Coco’s Chinese Restaurant

i heard from a friend and went there. but the food kinda disappointed me.

I came here with a friend, hoping to get dumpling soup which I’ve had here before and was craving since it was a cold February evening. Apparently, they’ve changed chefs, menus, and regional cuisines since my last visit. Meh!
Gone are the shrimp dumplings and Cantonese goodies… replaced by Mandarin and Northeastern Chinese fare. Supposedly, according to other reviews, they «specialize» in seafood. In fact, they have several fresh water tanks… all of which were empty. The only seafood they had in house were small shrimp.
Tried to order a beef dish. They were out of beef, too.
So, we settled on eggplant in brown sauce, shrimp fried rice, and cashew chicken. The eggplant was the best dish, with just an average fried rice and thinly flavored (but fresh) cashew chicken. I wasn’t impressed and likely won’t be back.
Our server was very sweet and friendly, though.

The food was very over priced for what it is. It was about the same price as PF Chang’s. The average price for dinner is $ 13.99. Most Chinese restaurants are $ 5-​$ 8. The food quality was below average. The rice was definitely taken from the bottom of the pot. We did not get the food we ordered and they were closed when we went back to get it fixed. Would not recommend. This restaurant was excellent one year ago. It has gone really down hill since then. I am not sure if there are new owners and the worse thing of all there was no fortune cookie.

Gotta dock this place a couple stars, as the ownership has changed, and so has the menu and the recipes. I ordered two of my formerly favorite entrees, a hot pot and the crispy garlic chicken… while they are certainly edible, they definitely aren’t as delicious as they used to be. Chicken was overcooked, the hot pot had weird flavors (ginger). Remains to be seen if they improve over time.

My dragon boat team and I celebrated a successful race with Sunday brunch at Coco’s. We had a pretty large party, 10 people, and the place could easily accommodate. The restaurant is small and oddly split up into two sections, one at the front of the restaurant and the other in the back with the kitchen dividing them. During brunch, I thought to myself If this place wasn’t good, our group could have easily dined and dashed out of the many exits. Fortunately, we didn’t have to resort to such low life activities.
The food is pretty tasty despite the less than stellar Unilocal reviews in the past (Must of changed ownership).
A few of foods that we thought was delicious and recommend:
Beef and cilantro soup — full of flavor and generously loaded with beef
Crispy chicken with shrimp chips — very crispy and fresh
Eggplant with fragrant sauce
Duck Tongue — not a big hit with some of us, but because of how unique it is the dish is worth mentioning (maybe you like it, no?)
Most people don’t know this, or at least I didn’t, but this Coco’s also serves traditional Chinese comfort foods like duck egg congee and wonton noodle soups. This is the only place I know of in Atlanta that have these dishes.
Portion sizes are also very generous. Prices weren’t too bad either. The 10 of us ate, were stuffed, and took home leftovers all for the low low price of $ 115.
Services good considering we were the only table in the restaurant for a while. The owner even gave us a free steamed fish dish. I’m assuming because we came in 10 deep and it was so we could praise the restaurant and spread the word.
Bottom line is, if you are looking for cheap delicious Chinese food check this place out.

my mother-​in-​law ID’d this place after seeing an ad in the chinese newspaper. since we’re illiterate second-​generation taiwanese, we let her order for the table which means i can’t give names of the dishes, but hopefully it’s descriptive enough for you to order if you want. also see the photo of what the dish sizes are like.
stir-​fried lobster: tasty, not the best we’ve had but on the better end of chinese restaurants. lobster was fresh, and spices were good.
beef cubes & king oyster mushrooms: the mushrooms are OUTSTANDING. the beef cubes were tender, but didn’t soak up much flavor.
eight treasure casserole: good dish of mixed seafood and vegetables
lotus root + chinese sausage + other veggies: my favorite dish because it tasted so fresh and they used the japanese root vegetable, naga-​imo
crispy garlic chicken: skin was great, but the meat got dry and a bit tasteless.
the last time we were here, it was wan lai. we didn’t try any of our old favorites, but coco’s seems to be one of the better chinese restaurant options in atlanta. looking at lucy’s review from february, we may have ate here while the good chef is still around.

