14th Street is packed with restaurants, but Little Coco’s stands out for its trendy yet casual Italian dining experience.
The old school white marquee sign adorning the front of Little Coco’s tells passerbys all they need to know about the restaurant, reading “Pizza, Pasta, Espresso,” in capital green letters just under the bright red name. Located at 3907 14th St. NW, the modern Italian restaurant is pumping out some of the tastiest pasta and pies north of Mt. Pleasant.
The two-story brownstone building is detailed with red doors to match its sign and strings of bulb lights are draped over the small outdoor dining area in front of the restaurant. The dining room and bar are squeezed into the narrow downstairs area, with the upstairs reserved for private events. The space is vibrantly lit with red string lights filling the ceiling near the bar and hanging dome lights to fill the rest of the space.
Seating is slightly cramped with booths near the front door, high top seating parallel to the bar and an area of booths and rectangular tables in the back. Parts of the floor are tiled with black and white squares, giving old-school Italian deli vibes. And to bring the aesthetic together, red chairs and accents compliment the light brown wood tables and bar counter.
The menu is separated by appetizers, salads, pasta dishes and pizzas with a short kids menu. The well-curated list of seven appetizer options makes it hard to choose just one, so my two friends and I decided to share the 18-month prosciutto & whipped burrata ($15), Coco’s meatballs ($13) and lemon ricotta & truffle marinated artichokes ($9).
The big decision is whether to order a pizza or pasta dish for your main course, a choice our waitress said is an easy win for pasta. But if you’re in a definite pie mood, she recommended the fool’s gold pizza ($19) topped with white sauce, fig, prosciutto, honeycomb and arugula. As a spicy food lover, the Mt. Vesuvius ($17) with red sauce, mozzarella, pecorino, pepperoni, sopressata, jalapeño and red wine pepper honey also caught my eye.
By the advice of our waitress, we each ordered one pasta dish from the seven options on the menu. My friends tried out the fra diavolo risotto ($25) with seared scallops and fried calamari, and the saffron tagliatelle ($19) with lamb ragu.
Squid is one of my favorite ingredients because of its distinct briney seafood flavor, so I ordered the squid ink capellini ($19) with XO butter sauce, shrimp, lime, cilantro and a prosciutto crumb topping.
Served in a shallow ceramic bowl, the stark black capellini – similar to angel hair pasta – contrasted with the creamy yellow tint of the butter sauce and bright green leaves of cilantro made my dish the prettiest on the table.
XO sauce, which typically consists of dried shrimp, dried scallops and cured ham cooked with onions, garlic and chili pepper is a traditionally Chinese condiment. But infused into the butter sauce that coated the pasta, it brought a punch of seafood-centric umami flavor that pairs well with the sauteed shrimp and squid ink flavor.
The shrimp was cut into quarter-sized pieces and was cooked just enough to give a snap when you take a bite but retain a juicy interior. On top of the al dente nest of pasta and shrimp, the fresh cilantro leaves and crunchy prosciutto crumb proved integral components of the dish.
With just a cannoli and vanilla or chocolate gelato on the dessert menu, you might be better off saving your sweet tooth for the ice-cream you’ve been saving in your freezer. But as any good Italian restaurant does, Little Coco’s has a long enough list of white, red and sparkling wine along with a list of draft or canned beer and a full bar for classic cocktails.
A date night or dinner with friends would be well-spent at Little Coco’s: the environment is warm and welcoming and the food is a refreshing modern change of pace from what the abundance of classic Italian joints around D.C. have to offer.
