No. 5 on TastyNes Tour and WNST Baltimore 27th Anniversary: Koco’s Pub “Koconut Shrimp” with Raspberry Jalapeno Sauce

You know about the crab cakes at Koco’s Pub in Lauravile. Let us tell you about the best coconut shrimp you’ve ever had in your life and why the sides are to be savored at all of our favorite restaurants where we get the same thing every time we go. Nestor also refused a private teaser reveal to Ricig and Marcella on the final four spots, so you’ll just have to follow along the TastyNes trail for deliciousness…

Nestor Aparicio discusses his top five favorite dishes from various restaurants, emphasizing the quality and uniqueness of each. He highlights Koco’s crab cakes, which are a staple, and their coconut shrimp with raspberry jalapeno sauce, created by chef Eric. Nestor praises the freshness and effort put into the shrimp, noting it’s not typically found in other restaurants. He also mentions other favorites like fried oysters from Fade, cheesesteaks from Pizza John’s, and Oysters Rockefeller from Costas. The conversation underscores the importance of innovation and quality in restaurant offerings.

• [ ] @Nestor Aparicio – Nestor to purchase brioche English muffins from to enjoy with Koco’s crab cakes at home.
• [ ] Marcella to continue offering the popular coconut shrimp dish on Koco’s menu.

Nestor Aparicio’s Top Five Food Destinations

• Nestor Aparicio discusses his top five food destinations, emphasizing that his crab cakes are well-known but he wants to highlight other items.
• Marcella Knight and Mike Ricigliano join the conversation, with Marcella expressing her favorite items.
• Nestor explains his criteria for the top five, mentioning his long-term relationship with certain items and the evolution of his favorites.
• He highlights the popularity of crab cakes at his restaurant, noting that locals often order different items due to frequent visits.

The Evolution of Coco’s Menu

• Nestor talks about the evolution of Coco’s menu, mentioning the introduction of items like meatballs and the popularity of crab cakes.
• Marcella and Nestor discuss the quality of frozen breaded shrimp and the decision to create their own version.
• They introduce the raspberry jalapeno sauce, which is used for both shrimp and wings, and the process of making it from scratch.
• Nestor praises the coconut shrimp and the effort put into maintaining its quality, despite the high food cost.

Nestor’s Culinary Journey

• Nestor shares his recent culinary experiences, featuring different items from various restaurants.
• He mentions his love for fried oysters, cheesesteaks, and the scratch kitchen at Pizza John’s.
• Nestor highlights the importance of presentation and the impact of traditional wrapping methods on the taste of cheesesteaks.
• He discusses the quality of ingredients and the effort put into making dishes like Oysters Rockefeller and crab Imperial.

The Role of Innovation in Koco’s Success

• Nestor and Marcella discuss the role of Eric, the chef, in innovating and improving Koco’s menu.
• Eric’s journey from helping out as a teenager to becoming a key figure in the restaurant’s success is highlighted.
• Nestor emphasizes the love and effort put into creating unique dishes like coconut shrimp and cream of crab soup.
• The conversation ends with Nestor promoting Koco’s crab cakes and other items, encouraging listeners to try them.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Coconut shrimp, raspberry jalapeno sauce, crab cakes, cream of crab soup, fried oysters, cheesesteak, scratch kitchen, Pizza John’s, Costas, crab Imperial, gumbo, Eric, menu innovation, food cost, local favorites.

SPEAKERS

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Marcella Knight, Nestor Aparicio, Mike Ricigliano

Nestor Aparicio  00:00

Mean, you evolved into becoming, I mean, honestly, a foodie destination based on your crab cake. And I ain’t even gonna talk about your crab cakes. How about that? I mean, everybody else talks about it. I want to talk about this is, this is, this is the part where I’m gonna feature number five. Number five. I mean, I’ve offended somebody sponsoring your number 987, my top four aren’t even sponsors. Two of them I’ve never mentioned on the radio.