The old Coco’s left, and a new one took its place. It’s not the terrible FuZhou cuisine anymore. It’s now Cantonese. The Chef from Bobo Garden and Golden House is now at Coco’s cooking up some cheap, Cantonese dishes.
I think it’s an improvement from the old Coco’s. If the chef came from Bobo Gardens and Golden House, he should at least have a clue.
The Crab Meat Fish Maw Soup was bland. Even with the red vinegar, I couldn’t taste anything. The texture was fine though.
The Beef Tripe and Tendon had a lot of flavor. It wasn’t just tendon and tripe, it had blood sausages too. I liked it.
Salt and Pepper squid tasted good. The squid seemed seasoned well. The taste was definitely superior to the old Coco’s. I would’ve liked the crust to be more crispy though. The crust felt mushy.
The Chicken, Chinese Sausage, Shiitake Mushroom, Onions in Black Bean Sauce Hot Pot tasted good too. I liked the black bean sauce; it made it have that jajamyun taste that we Koreans love. The dish was packed with flavor. However, the chicken was a pain to eat. It had too much bones.
Besides the Cantonese entrees, they served Chinese noodle soups as well. I would love to try those someday.
Once again, I think this place is an improvement over the old Coco’s. I would love to come back and try more dishes. For now, it gets about 3.5 stars from me.

I was here at a UYE and the company was the best part of this night. While the rest of the table ordered a variety of different and interesting food items, I stuck with some foods I’m more familiar with. It was a light meal for me. I had hot and sour soup, spring rolls, and a pork bun.
The hot and sour was a little salty for my taste, the spring rolls lacked flavor, and the pork bun tasted pretty good. I was also able to try the Singapore Noodles, which I did not enjoy the taste of. The other thing I tasted were the spare ribs which were fried and drenched in a sauce which I will call interesting and that I think I liked, but I’m not sure I liked (I know that sounds crazy, but so?). However the ribs were way too fatty and that made them yucky folks.
I enjoyed watching my Unilocaler friends eat snails, and frog, and calamari, and pork bellies, and tara pie, and fresh fish that was selected from the aquarium, and soup. Unfortunately, they were not very please with some of these dishes.
Our server did a good job with us for doing a solo job. Some items took a while to get to us, but it wasn’t too bad. I believe there were 15 or 16 of us in all divided into two tables. She was even nice enough to do a bit of check splitting.
It is highly unlikely that I will find myself back at Coco’s.

