Coco Bongo’s, Ridgefield (Closed)

Coco Bongo’s (Closed)
cuisine: Nuevo Latino
entrées: $19 – $29
address: 37 Ethan Allen Highway, Ridgefield
phone: (203) 544-0059
credit cards: All major

4 Stars… Special

Few restaurant names give one a clearer idea what sort of food one might encounter than Coco Bongo’s in Ridgefield. The name sounds festive, tropical, even silly. It also sounds Spanish. All of which adds up to Nuevo Latino food, that boisterous blend of Latin American and Caribbean influences originally popularized by Douglas Rodriguez at Patria in New York.

In Connecticut, the leading practitioner of that cuisine has been Arturo Franco-Camacho, who abandoned Fairfield County more than a decade ago for the headier charms of New Haven. Although Connecticut has welcomed other Nuevo Latino restaurants like Habana in Norwalk, the two Brasitas in Stamford and Norwalk, Restaurante Islas in Fairfield and Pacifico in New Haven, Camacho’s Elm City eatery, Roomba, represented the pinnacle of this cuisine. When Camacho opened Bespoke, an elegant contemporary American restaurant, and subsequently ended Roomba’s incredibly successful run, devout Roomba fans pressured him until he created a parallel Nuevo Latino menu at Bespoke that incorporated many of their old favorites. He called his creation Sabor—a restaurant within a restaurant.

Dimas Astudillo worked at Roomba for some time, and brings that invaluable background to his role as executive chef of Coco Bongo’s. In fact, a couple of his dishes are right out of Camacho’s playbook. An Ecuadorean native, Astudillo gained much of his early experience in South and Central America and the Caribbean. Coco Bongo’s owners—father and daughter Joe and Colleen Osorio and family members Juan Carlos and Lisa Ruiz—first experimented with adding Nuevo Latino fare at their popular Villa del Sol Mexican restaurants in Westport and Mount Kisco, New York. The enthusiastic response generated by these experiments encouraged them to open Coco Bongo’s in October 2007.

Coco Bongo’s is conveniently located in Branchville on Route 7 in the building that formerly housed Italian restaurant Amici. The quarters have undergone a stunning transformation, capturing the festive feeling suggested by the restaurant’s name but maintaining a certain reserve and dignity at the same time. Extensively—and no doubt, expensively—remodeled, there’s even a palm tree in the dining room. Starry ceilings, Escher-esque archways, bamboo furnishings, candles inset in stone walls and vases ensconced in alcoves add up to an ambiance for romance. The bar area is also beautiful, with gorgeous tile work lining doorways, steps and even the bar itself. Nimble Spanish guitar work swells the sound system.

Coco Bongo’s wine list ($26-$48) features vintages from California, Spain, Portugal, Argentina and Chile, fourteen of which are available by the glass ($7-$10). We set out on our culinary odyssey with a 2005 Terras Gauda Albariño, Rias Baixas, Spain ($10/$38), a complex and balanced white with nice citrus notes. A quarter loaf of crusty, brick-oven Italian bread sliced most of the way through was served warm with an addictive green sauce. The sauce proved to be made of tomatillo, onion, cilantro, olive oil, garlic and pepper—kind of a tomatillo chimichurri.

As much as we would have loved to fill up on the bread, we had work to do. Yeah, I know—violins. We tore ourselves away for a tasty and refreshing shrimp and scallop ceviche ($11) laced with citrus juices, tomato juice, ketchup and even lemongrass, star anise and cardamom, ingredients which demonstrate how wide-ranging and free-wheeling Nuevo Latino cooking can be. Cradled on ice, the bowl of ceviche was garnished with sliced avocado, plantain chips and a huge taro chip.

A spicy salmon tartare ($11) was presented on plantain propeller blades and garnished with housemade potato chips. The tartare was only vaguely spicy but exceptionally flavorful. We were beginning to forget the good bread. By the time we were presented with a sweet corn arepa ($13) drenched in a lobster stroganoff sauce and capped with sliced avocado, we’d forgotten the bread completely. We were too busy praising the texture of the corn cake and the sumptuousness of the sauce.

