Cochin

Remya (11 April 2008)

I love Cochin - the food and service is really good. I live in East Finchley and go there every Friday. Fish moli is worth trying - truly Keralite.

Ramdas (16 July 2007)

I decided to dine at Cochin Restaurant at East Finchley, seeing their ad that they serve Kerala cuisine. I took three other people with me to the only 'Kerala restaurant' in Finchley area. Before we ordered we eagerly asked ‘where is the chef from’ and got a prompt answer that the 'chef is from Cochin, sir.' Pleased with it we ordered 'appam', idli, and 'chicken cochin' to begin with. To be polite none of them were good and didn't taste anything Kerala about them. In fact the dishes were horrible. Then we asked again 'where is the chef from?' the answer this time was 'from Bangalore sir.'

When said the food did not have any Kerala taste about it, the answer was 'in this country, you know sir; we have to make lot of compromises. If we serve the real Kerala taste people may not like it.' Without saying anything more or disclosing that we all were born and brought up in Kerala and frequently eat out in London restaurants serving authentic Kerala cuisine, so without ordering any main course we asked for the bill.

We all felt angry and hurt about the way the restaurant misrepresents things. We felt that 'Cochin' is a fake Kerala Restaurant. Later some of our English friends, who visit Kerala at least once a year, also told us about how they were deceived.

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