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Bistrot Le Coucou: begrudgingly delicious

By Joseph L. Garcia, Senior Reporter

WE’RE NOT placed so high up in the world to immediately take expensive things at face value: we’re not too shy to dunk on an expensive restaurant now and then. We were very, very prepared to dunk on Bistrot Le Coucou, the latest offering from the Nikkei Group, but as we sipped on their excellent martini and munched on their steak during their Feb. 12 opening, we were begrudgingly sold.

A popular legend since dismissed by linguists was that during the Battle of Paris in 1814, Russian occupiers shouted “Bistro!” (“quickly,” in a Russian transliteration) to their waiters. Other linguists say it derives from an old term for “innkeeper.” “Coucou,” meanwhile, is an informal greeting in French. All these elements together might translate to an informal experience, but Bistrot Le Coucou had waiters waiting behind us, white tablecloths, and very chic interiors with stone, wood, and white brick.

The Pomme Frites (fries) cost P350, and when it arrived at our table, it was about a handful of thick fries with a sprinkling of cheese and caviar. It looked like a caricature of rich-people food, but as we chewed, we be-grudgingly admitted that the high-low mix of caviar and fries should be a norm in the restaurant world. We liked it a lot.

The next course, a Melted Cheese (Beillevaire, according to the menu) was served with figs, caramelized shallots, and roasted cashews, cost P1,450. With some satisfaction, we noted that it could be done better. We found the Steak Tartare tangy, and ate it atop fried spinach leaves. Our reverse snobbery failed when we tried the melted cheese on top of the fried spinach leaves. Foiled again! The sweetish, creamy cheese was a great contrast to the crispy spinach.

The Escargot (snails) was irritatingly affordable at P550, and good, too. It was awake in its freshness, with a bit of a grassy note from the excellent butter sauce. We’re also quite impressed that the bread they served al-most matched the bread we had in Paris.

We were excited for the steak: The one-kilogram Entrecôte and Frites, a ribeye caramelized in butter and topped with roasted garlic and their version of the butter-based Café de Paris sauce. The ribeye was not as yielding to our knife (it’s not supposed to be; and look at us, suddenly too fancy to cut more than once). Otherwise, it was begrudgingly good and excellently rich. Will it beat the steak from other Manila steakhouses? Probably not — but it can look them in the face.

The Nikkei Group, with restaurants like Nikkei (Japanese-Peruvian), Alma, Big Belly (burgers), and Sala and Terraza Martinez (these Spanish restaurants are fast gaining a reputation as some of the city’s best), have an anointment of cool upon them, thanks to the chic crowd going in and out of them, not to mention their stamp on some of the country’s prime real estate. Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Carlo Lorenzana saw a gap in the number of French restaurants in the country, and decided to do one with classic Parisian dishes after vetoing a New York-style one. He said, “We want a good, cool dining experience, but not lose ourselves too much in trying too hard to be cool.”

We left the restaurant thinking we were a bit cooler: the food was great (albeit expensive — but one pays the price for cool, besides, a ticket to Paris is still more expensive), and the table of famous people near ours didn’t hurt either.

Bistrot Le Coucou is at the 2/F View Deck, One Bonifacio High Street Mall, PSE Tower, BGC, Taguig. Currently on soft opening, it is open for lunch from 11:30 a.m. until 3 p.m.; then for dinner from 5 to 10 p.m. from Sunday to Thursday, and until 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.