Fresh & Homemade
Cocottes
It’s lunch time at the office and you step out for a bite to eat. You don’t have long as an important deadline looms and you’re in two minds about whether to hold firm on your new healthy food regime, or whether to treat yourself to something naughty and delicious. Sound familiar?
Well, no need to stress. Cocottes, a fresh-food café chain in Luxembourg, is the perfect lunchtime pit stop, providing customers both healthy and delicious homemade meals.
There are two menus to choose from: a “to-go” menu with an array of sandwiches, salads, fresh juices, as well as quiches, hot pasta and rice dishes, and a “caterer” menu featuring Marks & Spencer-style ready-made meat, fish and vegetarian meals and a selection of pastries. Customers can choose to eat in or take away, and service is relatively quick, meaning you can pop in and out in a few minutes during those busy lunch hours.
You’ll always find yourself spoiled for choice at Cocottes as there are quite a number of beautifully arranged salads and sandwiches to choose from. Our favourites include the autumn superfood salad, made of quinoa, avocado, butternut squash and blueberries, and the salmon tartare and guacamole mini-baguette. From the hot meals section, the salmon and spinach fusilli and Indian vegetable curry stand out, and I am told the cannelloni with ricotta and spinach is a big hit as well.
On occasions, we have felt that too much emphasis has been placed on looks. Take, for example, the crayfish, pasta rice and raspberries salad; a healthy-looking salad with a wonderful blend of colours. However, when we gave it a try we thought the combination of sweet raspberries and savory crayfish didn’t quite work together.
Eating at Cocottes is not cheap either. A main, drink and dessert can easily cost you as much as €20, not what you’d expect to pay for a lunch that’s eaten with a plastic knife and fork. But if fresh homemade meals are what you’re after, then it can feel like money well spent.
There are now five branches of Cocottes across Luxembourg following the opening of a new café near the Gare, with the other four cafés located in the city centre, Kirchberg, Glacis and Cloche d’Or.
Newest Gare location:
6 Rue de Bonnevoie
L-1260 Luxembourg
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Tip from the Editor: Our favourite of all the branches is this one at the Gare, with on-trend wallpaper and comfy seating, we could spend all day here. That reminds us, one of the pros of this restaurant is that it stays open all day (yes, even after 14:00) so it’s perfect even if you want to pop in for an afternoon cake and coffee break.
