Element - moscow`s top entertaiment publications for expats
15 Ìàðòà 2010
During Moscow’s never-ending winter there have been many moments where the idea of climbing into a cocoon is quite tempting. Cocon Home has taken that desire to the extreme, creating a womb-themed restaurant to make guests feel nice and cozy.
PHOTO ALEXEI VASILYEV / TEXT ELIZABETH SCHOFIELD
It is hard to imagine that a restaurant with a concept based on a mother’s womb would or could be a success; in fact, if I hadn’t actually been to Cocon Home I wouldn’t believe it myself. But this is Moscow and sometimes you get a nice surprise. The entrance is an arched tunnel which draws you in to a restaurant with cocoon like nests. God knows what any psychologist would say about the decision to build a restaurant in such a way, but that is by the by.
The seats are clad in a tartan check that bears unfortunate similarity to the many examples of “Durberry” plaid that grace this city’s streets. However, these high backed seats and nest structures immediately make you feel sheltered, protected and at home. In fact this restaurant is more about feeling homey than returning to your foetal days. The wooden cocoons also catch and cradle noise, giving the restaurant a good atmosphere even when there are not too many people there, bringing you closer to your friends and creating a sense of cosiness.
Like the restaurant itself, the menu is inviting with dishes that are designed to make you want to eat them — no pompous foams and froths in this fair establishment. For starters, the waiter recommended the East-West Salad (490 rubles), which was a fresh spinach salad with grilled quail, sesame seeds and radish daikon. The radish gave this salad an unexpected and surprisingly lovely kick while the soy sauce and spinach worked well together. Quail isn’t something that would usually be paired with such Asian inspired ingredients, but the mixture of elements from the east and west created a nice fusion.
Even after such a delicious salad it was hard to be convinced that this restaurant could really be as good as it seemed. Our main dishes soon put these doubts to rest. My friend chose a veal medallion in a cream sauce with mashed potatoes and wild chanterelles (890 rubles) and I went for a duck breast marinated in raspberry vinegar and baked with pistachios under a plum-ginger sauce with pear (760 rubles). The veal was excellently cooked and was a nice twist to a traditional beef stroganoff recipe with the thick, meaty cream.
My duck had been cooked nothing short of perfectly; it was pink and tender and the pistachios made the texture much more interesting that I expected. I was a little disappointed by the raspberry vinegar, plum sauce and pear combination which, although delicious in it’s own right, was slightly over powering and masked the beautifully cooked meat.
After these hearty main courses we needed something to clean our palate and decided to share a panna cotta (390 rubles). This was quite far from a traditional recipe and more like a trio of yogurts with raspberry, mango and kiwi coulis making traffic lights on top. Not what we were expecting, but a refreshing dish that finished off the meal in a colourful way.
Although the concept feels somewhat like a Freudian slip gone wrong and you can’t help wondering about the owner’s relationship to his mother, Cocon Home is a friendly, comforting and cozy place to go with a group of friends. The restaurant also boasts a 150-seat open-air lounge area for the summer months and a downstairs bar for those not so cheery times. The owners have gone into painstaking detail to ensure that you feel at home at Cocon, so much so that you can mix your own cocktails from behind the bar if you so desire. The menu is made of things that you might make with friends at a dinner party, only here they are better cooked and you don’t have to do the washing up afterwards.