Zoco

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samuelo

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Joined: July 18, 2004
Posts: 576

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Posted: Nov 01, 2007 - 01:09 PM
Post subject: Zoco

Finally got a chance to try Zoco last night with some friends. It's the new tapas/Spanish restaurant that's opened in the Grand Plaza on Julu Lu. Before going I'd read the user reviews on SmartShanghai and there was one that slammed the place and another that was effusive in its praise. I am guessing the former was written by someone who had had a bad day or a competitor and the latter was written by someone with a vested interest in the restaurant. My own view is that Zoco falls somewhere in between - it has a nice space, good service but the food is just so-so.

Before I go any further I should say there is a tapas bar area and a restaurant proper. The idea behind this is I guess the tapas area is more informal and the restaurant is where you can order a more traditional meal (i.e. starter, main, dessert etc). To be fair we sat in the bar area and only tried the tapas so my comments are limited to the tapas menu. The starters and mains looked interesting on the restaurant menu and I might go back and try them some time.

Now before I get to the food let me say that the restaurant is really nicely decorated (photos on website at http://www.cosmogroup.cn/zoco/) and the staff which as far as I could tell were non-Chinese polite and efficient. The two might be linked...

Ok moving onto the food. We tried about half a dozen tapas dishes (tuna tartare, fried calamari, grilled scallops, deep friend king prawn tail, deep fried puff cod fish, mushrooms, duck egg with catalan sausage). I found the calamari was the worst dish - too little calamari, too much batter and way too salty. The cod fish again had too little cod and too much batter. The higlight was the scallops. The other dishes ranged from ok to nice but hardly memorable.

The cost of the tapas ranged between RMB 28-48 with a few dishes (such as cold cuts or cheeses being substanitally more at RMB 108). With a bottle of red wine (I found the wine list a little over-priced on the whole) and a mineral water the dinner RMB 656 for 3. Not terribly expensive but not exactly cheap either given the that portions of each dish are pretty small and had I been very hungry it would not have been near enough food.

All in all, I would say that if I was going to eat tapas I would go to Indalho. I think the tapas there is better, service equally good and they have less fried tapas which Zoco seems to be heavy on. I might go back and try the restaurant food some time but wouldn't be in a hurry and would wait for there to be a few more diners. We were literally the only table in there last night.