Kokomo delivers the beachy vibe, but dishes a little hit-and-miss
Winter is coming. It’s time to defend yourselves and strap on your puffers. The other option is to escape and the good news is you don’t have to fly to the islands to have a beachy getaway.
Kokomo (yes, the saccharine Beach Boys #1 hit from the film Cocktail, with its “bodies in the sand/tropical drink melting in your hand” fantasy) has been open for six months so it felt like the right time to see how it was settling into its home at The Welder in Welles St.
Even on a crisp autumn night, Kokomo’s retro beachy fit-out was vibing. The large space has a great flow, with a big open bar anchoring the street-side entrance and an open kitchen anchoring the other end by the internal entrance from The Welder.
There are lots of inviting spaces to sit, from cosy corner booths to bar seats overlooking the open kitchen, and the vintage industrial building has been given a shabby-chic makeover stuffed with potted plants and an assortment of wicker lampshades you may recognise from Barberra, one of the owners’ previous restaurants.
The knowing wink of kitsch is on the walls, sporting the ubiquitous J.H. Lynch prints of sultry women from the 1960s, Tina and The Nymph alongside Goldie portraits of Māori from the early 1900s. Kokomo knows what it is and wants you to have a good time.
Following the trend, the menu of “coastal cuisine” is made up of smaller to larger plates meant to be shared, or you can do the $75 Just Feed Me menu. We ordered nine dishes for three people and had more than enough. The waiter explained that the kitchen would send out dishes as they were ready, and this tended to be the smaller dishes followed by the larger dishes.
Our meal began with a couple of impressive “sandos” each: scallop katsu and paua and lemon pastries. At just $5 each, these were delightful calling cards that announced the kitchen’s intentions: simple food with a playful twist.
The tender scallop was perfectly fried and sandwiched between slices of white bread sprinkled with nori flakes and slathered in kewpie mayo. It was called yuzu kewpie on the menu but I detected very little hint of the citrus, which would have lifted the dish into another level of yumminess. Nevertheless, the dish was an instant beach-cuisine classic and I could easily imagine devouring several alongside a beachy cocktail (or three).
The earthy, umami flavour of the paua also worked really well with a lemon cream nestled in buttery, flakey vol au vents.
Our third sando was a $23 raw fish crumpet that was less well conceived. The crumpet was a bit dry and the mound of raw moki with chives and dollops of a lemony mayo sat awkwardly. It was a little too large to pick up and eat like a crumpet without spilling the too-large chunks of fish, and was a bit tough to cut. The advertised chilli was missing and the dish tasted bland. It felt like a classic example of Instagram-ready food where little thought had been given to how someone would actually eat it.
Another intriguing category of small plates was the sticks, which were essentially yakitori skewers. The brown sugar chicken with chilli jam felt like a dish you might get on a Thai beach, only with less spice.
But the biggest surprise – and best dish of the night – was a cheese and cabbage stick with “egg sauce”. The thick slice of charred cabbage was topped with cheese that had been torched, resulting in a caramelised miracle of a skewer. The egg sauce was essentially yet another take on mayo and the unctuousness of the sauce worked well to balance the acrid notes of the char.
The larger dishes were less inventive. The sticky beef rolls were a pair of eggrolls filled with a sweet turmeric and ginger beef that delivered the notes as advertised but didn’t go beyond. The red goat curry had good depth of flavour but the kaffir lime and marmite peanut crumb promised on the menu were difficult to detect. A crab and jalapeno mac and cheese was served in a little casserole dish and looked adorable but it was a miss: the jalapenos were barely present, the dish had an unappealing funkiness, and instead of the classic cheesy sauce, it relied on breadcrumbs to carry the flavour.
I put that one down to being blinded by a menu: the four words “crab jalapeño macaroni cheese” promise a lot and I couldn’t resist but I’ve been underwhelmed before by simple classics given luxury ingredient makeovers.
Kokomo is a gorgeous space that has been well designed. The cocktail menu is long and impressive and it is a great spot for casual day-drinking and grazing. And the addition of another restaurant to The Welder makes it a rival to beloved foodie collectives like Riverside Market and Little High. I just wish there was a little more care and thought coming from the kitchen.
On the Beach Boys scale of sun-kissed awesomeness, a couple of scallop sandos and a cocktail would be a God Only Knows level of brilliance. But sometimes just humming along to Kokomo still helps you escape the winter blues.
Kokomo is at 24 Welles St, Christchurch Central.