Lunch at Coco Vika

When I was 15-16 years, back when pizzas were regarded as fancy food and tacos had just started to appear on Norwegian dinner tables (and we hadn’t even heard about café lattes… isn’t that funny?) the first Asian restaurant opened in Oslo . It was a Chinese restaurant and me and my friends were sooooo fascinated by the mix of chicken/rice/sweet chili sauce. (food that is sweet and spicy at the same time? How strange and unheard off.. )

Since then, I’ve eaten lots of Asian food and have developed a love for it (Thai/Vietnamese food in particular). I think it has to do with their yin-yang approach to food, which in so many dishes results in an amazing mix of color, flavors, and textures (call me superficial but I like food that looks pretty too…)

Yesterday I had lunch at Coco Vika (the sister restaurant of Coco Chalet - the French inspired place close to Stortinget).

Sometime back (although I don’t remember when, and my memory isn’t what it use to be so I could be wrong) Coco Vika became an Asian inspired restaurant with the slogan “we promise you a different taste to a reasonable price”.

And they were in fact reasonably priced, but the food however was err… unfortunately a bit of a disappointment :(

I ordered the Wok Noodles Thai Grilled Chicken (Fried noodles with chicken, vegetables and sweetchili)

Did not love this dish - it was bland, boring and uninspiring. Lots and lots of noodles and almost no vegetables (with the lame exception of a 4 small pieces of a carrot stick), also it was soaked in bottle-sweetchili sauce (chicken pieces were good though).

The other dish I tried was Rice Bowl Scampi (Rice with scampi, fried vegetables and spizy Szechuan garlic sauce). The scampies were very good but as with the other dish there was lots of rice but almost no vegetables… Why I wonder? Is it really that expensive to add a bit of fresh vegetables and maybe even some herbs?

OK, so I only tried to lunch menu.. perhaps the dinner menu is much better. Also, I’ve heard they make one of the best chocolate fondants in Oslo, which I didn’t have this time so I would probably go back just for that, and the service was good so as a lunch place for the business crowd in the neighborhood I guess its OK ..