Coucou, Craig Road

Maybe the Swiss aren't big on opening restaurants here. Marché aside, the one other outpost that comes to mind is Huber's. Coucou (9 Craig Road, tel : +65 6226 0060) came along, run by Yves Schmid - formerly restaurant manager of the defunct Senso for the past decade or so and its executive chef Sebastien Donati - former group executive chef of also Senso. How the transit happens from Italian to Swiss, I don't know.

We were given some spicy crispy potato skins while waiting for the food. Nice to munch, a little salty.

Their Coucou salad is apparently a thing. 

The shredded vegetables are accompanied by a little jug of dressing which according to Yves, is a recipe from his grand père. I can't break down the flavours but it's kinda like pesto. And it's good. Better tasting than what I had imagined. Refreshing with the crunchy "curly" vegetables.

We got a half platter of their cold cuts and cheese. Which was fortunate because the portion was already pretty big. Air dried beef, ham, speck and coppa. A couple of Swiss cheese which I don't know. I'm quite the sucker for these things so yes, I enjoyed them.

Those cold cuts and cheese came with nice bread. The dark one has walnuts and the other, seemed to have a cheesy crust. Would have loved to have more bread for those cold cuts.

A few of the items on the menu sounded good. We had to start somewhere. This was their pork tenderloin. Pan fried maybe with an outstanding creamy morel sauce. And a nice portion of those mushrooms. Meat was tender and pink in the middle. This was so good.

The pork came with a choice of side. We got the spatzli. Tasted like it was pan fried. It was buttery with some caramelized bits on the edges of the pasta. Nice.

Since we were in a Swiss restaurant, one had to order the rosti right? Said no one that I know of. But we did anyway with the Zurich styled veal ragout. Liked this but I was surprised that the rosti was only half the pan. The other half with the ragout didn't have any potatoes underneath.

Dessert was superb. Meringue with Gruyère double cream and berries. It came with what I thought might have been a raspberry compote. I didn't upturn the entire jug of it. A generous drizzle would suffice while allowing the dessert to preserve a nice richness from the cream. What impressed me was that the meringue wasn't too sweet. So good.