Coco Lezzone – MoVernie Food Review

The Toronto Yorkville
area is always one of my favourite areas to dine and relax. There are tons of restaurants
located along the wide street of the Avenue Road. I just love the vibe around
the area, it’s chic, modern and most importantly, classy and trendy. It’s just
totally fit my MoVernie style!

Recently, I was on the
MOVE to check out Coco Lezzone, which is a stylish, rustic-chic Italian eatery that
serves stone-oven pizzas and Mediterranean seafood since 1994. So, this restaurant has been well-established and when I was posting my food pics, I have peeps telling me how much they love the spot and that it’s a go-to hotspot around the area. I took the 2016 Ford C-Max Hybrid with me and there were ample of street parking along the Avenue Road. Better yet, there was a parking lot just right beside Coco Lezzone, which was very convenient. As I dropped the Ford C-Max, I walked towards the
front area of the restaurant, I could see the inside of the  restaurant from the tall bay
windows. From the outside, I could see the patrons standing around the bar area, sipping some nice
cocktails and martinis in a very chic and trendy setting.

2016 Ford C-Max Energi

After I walked into
the entrance, I love the lightly lit area along with the beautiful marble
bar counter with cool purple and blue light fixtures. As I
walked up a few steps of stairs, I saw the dining area with long set of
tables. In particular, I really like a booth dining table that was situated
close to the kitchen and the booth could sit approximately 6-8 people
comfortably. Moreover, if you want even more privacy to host your close
friends, there was a private room behind 2 opaque sliding glass doors. The
beautiful chandelier on the ceiling and the round table were gorgeous. It definitely
added the privacy and exclusive VIP vibe into it.

Private VIP Room with 2 sliding glass doors at Coco Lezzone

The moment I arrived,
the friendly server greeted me and offered me a nice glass of white wine to
start off the evening. As I walked towards the back of the room, I saw the NOW
Foods banner and a representative from NOW Foods was on hand to showcase to the
attendees some of the latest food products that are available on its website.

In case some of the
peeps don’t know, NOW Foods is a well-established company that provides health-seeking
consumers with high-quality, affordable nutrition products. It is a family-owned
company that manufactures and distributes more than 1,400 dietary supplements,
natural foods, sports nutrition and personal care products. I am sure people
who are already living a better and healthy lives have already heard of NOW Foods. If
you haven’t, it’s never too late to know more about them now. In fact, I really
like its motto which is “Live Happy! Live Healthy! Live NOW!”. I am
sure many of us want to live a better life right now, living the moment. So, check out its website on its wide variety of products that would fit your individual needs.

NOW Foods Presentation during the food tasting menu

After a brief meeting
with the NOW Foods representative, the food tasting feast begins. First off, we
got some nice bakery bread to start off the evening with some of the nice olive
oil and dipping sauce. A Mediterranean restaurant is not a Mediterranean restaurant
without serving seafood. So, the moment the Coco Lezzone staff brought out a
number of seafood dishes, I was super happy. We were served with a dish of the
fried calamari, a dish of grilled calamari and a dish of grilled octopus. Personally,
I was very impressed with the fried calamari. It was nicely lightly battered,
retaining the freshness of the calamari with golden cooking oil. It was crispy
and complement greatly with its dipping sauce. I don’t know about you, but I
hate some other restaurants that put so much batter into the seafood that when
the dish is served to us, we couldn’t even identify what we are about to eat
and over use of batter kills the taste of its original ingredient. Thus, I was
super satisfied that Coco Lezzone did a fine job with the fried calamari to my
liking. I also enjoyed the grill calamari. The size of each piece of calamari
was well-balanced, it was cooked to perfection. I love the grill aroma on the
calamari. It’s juicy and tender. Another good dish. Now, for the grilled
octopus, it was my least favourite dishes out of the seafood items. For some
reason, I felt the octopus was a bit too chewy & the meat was just hard to
cut it away and breaking it down. Not sure if it was the ingredient itself or
just the way it was made.

Grilled octopus with mixed greens

During the food tasting menu, we got a NOW Foods Presentation from the representative. She introduced us a number of latest new healthy food products as well as some of the best selling food products that will benefit everyone. In particular, she introduced me a number of products that will benefit me greatly since I am ALWAYS on the MOVE. A product that stick to my mind was the NOW Foods B-12, it sounds cool but it also serves a useful purpose, it improves a healthy cardiovascular system. Another product that I learned and appreciated during the NOW Foods presentation was the Essential Oils. Essential Oils are made of natural products that are used for Aromatherapy. The natural extracts are diffused so they can inspire, energize, soothe, and encourage wellness and peace of mind. This is exactly what I need after being on the MOVE 24/7. There were a number of essential oils combinations but I chose the peppermint and lavender combination. I love anything lavender and I think peppermint will give me a refreshing smell.

A second round of food
came our way, this time we were served with meatballs that was slowly braised
in tomato & fresh basil with shaved parmigiano. We also were served with
grilled brussel sprouts and wild mushroom ravioli. I personally loved all three
of these dishes. If you are a veggie lovers, brussel sprouts is a nice dish. It
was a bit oily but other than that, I love the aroma and the crispiness of the
brussel sprouts. The meatballs was one of the highlights, although I would have
loved the meatballs to be a little be hotter in temperature but perhaps it was
due to the longer time it took other people from taking selfie or food pictures
of other food that delay the timing of the meatballs serving to us. Otherwise,
I enjoyed the meatballs. But from this round of the food items, my favourite
was the wild mushroom ravioli. I loved the combination of fresh wild mushrooms,
cheese and the white truffle oil. The wild mushroom inside the ravioli added another
element to the overall of the dish. I highly recommend you order this wild
mushroom ravioli.

Left: grilled brussel sprouts; Top: meatballs; Right: wild mushroom ravioli

The last item that came to our dining table was a big plate of Margherita
pizza. I recalled interviewing ex-Toronto Raptors player, Andrea Bargnani (born
in Italy) what his favourite pizza was and he said “Margherita, nice &
simple, just cheese and tomato sauce”. And I totally agree with Andrea. The plate presentation of the Margherita
pizza was very nice at Coco Lezzone. I enjoyed the cheese, the tomato sauce and
basil. However, I did find the crust to be too dry and too thick for my taste,
so I ditched the crust and only ate the topping.

Margherita Pizza

All-in-all, Coco
Lezzone is definitely a good option in the Yorkville Area. Whether it’s in the summer
or in the winter, this place gives you a warm and cozy feeling. I highly
recommend the seafood as well as the meatballs and wild mushroom ravioli.
Although I would prefer the chef to provide us with a more variety of
seafood. Instead of serving us 3 dishes of calamari and octopus being prepared in
different ways, I would prefer to try a fish dish or perhaps mussels just in case
some attendees either don’t like calamari or are allergic to calamari that at least they are not stuck with no options. But I am sure there will be another evening that I could taste
its other seafood items.

Until next time,
MoVernie is outta here!