Marcella Knight  00:23

Are they? Are you these your face? Are my favorite? Are they in Oh,

Mike Ricigliano  00:27

so 5/5. Favorite in order.

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Marcella Knight  00:29

I just wrong. I

Nestor Aparicio  00:32

tried to put them in order. See, everybody’s mad at me. If they’re not number one. I mean number one is nobody’s gone alphabetically. You know how I did

Mike Ricigliano  00:41

tell me what number one is, because I have not, no, okay, all right,

Marcella Knight  00:44

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so, oh, we’re going backwards.

Nestor Aparicio  00:46

Well, I didn’t want to offend my friends at the Beaumont and Catonsville, but I needed to do shows all month, so I made their fried lobster, like in the 20s, but I said I had dinner at a steak there last night. Like it’s a top five restaurant that we go to. I’ve only been eating there a couple years. My number one item, I’ve been eating for 20 years. My number two item, I’ve only been eating for maybe 10 years because it didn’t exist. My number three item is a place that I’m famous for. I’m known for this place, okay, but the item on the menu, they did not even serve meatballs 10 years ago, right? Like, literally didn’t have a meatball on their menu. They were an Italian restaurant without a meat.

Marcella Knight  01:22

Restaurant without a meatball. I’m not telling anybody.

Nestor Aparicio  01:28

I know nothing. I’m like Schultz. I know nothing, right? I want to do in this segment, and we’re going to do Africa, and I want to do more, but this to me, and I don’t know why I even ordered it when I came in here years ago, and I fell in love, and I love your crab because, you know, I love your your cream of crab. I already had a bowl of cream of crab soup today. I was gonna feature that as part of the cream. I was gonna do cream and Maryland crab soup every day for a month. And then at some point in spring, I’m like, I love the pretzel at the Philly pretzel factory. I love Indian food. I want to feature it. I love my Thai place, but it’s not a place that’s a sponsor, Fuji San. I’ve never put a picture up. I made it number 19. You know, many times I’ve ordered Chinese food from happy China and Hartford. I get it once a week. I love it so much, but it’s not like something. I feature my shrimp and broccoli there. I just wanted one time to take care of all my sponsors and feature something at Costas. I featured their oysters, Rockefeller, because they’re cream spinach is to beat the band. It’s phenomenal. And nobody people go to Costas for crabs or crab cake, or they get this or that, or they got their thing, or whatever. People come here. And every I’m looking I got Marie, every person gets a crab cake in here without it. Is it 80% tables, 75% get a crab cake. People come in here,

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Marcella Knight  02:51

I would say that crab cakes are probably close to 90% of our sales.

Nestor Aparicio  02:59

Six people at a table five get a crab cake? Yes, and that’s what I see when I’m physically now,

Marcella Knight  03:04

locals will get something else because they come in multiple times a week, and you can’t eat a crab cake

Nestor Aparicio  03:10

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all the time. Your crab cakes

Marcella Knight  03:12

too big. I can’t eat anything else. It’s the locals that come in for the burgers and the wings. My wife loves your brothers. Wednesday night specials that Eric does, you know?

Nestor Aparicio  03:21

And the specials are great, I mean, but this, where does this emanate from? Because you have told me about this three or four times. Once a year, we talk about this, and I eat it because I just think, like so many places you go and get fried shrimp, or shrimp, it’s a Cisco breaded thing. And Margaritaville was made in the factory and somewhere in Kansas, and it’s been frozen for three months, and it it’s good, it’s fine. And then it give you some mango sticky sauce and or some cocktail. It’s fine. This is a labor of love for your business. It’s not a huge it’s a huge food cost thing. You probably don’t make a fortune on it, but it is unpress number five on my list. And when you hear the top four, you you know, I got other sponsors mad at me because it’s number five, but I love your coconut shrimp, and I just don’t know anywhere else where I get coconut shrimp, another place, but gonna be frozen. It’s not going to be how you came up with it or thought about it, or why you even keep it on the menu when it’s such a pain in the butt, but it’s just so delicious.

