This reality may be a spin on TV but it's not really the reality

The meal at Nadav and Daniel's Coco Thai was not bad but also not good enough

Avi Efrati

16/06/2022

Thursday, 16 June 2022, 07:30 Updated: 07:33

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Coco Thai.

The Thai of Nadav and Daniel (Photo: Afik Gabay)

Tel Aviv's beach restaurant division is desperate to strengthen.

For years, a proper restaurant has not been able to open there.

And so, even though the big city holds a long and attractive beach, it is not certain that one can talk about one really good restaurant on its shores.

Every time a beach restaurant opens that promises something, a big bag of expectations and longings is worn on it.

It ends, for the most part, with tears or resounding closures.

The new Coco Tai was recently launched in the space where, five years ago, Omar Miller's Calypso opened, which opened with great fanfare but barely lasted one summer.

In the kitchen of the duo Nadav and Daniel, who were exposed to the nation in the first season of the winning kitchen MKR.

The duo, who activated pop-up deliveries during the corona and then operated in a kitchen in Dan Caesarea, serve in Coco Thai food stalls with Isani accents (i.e. from the northeastern region of Thailand).

The large restaurant has a closed and air-conditioned inner wing, an open wing and another wing on the sand line right.

It is difficult to compete with the attractiveness of the location.

How beautiful the beach of Tel Aviv is in the middle of the week in the evening, just before it gets blown up with the outbreak of the great freedom.

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Miang Kam Pele.

Impeccable performance (Photo: Afik Gabay)

We sat in the closed inner wing, which has something laid back and informal, one that was decided in advance to feel like a beach restaurant, as opposed to a meticulous restaurant.

The menu includes starters, snacks and mains, most of which are priced at relatively reasonable prices.

On the other hand, it later turned out that most of the dishes are not very large, so you have to order quite a few.

We started with starters:

(NIS 66) alongside

(NIS 12),

(NIS 72),

(NIS 48) and

(NIS 48), all for distribution.

Gang rum Kwan Pela is based on Antias in smoked curry with black cardamom, turmeric root and cashews - a dish with complexity, a slightly dark smoking touch that did not overshadow the fish and a considerable amount of spiciness.

The Karachai Gong Sud dish included raw crystal shrimp, karchai, cucumber, glengel, coriander, cashews and chili oil.

Another nice fish dish but this time much less complex, less spicy with noticeable greenness and a degree of freshness.

If the first of the two was really good, the second was "okay."

The Miang Kam Pela dish was a kind of opening snack, inside a lettuce leaf, in two units.

Inside the lettuce were chunks of crispy seafood, rice noodles, purple onion, cucumber, chili, greens and peanuts.

Two fresh and not challenging palate bites but performed flawlessly.

The som tam salad on the other hand - based on green papaya, beans, tomatoes, peanuts, horse fish, chili and lime - was one of the less successful ones I remember in the history of the genre.

If so far the level of performance has been handsome, with no fuss, this dish has suffered from careless execution, somewhat overlapping and the sauce did not hold the raw ingredients.

So the opening edge was not bad, nor quite uniform in its level.

The dishes dragged on to the positive pole overall and were not too large. The interim summary left hope for the future.

Uneven meal at its level.

Coco Thai (Photo: Afik Gabay)

Any Thai restaurant aimed at the general public and not necessarily sophisticated should have Pad Thai.

Any review of such a restaurant should refer to Pad Thai, just as any review of an Italian restaurant must go through one basic pasta - in tomato or pesto sauce.

Mainly because it is a dish that a large portion of diners in such a place will order.

So we ordered a

(78 shekels) on an intermediate course standard.

It had all the immediate suspects of the genre and it turned out to be lackluster and a rather dull and joy of life.

From the Pad Thai test came out, then, Nadav and Daniel quite bad.

We went for two main course dishes:

(98 shekels) and

(NIS 92).

For the first time there was a fillet of leek (one) wrapped in banana leaves, a sauce based on horse fish and palm sugar, greens and crispy garlic.

This was not a bad dish but it dragged more into the generics.

The fish was reasonably made, even if it did not retain all the required juiciness and the sauce resembled similar sauces, not bad in themselves, familiar from enough other places.

In the Masman Pela Mock dish, a charcoal-grilled calamari was promised in a curry with potatoes, onions, coriander and crispy shallots, alongside a salty roti.

Everything promised was present, only it is impossible to relate to this dish without talking about its proportions.

Instead of calamari curry we were given a dish in which the calamari was present in minimal doses, as a side note that did not affect the overall fabric of taste.

We felt the potatoes a lot more.

The curry itself lacks the degree of its complexity you expect from a quality and authentic curry.

Nothing would have happened if it had been at least a little more spicy.

disappointing.

Nadav and Daniel.

Their talent can not be doubted (Photo: Afik Gabay)

We finished off with

(58 shekels) the Coco Thai version of a banana Lotti that turned out to be a sweeping failure.

It had layers of cookie, banana cream and blond chocolate with pineapple and condensed milk.

It was a dessert that revealed a purely amateurishness, with a performance problem at all stages and flavors that did not connect to each other and lined with over-sweetness.

It was not a bad meal but it was also not a good enough meal.

She certainly was not uniform in her level.

There were sparks of ability in it, from which the basic talent of the couple could not be doubted.

Conceptually, there are tolerable corner circles to the mainstream, alongside a touch of over-genericism.

In terms of the point of view of the general public and not specializing in the intricacies of Isani Thai cuisine, these quiches are a must.

For the podium audience this will experience a little too many compromises.

Despite some not-so-bad dishes at all, it is evident that winning the winning kitchen and running pop-up deliveries during the corona are not the sufficient training and experience base for transporting and operating a large restaurant.

The chefs, it seems, need more experience to set up a really good restaurant of its kind.

So we did not win a proper beach restaurant.

Cocoa Thai currently has more potential than realization and is still more of a butterfly pupa.

Will you develop into more than that?

time will tell.

The potential exists but quite a bit of conceptual thinking is required.

Along with really good dishes, dishes that should not have been there at all also came to our table.

This reality may be a spin on TV but it's not really the reality.

invoice:

Gang rum Kwan Fela - 66

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