to convey, they use these supplemental materials to hide the vacuity of their presentations.