Review of Cote, restaurant in Blackheath, SE3

This Review was first published in the February edition of The Greenwich Visitor

Is it true that I turned up to Cote in a Breton t-shirt and a beret?

I’m sorry, it is true. I really did. It wasn’t deliberate. If it had been deliberate I would have cycled there. With onions.

And I’ve never done it at Cafe Rouge.

I think.

Cote has one of those confused service restaurants where you get waiters queuing up for your table to serve you, and not noticing that you just asked the first waiter in the queue to leave you a bit more time to think. Maybe they thought I was French and deserved more service. (I’m sure there is a logic there somewhere.)

As is typical in restaurants which over-serve, they then deserted us when we put the menus down.

I ordered steak and chips. When I order steak and chips (with no spiel about the source of the cow) there is part of me that thinks, I won’t be able to blog about this place, then. Because there is not so very to say on the subject unless there is a mistranslation on how rare the streak should arrive. And even that’s not infrequent. (Note able evasion of pun).

(This is with the exception of steak and chips at Buenos Aires … With chimcurri sauce)

This was mostly true at Cote. But take a look at this, and tell me the first thing that comes to mind…

Steak and Chips and nothing else

Yep, me too. Could they have served a little rocket with it? Or tomato? Or you know what, gone and pulled dandelion leaves out of the garden? Radishes? Plantain?

It was a lovely steak and chips, it really was. I couldn’t tell you why but the associated butter swam brilliantly on top and coated every chip that came near, but when you eat a lot of something lovely you kind of want something to cleanse the palate so that you an experience the lovely taste all over again. This felt like unremitting buttery beef chip mash eating exercise. Good buttery beef chip mash, but definitely unremitting.

Dessert was pleasant, although it felt a little ‘on the cheap,’ iced berries in white chocolate sauce. Iced meant frozen- but were sufficiently tart to offset the copious amounts of warm sweet white chocolate sauce. It was properly white chocolate sauce too- not just unfinished meringue.

Iced Berries- Cote’s £10 menu

I should tell you that we were on the 2 courses for £10 menu here and there were some items on both the specials menu and the a la carte that looked extremely appetising.

I ordered a coffee noisette with dessert. Have you had one if these before? Apparently they are very French, and feature a lot of expresso, with a little single cream floating on top. This made for a nice twist on a machiato (if you ignore the failed promise of praline in the word ‘noisette’). It was way waaaay bitter coffee in the slightly addictive sense of the word.

Cafe Noissette

As we left, we may have received enlightenment as to the target audience of the steak frites- as a seven year old was heard to exclaim in the face of it ‘that’s amazing,’

There’s nothing like removing the vegetables for a truly gratifying kid-meal.

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