Coconut Lagoon lunch, Local Beers

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Good morning,

I have an amusing story to share with respect to last week's review of Cô Ơi.  One of our thoughtful readers wrote to me with a correction. It turns out I had used an accent on the second O in the name when I should have used an apostrophe.

Apparently spelling the word Ơi the way I had, gives it the meaning puking in Vietnamese and that’s the furthest thing from this restaurant experience. Thank you to our reader Trâm for putting me right.

Now let’s head to Ottawa’s north-east end for lunch and a few brews.

Ralf Joneikies, food and drink editor. [email protected]

INDIAN

Affordable? Gourmet? Lunch? Coconut Lagoon delivers on all three

Coconut Lagoon is one of our city’s finer dining establishments and we’ve come to expect a high level of cooking from their kitchen. 

Before fire destroyed the old Coconut Lagoon, it offered not only dinner service but a lunch buffet that was well attended by regulars. I don’t recall a lunchtime when the room wasn’t packed.

After a period of reconstruction, Coconut Lagoon relaunched with a new menu and style of dinner service. It was a little more elevated, which took the business into the realm of fine dinin,g but with service that was never stuffy and always gracious. 

People did however, miss the affordability of the buffet and the opportunity to occasionally see old familiar faces.

Now their lunch service is back, so what do I think of it?

The lunch may no longer take the form of a buffet but at $27 for three courses, Coconut Lagoon leads as an example for the city’s restaurants that a value-priced lunch is possible and that people will once again go out for an afternoon repast.

For the price, you will receive a starter soup, a main course and a dessert and yes, the cooking is as fine as you’ve come to expect.

On this day, I was served a very nice and gently seasoned butternut squash soup, a dish entirely appropriate for this time of year. 

It was, of course, sumptuously silky with a tease of an accumulating spiciness that never defeated the palate. Luscious and lovely. The assortment of accompanying pappadams was a delicious bonus.

The main course consisted of six different and smaller dishes involving meat, seafood and plenty of vegetables. If you prefer, you can of course ask for an entirely vegetarian version. All of it was pretty special and came with a fluffy and fabulously prepared basmati rice. 

I appreciated that the veggie samosa, drizzled with tamarind, had been made with a wheat spring roll wrapper rather than the traditional, thick, oil-soaked dough. The filling of assorted vegetables was soft and almost creamy.

The prawns came in a sweet tangy curry of mango and coconut and had been properly poached to tenderness rather than rubber. The effect was one of lightness.

Chicken too arrived tender in a masala curry that had been given a twist by using a roasted coconut base. 

If you ever decide that you may want to change your diet to a vegetarian one, you can do no better than getting your training wheels at Coconut Lagoon. 

The eggplant side was supremely creamy with a mild smoky note and a natural sweetness that had developed through the cooking. The lentil dal, a favourite of mine, was as delicious as ever and deep and nutty with lovingly caramelized onions dressing the top.

The biggest flavour came from the coarsely ground lamb and I’m going to search Joe’s two cookbooks (My Thali and Coconut Lagoon) for the recipe. It was a memorable bite that worked so well with the warm, freshly made roti bread that had been kept warm in its own blanket.

To finish, I was served a small pot of rice pudding crowned with fresh berries and a tangy mango coulis. As manager Saji Kumaran told me, it had been made using rice flakes and this gave the pudding a more creamy density. It would have been difficult to imagine how I could have enjoyed it more.

We can go on at length talking about how fine the food is at Coconut Lagoon and it’s certainly right to do so. What sometimes gets less attention is the service and the reason for that is because it’s so good. So good that we unconsciously understand that this is what service should always be. Everywhere.

Yet it seldom is. Except, in my experience, at Coconut Lagoon. There is a warm, graciousness and civility to the dining experience that is as welcome as a gentle guiding hand. In the hands of Saji Kumaran and his team you are well fed but also nurtured in some ineffable way. 

And that friends, is some way to finish a meal.

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BREWERY

Original Local Beer is becoming a local favourite

There’s no denying the success of Western Canadian restaurant chains like Joey’s, Craft Beer Market, Milestones and Local. They’re also the chief tenants of what Ottawans still fondly refer to as Lansdowne Park. 

Since my return to Ottawa and the start of Capital Eats, I’ve often heard restaurant servers tell me that their “house brew” is made by Local Beers at 411 St.Laurent Blvd. That left me a little confused. A Vancouver-based restaurant chain making beer in Ottawa?

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one and this Ottawa based brewery added “Original” to the name to distinguish itself from the Vancouver-based restaurant.

I recently had one of their Belgian wheat beers (Blue Crescent) at the very good Cô Ơi, a brew with aromatics that paired nicely with Vietnamese food.

Naturally I headed down to the brewery and met with one of the three co-owners Aaron Rothney. Aaron is a partner in the business and moonlights as a bartender at one of my favourite pizza places in the city: Pizza Nerds.

Original Local took over the Good Prospects Brewery, a business that was never able to establish roots. Now they have a number of events to get people in their doors throughout the week and this includes Monday Night Trivia.

The beer at Original Local is well-made with characteristics of the styles named on the labels. Blue Crescent, for example, is a refreshing Belgian wheat beer that combines orange and coriander flavours. It was also the beer that brought me to Local.

The California IPA was a treat to for my palate that is wary of West Coast IPAs. It was a harmonious mix of both West Coast and New England style IPA. Not overly bitter but neither overly juicy, it had an almost appetizing salinity and creaminess. Nicely done.

Their Original Lager continues to be the top seller, followed by the California IPA. If you’re on site and you enjoy stronger beer, grab a glass of Obsidian Circle stout. It’s dry, with roasted coffee and chocolate notes and a respectable nine percent alcohol. In this weather, it’ll warm your core.

A note to consumers that their 500 ml bottled brews are a little precious in pricing running considerably higher than their canned counterparts.

Local also offers classic beer-friendly foods such as pogos, popcorn, fries, wings and melt sandwiches. For the health-conscious there are salads and soup as well.

There’s good beer here in a business run by people interested in building community. Folks from nearby Manor Park appreciate not just the brews but the opportunity to get together for bingo on Friday nights and to share news about their neighbourhood. 

We just need much more of this in Ottawa.

Quick bites

• Social media has become indispensable for so many businesses that it was devastating when Meta suspended a local restaurateur's FaceBook and Instagram accounts. [CBC]

• Ottawa can expect to see a surge of new hotels being built in the years to come according to experts. [CTV]

• Healthy eating costs the average family of four in Ottawa almost $1,200 a month. That means a crisis is brewing. [City News]

• Here is an eye-opening take on the Dubai Chocolate phenomenon from the excellent journalism outfit Current Affairs. [YouTube]

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