I went to Coco’s Chinese Restaurant last night for the latest Buford Highway UYE (
). There were 15 of us, so we got to sit in the special «VIP Room,» which is a private room in the back of the restaurant. For showing up unannounced with such a large (and loud) group, the service was pretty good.
Coco’s is located in the former Wan Lai space in the Orient Center shopping center on Buford Highway. They’re right next door to Phở Bac. The inside of the restaurant hasn’t changed much, if any, from its days as Wan Lai. It’s just an authentic, no-​frills Chinese joint. Nothing fancy about it. They do have some live seafood on display in the back. Leeanna L. eventually picked one of those fish for us to eat.
Coco’s specializes in Fuzhou cuisine, not to be confused with the more popular Cantonese and Sichuan cuisines that make up most of the Chinese cuisine you see in Atlanta. Fuzhou cuisine is known for seafood and soups. Coco’s has all sorts of Fuzhou soups like taro and duck soup, ox tail soup, black chicken soup, and eel soup. They also have a bunch of casseroles on the menu and Cantonese food too.
A group of us shared the following:
Taro pie
Fuzhou-​style dumpling soup
Steamed juicy pork buns
Crab meat and fish maw soup
Snow pea shoots with minced garlic
Pork chop with Peking sauce
Salt and pepper squid
Stir-​fried pork belly with Fuzhou sauce
Chinese snails with pepper
Frog with chives
Fresh whole tilapia
Generally speaking, the food was a little disappointing. Most of the dishes were either bland or did not taste very good. My favorites were the Fuzhou-​style dumpling soup, the steamed juicy pork buns (also a Fuzhou dish), and the crab meat and fish maw soup. The snow pea shoots with garlic and the tilapia, Cantonese dishes, were also decent. I probably wouldn’t order any of the other dishes again, but some were good to try at least once.
We probably should have ordered two of the dumpling soups, so each person could’ve eaten more than just one dumpling. The broth in this soup was light and the flavor of the dumplings (fish-​based, I believe) was mild and refreshing.
When the steamed juicy pork buns were placed our table, I thought they were Eastern Chinese xiaolongbao (soup dumplings). However, these were not soup dumplings — they just resembled them. These soft little dumplings were served with a dark sauce with minced scallion. Like the dumplings in the soup, these were mild in flavor, but pretty satisfying.
It’s hard to mess up snow pea shoots with garlic sauce. Almost every Chinese restaurant serves them. Coco’s version is just fine. It’s one of my favorite vegetables to order at any Chinese restaurant I go to. The tilapia, which I mentioned Leeanna L. picked out of the tank, was fresh and meaty. Another common dish.
The taro pie was thick and a little bland. I was expecting it to be a little sweeter, but I guess this is real taro we’re talking about here. Not some kind of dessert.
The crab meat and fish maw soup was not bad. Fish maw is the same thing as the swim bladder, an internal organ of the fish that helps keep it afloat under water. Coco’s, and I’m assuming a lot of other places too, uses imitation crab meat in this soup. I know because I’m allergic to crab and this soup didn’t affect me. That’s not a bad thing, though, because it still tasted good. This is a very popular soup in China and is known for being rather light. I like to add vinegar and white pepper to mine to add more flavor (my parents like to do this too).
The pork chops with Peking sauce just tasted funky. I think there was too much vinegar in the sauce. The batter also wasn’t very appetizing. Speaking of fried stuff, the salt and pepper squid was a fail. We probably shouldn’t have ordered this dish to begin with since it wasn’t on the menu. (Funny aside: When I tried to order this dish, the server called someone to translate «salt and pepper squid» to her.)
The rest of the dishes (pork belly, snails, and frog) were just not very good. The frog, in particular, was bland and it’s texture was a little too slimy. The snails were more of a novelty. Arnaud T. told us these were sea snails. Some were easy to suck out of the shells, others were not and we had to use toothpicks to help us pick out the snails.
All of the food above, split amongst 7 – 8 people, came out to about $ 18 per person before tip. We could’ve easily gone with one or two less dishes. We left a lot of food on the table, partly because we were full and partly because of the taste.
I thought the service was very good considering we showed up unannounced. The restaurant was ready and the dishes came out in a reasonable amount of time. Service for stuff like refilling tea and water was spotty, but there was only one server for the entire restaurant. The server did a great job at the end separating/​splitting all the checks. Very organized.

It’s another one of those «I guess I’m spoiled by having the real thing.» reviews… or «meh!» for short.
Was at a UYE with lots of others, so you’ll be seeing their reviews too. At first I was thinking Fuzhou style food, sounds great since I’ve been there before way back in 2007. (Don’t ask what a white guy was doing there, but I’ll tell you I stuck out like a sore thumb in the outskirts where I was visiting. Thankfully I also didn’t sick given the amount of street food I had.) Anyhow… I will say I did take a liking to Fuzhou style Fishball soup, which are tasty little fish paste (fish & flour) balls with minced pork in the center.
Unfortunately we didn’t get the Fishballs, and the waitress didn’t seem to understand what I was asking her. Fortunately I can find this style of fishball at Great Wall farmers marketer, so I can feed that craving when I have it.
As for the rest of the food, I really won’t go into detail as most of it was bland and lacking flavor or had too much (ex. the perking spare ribs were to vinegary). I will say I enjoyed the Taro pie… who doesn’t like fried taro or fried anything for that matter? We ordered some more traditional (ie. not American-​Chinese) dishes like snow pea tips, frog legs, snails, pork belly, fish maw soup, etc. We even tried something not on the menu, Salt and Pepper Squid. I’m now making a rule of thumb; if they have salt-​n-​pepper something but not squid, do not ask them to make salt-​n-​pepper squid under any circumstances. (Chances are it’s not on the menu b/​c they just don’t do a very good job of making it.)
If I were to go back, I’d take some of the Fujian (Fuzhou) people I know and see what dishes they might order and their opinion of them.

