You Need To Try This Wicked Healthy Lunch Spot On Baggot Street

niallharbison

You can’t go online these days without somebody offering up the latest advice on eating healthy.

Models sharing their paleo photos on Instagram. Sportspeople giving you tips on how to eat clean and every Tom, Dick and Harry seeming to be on the latest diet.

To be quite honest, I find it a massive pain in the arse trying to keep up with the latest healthy eating fads and the unrealistic expectations that come along with them – I feel like people should just eat well and have a fucking Twix every once in a while, without all the moral grandstanding.

There are a bunch of places serving up great salads in the capital and I love the fact that they are now a real alternative to the dreary old sandwich that we lived with for so long. And this spot takes the whole thing to another level.

Cocu have two locations Baggot Street and Hatch Street, and they pitch themselves right into the healthy eating market with a really simple and brilliant format.

You order from a selection of salads (flank steak, chicken, salmon, veggie etc), before choosing a base (sweet potato, spinach etc) and then adding a sprinkle (Nuts, herbs etc). The menu feels fun and allowed you to get exactly what you want, but still offers enough variety for you to come back daily

They have stuff on there like brown rice (mega-healthy), but also baked potatoes (not so healthy), so there’s something for everybody. The presentation is stunning, the staff super-friendly and the place is bright and super well designed. And although there are a couple of tables, this is very much a place to grab something and eat it at the desk.

What I loved about my box was the explosion of flavours which were absolutely fucking delicious, but also the fact that they had the balls to put brown chicken meat in there. The legs and thighs are by far the tastiest type of meat, but we live in a sanitised world where people only seem to want a breast these days.

The result is a box that is exciting and you can tell that they don’t spare any money on the other ingredients. The avocado was perfectly ripe, the red peppers hand-roasted, and the feta was of outstanding quality, unlike the salty shite most places serve.

I had a cold pressed juice (they buy them in from the wonderful Green Beard) and the whole thing came in at €13. Defo too pricey to be eating every day of the week, but I would have actually paid more on this occasion for what I got. This is proper well thought out cooking. My only negative was that I only spotted the Hendricks gin and rose cakes while I waited for my salad, as I’d definitely have demolished one of those bad boys.

They make healthy eating fun in Cocu without laying on the guilt, and that’s good enough for me.