M.M. Cloutier
| Special to Palm Beach Daily News
With a French Riviera-style culinary twist, the new Palm Beach restaurant at The Vineta Hotel — the fully renovated boutique hotel that recently opened on Cocoanut Row — now is serves breakfast, lunch and dinner.
With a 64-seat dining room and a 32-seat courtyard for al fresco dining, Coco’s features upscale Mediterranean cuisine.
The restauruant also offers weekend brunch.
A cocktail program with classic and proprietary drinks also is a highlight — served in the restaurant and at an adjacent 37-seat bar — along with an ample wine and Champagne list.
Coco’s debuted Feb. 28, when The Vineta, managed by Germany-based Oetker Hotels, welcomed its first guests at 363 Cocoanut Row.
The opening followed a three-year renovation of the longstanding four-story hospitality property — formerly known, for decades, as The Chesterfield — after new owners assumed control in 2022.
Coco’s menus feature a handful of signature dishes that hail from a famed French Riviera hotel also under the Oetker banner — Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes.
“There are so many places to dine in Palm Beach now, but Coco’s offers something distinctly different as part of Oetker Hotels’ portfolio,” Coco’s executive chef Brian Rodriguez told the Daily News.
“Coco’s menus with dishes from Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc (are) familiar to many who travel to the south of France, yet for others it will be a completely new and delicious experience,” said Rodriguez, a former New Yorker who grew up in the Tenerife on Spain’s Canary Islands.
“We’re delighted to share it with our community and guests,” he said.
During the creation of Coco’s menus, Rodriguez collaborated with Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc head chefs Sébastien Broda and Tarek Ahamada.
Consider Coco’s dinner menu: It features such dishes as paccheri pasta with house-made tomato sauce, stracciatella and fresh basil ($32) and free-range chicken “supreme” with potato puree, black-olive powder, confit artichoke and sauce diable ($43). But there also are signature dishes from The Vineta’s southern-France sibling, including steak Diane ($85) — an 8-ounce Australian Wagyu ribeye with Dijon mustard, Cognac and brown butter — and a seabass dish (market price) with fennel puree, crushed San Marzano tomatoes and basil mayonnaise.
To start a dinner meal, patrons can choose from such appetizers as golden tomato gazpacho ($23); Morel mushrooms ($34) with spinach, soft potato gnocchi and parmesan jus; and raw-bar fare — fresh oysters perhaps, or Mediterranean red-prawn carpaccio ($35) with citrus cream, lemon oil and smoked trout roe.
Mornings at Coco’s feature lemon-ricotta pancakes, frittata Florentine and acai bowls, among other itemjs, while lunch offers such dishes as crab-and-avocado cocktail, a signature burger and linguini with clams.
At the bar adjacent to Coco’s, look for such classic drinks as the Sidecar and Vesper. Proprietary drinks include The Hibiscus and the Vineta Honey & Blush. Other cocktails are said to be inspired by nearby Pan’s Garden.
Meanwhile, other food-and-beverage venues at The Vineta include the Pool House, located beside the hotel’s swiming pool.
Hotel guests can order breakfast there, and guests and well as Palm Beachers can enjoy afternoon fare: seabream ceviche, for instance, or salads, sandwiches and pizza from a recipe from Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc.
Hotel rates at The Vineta currently start at $1,900 a night.
The property has undergone an extensive overhaul since April 2022, when British billionaire brothers David Reuben and Simon Reuben bought the landmarked property for $42 million.
Originally built in the 1920s, the hotel building initially opened in 1926 as the Lido-Venice. From 1928 until the late 1970s, it was known as The Vineta and went through several ownership changes.
When sold in 2022 to the Reben brothers, the seller was a company affiliated with Tollman-Hanley Hotel Group and former Palm Beach resident Beatrice Tollman of Red Carnation Hotels, which had run the hotel for some 30 years as The Chesterfield.
Dining and Cooking