Marcella Knight  04:23

You know, we used to have the frozen breaded shrimp, and it was good, you talked, man, at some point, the quality of it went down, and we weren’t happy with it. And so Eric decided he was going to do his own so we thought, because we’re tropical, kind of, you know,

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Nestor Aparicio  04:46

this is because, really literally, that you have coconut shrimp, okay, so

Marcella Knight  04:51

we started doing our own and and then the raspberry jalapeno sauce is one of our wing sauces. Yes. So we didn’t want to do the typical orange marmalade that most places sell with it, so we decided to use our Raspberry jalapeno sauce.

Nestor Aparicio  05:08

Does anybody complain about the raspberry or do people eat it? Say I’ve not. I’ve never eaten a shrimp like this in my life, which is one of this is raspberry jalapeno sauce. It’s a very similar sauce to what they do on the chicken and waffles at State Fair, one of my other great clients over Catonsville. So they do, literally, it’s a little more jalapeno, a little more spicy sauce waffles.

Marcella Knight  05:31

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It has literally, do you know what we do to make the sauce? We roast our own jalapenos. First nice we put them on the grill and cook them down. We do literally everything from scratch, from that sauce, when the peppers are cooking, it smells so good in here.

Mike Ricigliano  05:48

Let me just say that five being the fifth number five, five is a good number in this town. Nestor Brooks, Joe Flacco, you know, five is a great number. So you know, you’ve given her great, game. I’m gonna be honest

Nestor Aparicio  06:02

with you. The only reason you’re number five is because you were closed a couple weeks ago. I could do the show here, and you knocked it down two numbers was feature my my clients and friends in the top 10. Because I, I mean, you all have one thing that I love, right? So I did the show last week, a Thursday, I did the show at fade least, and I featured fried oysters. I’d never had a fried oyster in my life. Oh my gosh. Flash fries. These with great. I mean, they’re outrageously delicious. So I featured that at her place. Friday, I was at Pizza John’s. I did not feature the pizza, although the pizza is unbelievable. And you know that I featured their Cheesesteak.

Marcella Knight  06:42

You know, I haven’t had their cheesesteak in a really long it is delicious. When you get it to go, do they wrap it in paper, or do they stick it in a box? They wrap it in paper? Oh, I love that. That makes such a difference. I really got a cheesesteak from somewhere for my crew here, and it didn’t get melty it, yeah, it was just in a regular carry out container. And I grew up with the old school sub shops that wrapped it up, wrapped it in the paper, right? And something about that just, I don’t know if it makes it taste better or it’s just a memory that I have, but it it’s, well, they make better

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Nestor Aparicio  07:19

scratch kitchen. You have so little space here. Pizza John’s, when I tried to explain, I explained this to JB Jennings the other day, Wendy bronfon from curio wellness, who’s really underwriting the 27th anniversary. I sent her home with pizzas and cheesesteaks for her family. She doesn’t eat meat, but her husband does. So I sent him home with all food. And I said to her, this is like a scratch kitchen, and she’s an operator. She runs farm daughter at curio. She’s Brand Officer at Pizza John’s. They have a television right above the counter that runs 24 hours a day, a like 12 minute feature on them making their bread, their dough there, which shows them making, cutting the potatoes like it’s a video showing their operation. Nobody knows that, because you go to pizza, John’s, you don’t stare at it. Wendy sat there. She’s like, I could watch this all day. Loves operations. Brian billets like that too. When I did play it over to pizza, John, this thing, Mr. John over there, took him through the kitchen 15 years ago, when Brian was with me all the time, yes, and Brian just is, like, never seen operation like this. You know, Brian. So on Friday I did that, um, Monday, I was at Costas, I did Oysters Rockefeller, which, they’re just phenomenal. I also love their crab Imperial. Don’t tell anybody that makes crab cakes this Mars. I love crab Imperial, and I am partial crab Imperial in some weird way that like, if I get crab Imperial, I like that more than I like crab cake, even though it’s wet and sort of different. But I love crab Imperial, and I did the mushroom with that yesterday. I did slashing Cooper’s gumbo. Have you ever had their gum?