Coco’s didn’t sweep me off my feet, but it didn’t knock me on my butt either; and for that, it gets three stars.
The restaurant décor is a hodgepodge of decoration — including those plastic flags on a rope that seem more at home at Plaza Fiesta. Large and small round tables dominate with lazy susans to make family-​style eating (ie. sharing the large plates) easier.
I went along with other Unilocalers and we all ordered a lot of dishes. I tried and felt about the following:
Taro Pie — The fried, crunchy outside was delicious, but the taro filling was thick and tasteless. I would only order this again if they filled it with apples or peaches.
Fried Twisted Cruller — This reminded me of Spanish churros — without the cinnamon and sugar. They were cooked perfectly — crunchy, soft, and not greasy at all. You’re supposed to eat these with the sweet soy milk but they were out. If the soy milk had been available, I would have eaten all of this.
Singapore Rice Noodle — I didn’t know this had shrimp in it (which I don’t like), but once I took out the shrimp, I liked this dish. It was a little oily but not too much, and the noodles were cooked nicely. The dish also had a nice cumin flavor with red pepper spice. And along with the shrimp there were slivers of sausage which were tasty.
Snow Pea Shoots w/​Minced Garlic — These reminded me of sauteed spinach, and I really liked them. The shoots were still a bit firm and very flavorful with the garlic and whatever they were sauteed in.
Spare Rib w/​Peking Sauce — I loved the sauce. But I didn’t love the spare ribs. They’d been breaded and fried, and I didn’t like the breading at all — the texture was off — too chewy and mushy.
This restaurant definitely had some good and some bad going on with its food. But the menu is huge so there is a lot to choose from and like a lot of restaurants, I’m sure there are some things they do better than others.
Service was slow, but understandable because there was only 1 server and about 16 of us. If you want something, be prepared to be a little aggressive to get it.
I would come back here and try some other things if I were in the area and felt like experimenting, but it’s not a place I would tell a friend they had to try… unless they changed that taro pie to peach pie. Yum!

Went by here last month and looked at the menu like three times before I finally made the decision to start eating here knowing they had changed ownership awhile back, I’m weird that way sometimes .
Anyway went in grabbed a table and looked around, decoration is a t.v., live lobster, crab and fish tanks and a large menu on the wall of combo’s.
Decided on the Shrimp Lo Mien combo it comes with soup and a spring roll, the Hot & Sour soup, not bad and the roll it’s a roll. The Lo Mien was good and it was a full size portion.

After nibbling for a few minutes I wanted to place another order Singapore Noodles this time and wanted to put the Lo Mien in a box, the waitress thought it was all to go. I shook my head no and said «Singapore for here,» swear to God she paused, looked at me, cocked her head to the side, took a step back and glanced under the table wrote down the order and walked away shaking her head.
What the hell did she think was under the table ?
Hey, I even looked.
I sat there and giggled the entire time she was in the kitchen, little did she know this was to feed me and the bf for the night and tomorrows lunch’s.
Singapore noodles (on request) were nice and spicy.

