Coconut Lagoon returns with extra refined meals after 2020 hearth

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When Coconut Lagoon formally reopens Wednesday, one among Ottawa’s most celebrated Indian eating places, which is lastly welcoming prospects once more after a devastating Might 2020 hearth, will showcase rather more than beauty renovations.

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Chef-owner Joe Thottungal, who completed second within the 2017 Canadian Culinary Championships, says his flagship restaurant on St. Laurent Boulevard will attempt to serve much more refined meals because it operates in line with post-pandemic, sustainable practices.

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“When the hearth occurred, it put a chance in entrance of me,” Thottungal mentioned in an interview. “After I get a brand new slate, a clean paper, I ought to draw properly. Now, I feel I can do it.”

The brand new Coconut Lagoon is brighter and airier, with white, black, gray and blue banquettes changing the darkish wooden partitions and tables that got here with its intensive pre-fire renovation in 2017.

Thottungal, who owns the constructing that was beforehand a comfort retailer after which a humble sports activities bar, did away with two second-storey flats throughout the latest, year-long renovation. There at the moment are excessive ceilings and two upper-level rooms, named Cinnamon and Cardamom, respectively, for personal eating.

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Since Thottungal first opened Coconut Lagoon in 2004, Thottungal has been a culinary trailblazer in Ottawa, popularizing the colourful meals and flavours of Kerala, his dwelling state on India’s southwestern Malabar Coast.

He mentioned that the reopened restaurant will cast off lunch service, takeout meals and buffets to deal with a extra refined, always altering dinner menu that can provide extra small plates and use regionally sourced substances. A six-course tasting menu for $80 per individual may also be accessible.

“I’m positive now Ottawa is able to have elevated Kerala delicacies,” mentioned Thottungal.

“Butter hen has come off the menu,” he famous.

Coconut Lagoon’s web site spells out two causes for the demise of the lunch buffet, which Thottungal admitted was in style. For one, COVID-19 has made eating places and prospects warier of the potential well being dangers posed by buffets. The web site additionally says buffets produce “untold meals loss.

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“In a world (and on this metropolis) the place there may be a lot meals insecurity, eliminating as a lot waste as attainable turned a prime precedence for us,” the web site states. The restaurant may also require reservations “to make sure we purchase and prepare dinner solely sufficient for the day’s wants,” the web site provides.

Thottungal has performed a vital position within the Meals For Thought non-profit group that launched in 2019 to fight meals insecurity and supply meals for Ottawans in want.

The reopening of Coconut Lagoon is the most recent huge accomplishment of one among Ottawa’s main culinary achievers.

A frequent participant in fundraisers and cooking occasions, Thottungal gained Ottawa’s 2016 Gold Medal Plates competitors, qualifying for the 2017 Canadian Culinary Championships the place he completed second in a discipline of 11 cooks.

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Thottungal’s 2019 cookbook, naturally known as Coconut Lagoon, gained a gold medal in 2020 on the Style Canada Awards. That 12 months, Thottungal additionally obtained the Order of Ottawa.

On the identical time, Thottungal has been outspoken concerning the hardships that restaurateurs in Ottawa have confronted in recent times. Whereas he pivoted after the hearth to deal with his second restaurant, Thali, that enterprise, which Thottungal opened in December 2018, has had its personal challenges.

That O’Connor Avenue restaurant needed to cope with the extended abandonment of downtown by teleworking staff, in addition to the occupation of downtown streets in February by the so-called “Freedom Convoy” protest.

phum@postmedia.com