Restaurant Review: Fine Dining and Breathing at Cochineal

If you’re looking for a fancy birthday dinner in Marfa, your options are limited. There’s a couple of glorified hotel bars, Margaret’s (who boasts a $14 tuna melt), and I mean, you can always just get burritos. But then there’s Cochineal, a reservation-only restaurant by James Beard semifinalist Alexandra Gates. As long as you’re fully prepared to shell out some big buckaroonies, the words “reservation-only” and “James Beard” should make the decision a no-brainer. And speaking of decisions, the menu is entirely prix fixe, so you don’t have to make a single goddamn one!

Reservations are made via email with Jules. Upon confirmation, they’ll remind you that the meal consists of 5 - 7 courses spread out over 2.5+ hours, “like a leisurely dinner party”. You’ve never thought of yourself as the kind of person who would be invited to a dinner party in real life, so this is already feeling very fancy. Jules asks if you have any dietary restrictions and you say no, because you respect the culinary arts more than your digestive system.

We stroll into the garden patio at 5:05 p.m., five minutes early for our reservation, softly stoned and in that vacation kind of love, and are seated right away at one of about 15 empty tables outside. The chairs are metal and not comfortable at all; I regret not stealing a few throw pillows from the Airbnb for our asses (hindsight is 20/20). Our waiter Sean approaches in a knee-length skirt, a corduroy Western shirt, and hightop converse. This is not a uniform. He initiates our supper with a bottle of the finest bubbly water from Mexico. 

I am a firm believer that every meal should begin with some kind of carbohydrate primer, be it chips and salsa or, in this case, house heirloom grain bread with charred spring onion cultured butter, smoked trout rillette, and two radishes plucked from the Cochineal garden like two seconds ago, all paired with a refreshing grapefruit prosecco spritzer. I seriously can’t tell which is trout and which is butter just by looking at it, but I spread whatever’s in the cute little ceramic dish all over my slice. I think it’s butter, but Will tells me he definitely got the butter, and it’s not that I don’t trust him but I am the one who made the reservation… Anyway, he had the butter. The trout thing reminds me of chicken salad from Graul’s - kinda watery, lemony, herby. The butter is clearly charred, if nothing else. Unfortunately, the bread is not warm. 

The second dish is simply called “scallop”. When it appears it is, in fact, a single scallop, placed in the corner of a huge plate. A nebula of garden pistou weaves around it, plus fava beans from Ft. Davis, a couple of pine nuts, and the teensiest edible flowers. Scallop slices with a fork and glides over either side of my tongue, silky and slightly blackened, soon drenched by a French white wine with a very long name, lively and crisp. As we scrape the last bits of pistou, an older couple is seated at the table directly next to us. They’re smartly dressed and I think they must be professors or, at the very least, high school English teachers. 

Wild-hunted RAW AF nilgai (pardon my butter-smudged camera)

Next is the wild-hunted nilgai, which, thank god, all four of us have to Google. Nilgai are deer-ish antelopes, native to India but released in South Texas in the 1930s as game animals. Here it’s presented as a circular patty, not unlike a sausage, partnered with early summer truffle, creme fraiche, and a lion’s mane fritter. Whenever I buy psilocybin microdosing pills, my dealer packages them in a Ziploc labeled “Lion’s Mane”, so I consider myself a friendly ally to the mushroom pancake. The antelope is surprisingly cold, like, almost frozen. It’s oily but light, soft except the occasional icy bit. It’s also raw, and I guess that’s allowed? I’ve never had anything like it, which is precisely what I came for.

While we’re waiting on a wild-hunted boar, a group of five women in jean cutoffs and white cowboy boots strut through the patio and into the restaurant. They emerge ten seconds later, ushered out by the hostess, who is trying her best to explain they’re reservation-only. 

“We’re just here for a drink,” says one in sunglasses. “There’s, like, no one here”. 