We hit Coco’s Chinese last night trying to do Wan Lai (which had possibly the best Beef Chow Fun I’ve ever had) — unfortunately the latter is now closed and replaced by Coco’s. In any event, we decided to try this restaurant that is now about 2 months old. As mentioned before, this is Fuzhou cuisine, which to my Americanized pallet is not as strong in flavor as your typical Cantonese. The sauces were much more subtle and everything wasn’t swimming in heavy corn-​starchy goo — if you’re not into that type of thing this restaurant may be more to your liking.
We sat down (the only table) and ordered hot tea. The waitress also greeted us and seemed a bit preoccupied with the Chinese news televised on the flat panel on the wall opposite (above the checkout). We ordered the Happy Family (spicy), the Beef Chow Fun (what inspired us to originally go to Wan Lai) and a couple of Hot and Sour soups.
The Hot and Sour soup was very mediocre — not much going on here. No meat and pretty bland — still it was a cold night so we continued. There was an appropriate amount of vinegar but almost not heat. The better H&S we’ve had used white pepper to get heat into your sinuses — this had a few red pepper flakes but not much heat — that seemed to be the general theme.
The Happy Family came out first and I must say that this was the best dish — it contained a good helping of chicken, pork, beef, shrimp, scallops, calamari, the usual bouquet of veggies plus some lotus root in a delicate brown sauce. We ordered this spicy and it simply wasn’t –guessing a miscommunication with the kitchen. The seafood was cooked spot on — I would order this dish again — call it 4 stars.
The big disappointment was the Beef Chow Fun — wow — the complete opposite of Wan Lai. I guess you can’t be good at everything. In this case the beef was almost flavorless — and the noodles, etc had a strong flavor of oil. This is usually an oily dish, but you don’t generally taste the oil as the primary ingredient — I give this a single star.
A couple of other things — on the good side, the dish portions were on the heavy side — plenty to share. On the bad side, the egg roll (when you order off the dinner menu you get your choice of egg roll or soup) was bare — we had to ask for mustard/​duck sauce which were then provided in packets. Same with Hot Sauce (in a dish this time but we had to ask). The first plate came to the table with a fork — we had to ask for a spoon. This theme went on the entire time we were there (had to ask for water, etc). I know it’s common for Asian restaurants but one of the things that make a restaurant stand out is the attentiveness of the service — this could definitely use some work at Coco’s.
Nothing really terrible here, but nothing exceptional either. It may have been what we ordered so don’t totally discount this place — it has potential (well, don’t they all?) — we may try again after they’ve had a couple more months to settle in.

Thanks to Kit F for educating me that this is Fuzhou cuisine not Cantonese. I asked our server about their specialty, and she said «live» seafood — live clams, live tilapia, live lobster, etc. She kept saying «live» and I had to ask just to be sure, if the food would be served live and she said of course not, the food is cooked. Hahahahaha :) I came with 2 friends, and we did family-​style: 2 small apps and 3 entrees, and we had plenty of food. Prices are very reasonable but some of the chef specialties are a bit more.
COMPLIMENTARY PICKLED RADISH
Loved the flavor, the crunch, … warning: these are addicting.
PORK BUN ($ 2)
We wanted to order the soup dumplings but they said they’re not available — no reason given. We got the pork bun and split into 3 bites :) Tasty insides but not a fan of the fatty pieces … I probably wouldn’t order this again.
TARO PIE ($ 1)
You get more «value» with this app — it’s a generous size and plenty to share for 3 – 4 people if you just want a sample, plus it’s deep-​fried so you probably don’t want more than a couple bites anyway :) Still, I thought it was pretty good and the insides kinda reminded me of Korean porridge for some reason. A spicy dipping sauce would’ve been nice.
GARLIC SNOW PEA SHOOTS ($ 11.95)
We wanted a veggie dish, and the server said this was the best one. I love snow pea shoots, and this dish was really good and packed with flavor — I’d definitely get this again.
CLAM W/​NOODLES ($ 7.50)
Server said this was the best noodle dish, and we were thinking about getting clams anyway. This dish looked very bland when it arrived b/​c it was almost all noodles and just a few clams — but I really liked the noodles (it had a creamy or milky like flavor to it … couldn’t quite explain what flavor I was tasting). Clams were freshly killed I assume but honestly I couldn’t tell. There wasn’t much meat in them either. While I’d recommend this dish, I’d probably try something different next time.
PORK CHOP W/​PEKING SAUCE ($ 7.95)
Highly recommend this dish — the flavor of the pork was outstanding. It’s that red shiny BBQ-​like sauce they use for Peking duck — YUM! It also came with sauteed onions in the same sauce — DELICIOUS! I’m salivating now just thinking of this dish.
Among the other chef specialties, our server also recommended these dishes:
— Clam w/​Ginger & Scallion ($ 11.95)
— Chinese Snail w/​Pepper ($ 11.95)
— Frog w/​Chives ($ 15.95)
— Sliced Conch w/​XO Sauce ($ 16.95)
— Salt Pepper Squid ($ 7.95)
COMPLIMENTARY DESSERT — PEANUT MILK SOUP
This was surprisingly very refreshing and great end to our meal. Who’d think peanuts would do that … haha, it was more the milk than the peanuts :)
Overall 4 stars — we all enjoyed our meal, and I’d definitely come back to try the other chef specials. Service was spotty though — we had several different servers and we usu. had to chase them down to get help. A lot probably had to do with a large party in the back room. And like Lee L mentioned in her review, there was definitely smoking going on in the back room. Hopefully they quit that habit fast.
For a restaurant that opened recently, business seems good. Except for the non-​Asians at my table and a couple others ordering take-​out, all the customers were Chinese («very» Chinese) which is a good sign if you’re looking for authentic Chinese food. And if you’re looking for Americanized Chinese food, they have a menu for that, too.
FYI — they’re located in the old Wan Lai space, just next door to Phở Bac.