Marcella Knight  08:58

I have, I have, it’s very good.

Nestor Aparicio  09:01

So I’m just doing my favorite, and they’re known for their burgers, right? I mean, their burger place, right? Yeah, and they have a great fish taco. So the things that like the crab cake is your signature thing, the 11 ounce. Her mom’s hands were 11 ounces. I gotta get that in here as well. But these other items that you put on your menu, a lot of other places don’t take their side. Yeah, we do pizza, we do crab cakes, is all we do. I think that the amount of love you put into the other things on the menu here, and specials, that’s what does make people stop by. Because everybody knows about the crab cakes here, and I’m bougie with you. You know, there’s I never eat your crab cake in here. I take it home.

Marcella Knight  09:38

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You take it home. I take it home. Make a Burke’s muffin out of it.

09:40

Well, you know why? Oh, that’s right, I was here with you.

Nestor Aparicio  09:44

I when I’m here, I get I love your Greek salad, I love it, I love your coconut shrimp, and I love your cream of crab soup. And now I have just admitted that probably the last six times I’ve been in here, I’ve gotten the exact you. Same thing every time, and I take your crab cake home with me, and I do exactly what you know I’m gonna do to it. By the way, since we got together last time, I was up at Kooper’s and Timonium, they have a growls next door supermarket, yep. And I went in there, and they have my beige English muffins. I know about the regular English muffins, and I knew about the sourdough they do a brioche. Oh, a brioche. My next Koco’s crab cake to go, as everyone should come over here and get them to go.

10:35

English muffin. Brioche.

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Nestor Aparicio  10:36

A brioche. English muffin. They were on sale, and I didn’t buy them. Two weeks ago, I went to Cooper’s. I told you I was there last night eating the gumbo. I walked in at 658 grouse closes at seven o’clock. I screwed myself. I didn’t wind up getting the brioche. I’m hoping Safeway has them. So I want to get I will leave here today. I am getting brioche Bay.

11:00

Oh, the base supply the crab

Nestor Aparicio  11:02

cake, and it’ll be fantastic. I saw Liz making it fresh over there. Um, but your your coconut shrimp? So was this mom’s or yours

Marcella Knight  11:13

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or no, this is Eric,

Nestor Aparicio  11:16

yeah, my dude, you know, like,

Mike Ricigliano  11:19

this is just, how long has Eric been here as a chef?

Marcella Knight  11:23

Eric has been here? Well, he started very young. His mom came in here as a customer. He’s still young, and, yeah, he’s still young. And he used to come in as a teenager, though, and help take out trash and, wow, do things, you know. That’s cool. That’s a cool

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Nestor Aparicio  11:39

evolution, yeah, and now he’s made it number five,

Marcella Knight  11:43

yeah, I would say he’s been with us 10 years.

Mike Ricigliano  11:48

I haven’t looked lately back and some of your stuff that you are big sellers for, your are his innovations.

Marcella Knight  11:56

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Yeah, yeah. He’s he has added a lot to her there. He is. Added a lot. No, I know he’s, uh, he’s the shy guy. Well, he loves to make people happy through food.

Nestor Aparicio  12:12

Though, by all means, if you’ve ever had a Coco’s crab cake, you know about it, you’ll be back. Get the coconut shrimp. Get the cream of crab soup when you come in. Get a gin and tonic for Marcy, but don’t get the tonic because she didn’t like care for the tonic so much. And get these coconut shrimp. But get get crab cakes to go. We’re here.