“We’ll be sooo quick,” another chimes in. Idiots, I think. I made my reservation a month ago! I briefly enjoy my prowess over the booty-shorted women until, to my absolute dismay, they are seated and supplied with a round of pink cocktails. 

A wild-hunted boar schnitzel with blackberry-mezcal compote appears with a smokey blackberry spritz. I am not impressed with the blackberry-on-blackberry pairing, but maybe I’m just mad about the bachelorette party over there without a reservation. Anyway, the boar is reminiscent of chicken fried steak; it’s tough and crispy and picked at. If this menu were a setlist, they’d be playing some new, obscure, experimental song and half the audience is heading to the bar for another drink. That is until the band starts a familiar riff that demands absolute attention: goat cheese. We flock to the stage. A firm charred slice swims in an asparagus veloute. Fresh spears provide a necessary crunch, and the whole thing tastes like spring and sea salt. 

At this point, we’re soaring. A few more tables have migrated around us and the sun’s starting to fade through the trees. We grab each other’s hands across the table. We giggle. It’s our birthday and we’re so full. We’re talking about the moon and the universe when Sean brings us bison, the singer’s last song. 

Bison baby!

The medium-rare cut is the size of a baby’s fist and rests on a spoonful of salvitxada, a Catalonian barbecue sauce. A charred spring onion is curled up on top, a cheerful callback to the bread from before. Beside it, scattered marigolds. All of it is elevated by a round and full house red, custom-made and absolutely divine. We eat and drink slowly, savoring each fleeting moment. 

I believe every great restaurant is a microcosm of its restroom, so I excuse myself to size up Cochineal once and for all. I pass the hostess stand and the open kitchen to a single occupied door across from the kitchen exit. I stand in the hallway for a few seconds before realizing I'm totally in the way, but soon a gray-haired dude opens the door while buckling his belt. We make awkward eye contact and I scoot past him. 

It’s dark in there, much darker than the rest of the place, and I can’t figure out the lock on the door (luckily I wore a bodysuit to my birthday dinner, so I have to get completely naked to piss). I test the lock three times and undress. There’s spent incense on the shelf behind the toilet, which I hope is on some kind of checklist: “every hour on the hour, light a stick of Scarpa”. As I’m washing my hands with brown bottle soap, I gauge myself in the mirror of this dimly-lit bathroom. It’s not as nice as I thought it’d be, but I’m glowing. 

The premeditated encore is, of course, our birthday surprise. Sean presents not one but two small cakes on wooden platters, each guarded with a lit tea candle. We make our separate wishes and start carving our vanilla sponges, dressed with blackberry compote, mascarpone, and lemon curd. It’s sweet but not too sweet, and reminds me of a childhood friend who used to make lemon bars for fun at age 15. I miss her vaguely, the idea of her deeply. 

Will being all cute next to the telescopes

Will surrenders his fork after a few bites and heads to the restroom. While he’s gone, I eat as much of the mascarpone as humanly possible. It’s acidic, creamy, and fluffy, the sponge dry in comparison. The tart compote stings and sizzles on my tongue. By the time he returns, my cake is entirely robbed of its accouterments. Sean comes to check on us and gracefully takes our surprises away. We order our after-dinner drinks: a digestif for Will, and an espresso for me. I’m nervous about my choice given that I make espresso for a living and have very high standards, but we’re heading to the McDonald Observatory in thirty minutes for the Star Party and I really don’t want to fall asleep in the car. 

Will’s amaro is syrupy and bitter and exactly what the doctor ordered. The espresso, on the other hand, is deprived of crema and assisted by two sugar cubes which it desperately needs. It’s hollow and lacks depth, perhaps an old roast date or coffee left in the hopper too long, still stretched to a 1:2 ratio. I briefly consider offering some free advice to whoever’s in charge of coffee service, but I’ve had too much to drink and besides, I’m off the clock. We pay the bill (which is not cheap, but is, I think, worth it) and walk around the block. The desert settles into a new shade of lavender.