The hubs & I first heard about the demise of Wan Lai and its replacement Coco’s through blissful glutton’s blog (
). We were sad about Wan Lai’s departure, but excited to try out a new Canto place inside the perimeter. We came here on Sunday night for a late dinner with a friend.
We walked in the front door and there was only one other table. But we were hit with a wall of smoke (cigarette, not the good kind of food smoke). We were seated in a corner away from the other table. But we soon realized that there was a smoker at that table, despite a posted «No Smoking» sign on the wall. Now, I think it’s illegal to be smoking inside restaurants, but the waitresses were not concerned about it. (I kind of understand… it’s perfectly acceptable to smoke inside restaurants in China). We asked our waitress whether they could ask the patron at the other table to stop smoking. The hubs & I hate cigarette smoke, and it turns off my appetite. However, instead of asking them to stop smoking (typical non-​confrontational Chinese behavior), the waitress just offers to move us to a table in the back room (the VIP Karaōke room, apparently). We were a little turned off, but still curious about the food, so we moved to the backroom.
It was cold back there b/​c the heat wasn’t on… but we order 3 dishes anyways: 1) Chinese eggplant (yu xian qie zi), 2) fried noodle with clams, and 3) chive flowers with frog (funny story about how we ordered that below).
1) The eggplant was very sweet, but the flavor was not complex and seemed pretty one dimensional. There were also jalapenos in the dish, which we don’t like (in Chinese cuisine at least).
2) The fried noodle dish was pretty good. It’s not deep fried as the name implies, but sauteed with clams, napa cabbage, celery, and eggs. They used thick rice noodles, which I really enjoy (you can pick what type of noodle they use).
3) The chive flowers with frog was decent. The frog was breaded & deep fried. They taste like tender chicken, really. Some pieces of the chive flowers were too tough to chew & swallow, though. But I love chive flowers, so I just picked out the tough pieces. So the story about how we ordered the frog dish: my hubs saw big flyers with pictures of their dishes in the front window. He was curious about the «jiu huang tian ji» (yellow chives with «field chicken»). They ran out of yellow chives, and asked whether it’s ok to replace it with chive flowers, and we said fine. I had totally forgotten until after we ordered the dish that «field chicken» was not chicken at all, but frog. But we were still pretty happy with the dish, though it was pretty expensive (about $ 15).
I wanted to like Coco’s. But the food was pretty average (and greasy), and our experience with the smoking indoors is a big turnoff. We may or may not be back, but I know we won’t go out of our way to come again.