Often with Nuevo Latino cooking, there’s so much going on that flavors and textures can get muddled. Well, there was a lot going on with Coco Bongo’s duck confit empanada ($15)—all of it good. Although a riot of colors, flavors and textures, it came together like a complicated float in the Rose Bowl parade. The crescent-shaped empanada, its edges pinched shut to seal in the teeth-tingling meat, was flanked by a tropical salsa. Capping it all was a lovely morsel of seared foie gras which went great with a little grenadine-laced onion.

The contents of our bottle of Albariño having mysteriously disappeared (I blame the Bush administration), we were compelled to order another bottle of wine. This time we went with a 2003 Arboleda Cabernet Sauvignon, Maipo Valley, Chile ($10/$38), a gorgeous red that packed a lot of pleasure for its price.

In a rigorously authentic context, anticuchos ($11) would most likely mean Peruvian-style grilled beef hearts, and I do love them when I can find them. But not all things Peruvian have been accepted into the American mainstream—roasted guinea pig, for example. Coco Bongo’s delicious, adobo-marinated beef, chicken and scallop skewers were accompanied by a black bean broth and a Latino “coleslaw” of green cabbage, roasted coconut, pineapple, turmeric and curry powder that would tickle the taste buds and offend no one.

Coco Bongo’s cabrita ($10) turned out to be a nice change of pace. Its clever design reminded us of a child’s origami fortune teller (a.k.a. cootie catcher) in which lifting one of the four paper flaps reveals an answer or a prize. Resting on a crisp malanga cake, our flaps were made of roasted portobello and the prize was a cache of creamy sour-sweet goat cheese with a sun-dried tomato guizo.

Although Coco Bongo’s starters incorporate so many vegetables that one could easily omit a salad, we found the ensalada selection tempting. We sampled two. An auspicious combination, the beautifully balanced house salad ($8) comprised baby mixed field greens, roasted beets, orange and grapefruit segments, and Cabrales blue cheese in a balsamic onion vinaigrette. The palmito salad ($11) was also a pleasure, supplying satisfying contrasts in texture and flavor, with endive spears, arugula, radicchio and Brazilian heart of palm tossed in a tamari-and-soja vinaigrette. Our salad breather had allowed us to regroup and regain our momentum.

¡Ándele! On to the entrées! We tried two seafood dishes and two meats, finding each rewarding. The empepitado ($23) featured a pumpkin seed-crusted corvina fillet in a delightful apple-lemongrass-coconut-curry sauce served with eggplant chutney over a starchy malanga purée. (Corvina is also called weakfish, if that’s any help, and is a member of the drum fish family, which is probably even less helpful.) Spanish rather than Nuevo Latino, Coco Bongo’s paella ($28) showcased a gallimaufry of shrimp, clams, New Zealand mussels, scallops, chicken and Spanish chorizo in a toothsome saffron-infused Valencian rice.

We fared as well on land as we had at sea. A thicket of rib chops, grilled marinated rack of lamb ($24) came with a quinoa salad, grilled vegetables and a rosemary-mango-pineapple mojo. Got my mojo working! A Nicaraguan-style churrasco of filet mignon ($29) with grilled veggies, guasacaca sauce and papas fritas also hit the spot. The beef was exceptionally tender, the vegetables perfectly al dente. Plantain chips jutted from the guasacaca sauce, essentially a spicy, vinegary guacamole popular in Venezuela. The papas fritas, or French fries, were served in a paper cone with a side of ketchup.

Finally, we had reached the desserts which, like everything that went before them, had a high fun quotient. Consuming so much, I feared weaving and staggering across the finish line like unforgettable Swiss marathoner Gabriela Andersen-Scheiss at the Los Angeles Olympics, but fortunately we got second wind. A perfect crème brûlée ($8) was graced with a subtle coconut accent. Bits of fresh banana were a welcome addition to a moist, delicate tres leches cake ($10) served with banana gelato. A banana flambé ($10) was also good, the banana pan-seared with citrus juice, lit up with rum and finished with a scoop of vanilla gelato. But chocolate ruled the day in the form of an individual chocolate lava cake ($10) with a melted ganache center served with vanilla gelato. Good thing I had help finishing it.

And good thing that this exciting new restaurant has found a home in Ridgefield. Kudos to the Coco Bongo’s crew for bringing a breath of fresh tropical air to a somber stretch of Route 7.