My Guts Are Smarter Than Your Guts

Restaurant: Coco's Southern Style Soul Food and Famous Deep Fried Lobster

Intersection: Clark between Congress and Van Buren.

Rating: 1.5/5

February 2^nd, 2010:

My gastrointestinal tract is in danger. I can feel it. I have been cautious up until now; sticking with Burger Joints, Breakfast Places and Civil War Theme Restaurants. It’s time to take a risk. Usually, when describing “risky behavior”, doctors will mention drug use, promiscuous sex and other daredevil antics. They never mentioned deep fried lobster.

There are three types of days during a Chicago winter:

• ·      The Blower’s Daughter: Mild almost warm, gray, wet, sloppy. Named for the Damien Rice song[1].
• ·      Winter Wonderland: Cold but not uncomfortable. Blustery. Snowy.
• ·      Well Worn Hand: Bleak, dark, snowy, unbearably cold and windy. Named for the Editors song[2].

Thank god, today is a Blower’s Daughter. This is my first entry that requires very little travel. No bus, no train, no cab, just some good old fashioned walking. God I hate walking, even around the block, but something about a Blower’s Daughter makes walking a little more bearable. I am answering the siren’s song. The clarion call of Coco’s Famous Deep Fried Lobster.

I see the sign every time I come home on the 22. Deep fried lobster? It sounds terrible. It sounds like a culinary abortion. It sounds, overall, like bad idea jeans. Yet, there is something truly tantalizing about the idea. I’ve always been one for some good soul food. I’ve always known to never judge a hole in the wall by appearances. I’ve also always known that shellfish is extremely easy to fuck up when a fryer is involved. But if you’re willing to take the risk fried shellfish and hole in the wall soul food joints can be amazing[3]. There is no reward without risk.

Walking to Coco’s, I start to truly doubt this idea. I can see the place, nestled between a pawn shop and a liquor store. Yet, despite my gastrointestinal hesitance, I keep walking. I keep repeating Rob Gordon’s words, “My guts have shit for brains”.

I enter the establishment and met by the beautiful smell of fried things. That misty, greasy, salty, warm smell. This is a good smell. This is a good sign. I ask for a small order of deep fried lobster, a side of fries and a drink. They do not serve drinks. I am pointed to an RC Cola[4] vending machine, directly behind me. Then another hitch is thrown in my giddy up, they do not take cash. I run next door to the pawn shop for their ATM and almost buy a drum set. I then run back and pay.

My debts paid and my order placed, I sit down and take in the glorious smell of fried food. I sit for easily 10 minutes and listen to the CTA bus driver in front of me tells the history of the 24 to his female companion, growing restless every minute. The suspense builds as the complexities of bus routes south of Chinatown are explained in explicit detail. I am waiting for, what smells like, an amazing meal. Just as I start to get interested in transit history, I hear my number yelled. I leap to my feet and am handed the bottom of a Styrofoam container filled with golden nuggets of lobster meat and fries that are so seasoned they’re practically orange.

This is it, the moment I have been waiting for, deep fried lobster. I pick up one of the oddly shaped morsels and take a bite into a seemingly flavorless nugget of rubber. Well, it’s not flavorless, mostly I just taste salt with a mild undertone of fish. This is disappointing. If I didn’t write everything in pen, these little babies would make a seriously greasy but effective eraser. The fries are decent but a little flaccid for my taste.

I attempt to salvage this meal by using the various sauces that I was given. The hot sauce is all heat and no flavor, making for a fiery piece of greasy rubber. The mild sauce however is great. Really, the mild sauce was the best part of the meal. It made it easier to eat the rest of the nuggets but didn’t manage to change the fact that those little fuckers were chewy. Despite the revolting nature of the texture and the absence of flavor, I finish all but one of the nuggets. I proceed to take the saved nugget and throw it on the table. Yet another disappointment, while rubbery, these nuggets do not bounce. There is absolutely no fun to be had with deep fried lobster.

If you only learn one thing from this blog, please let it be this: Always go with your gut. Rob Gordon is wrong[5], my guts are brilliant. They knew a bad idea when they heard it.

---

[1] Off the album “O”.

[2] The closing track of “An End Has A Start”.

[3] I’ve had some truly awful calamari in my time.

[4] Damn, I’m a Shasta man.

[5] About guts and for naming “Janie Jones” by The Clash as a better song than Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road”.