Restaurant Cochineal — Restaurant in Marfa

My partner and I planned our entire Big Bend National Park-Marfa trip around the tasting menu at Cochineal, eager to experience the cuisine of a James Beard award-winning restaurant. Unfortunately, our experience was highly disappointing, and the price was not worth the poor service we received.

We spent the day at Big Bend and began calling the restaurant as soon as it opened at 5 PM to see if we could push back our reservation, for which we had already paid a deposit. No one answered the phone. Fifteen minutes before our reservation, we received a call from the restaurant informing us that they were not busy and we could push back our time. We arrived on time and waited over 18 minutes before being greeted by our server, Caroline, to get our drinks.

When I asked Caroline to go over the tasting menu, her response was odd, confused, and uncomfortable. We asked if we could order additional items off the à la carte menu, but she said no because everything was timed, and we had reserved the tasting menu. This didn't make sense, as they took so long to greet us and get our drinks. We wanted the tasting menu but also additional food since we practice fasting, and this was our only meal of the day. I've never heard of a fine dining establishment denying customers the opportunity to spend more money, especially when they were not busy.

When we asked for coffee, Caroline said they had espresso but gave a rude response when we asked for an Americano. My partner was so turned off by her attitude that he wanted to leave, regardless of the deposit we had paid. We received better service for half the price at Margaret’s the night before. When asked for a tequila menu, Caroline brought over just three tequilas, even though we saw more at the bar. I had to get up and show her what I wanted, which was a very odd interaction.

The food was good, but the overall experience with our server was terrible. We were so excited to try this restaurant, but from the beginning, it was a mess. I’m extremely disappointed in the management team for not providing their server with better training. When experiencing a tasting menu at this high of a cost, the server is part of the overall experience and should be there to provide whatever we need within reason, like drinks and answers to what’s on the menu. Save your money and go...

We came in with pretty high hopes! Reviews seem mostly positive, but this experience was a major miss. Like, borderline pretty terrible.

It took us 17 minutes after our reservation time of 6:30 (which we were seated at 6:26) to see a server. We shot everything at him, because why wouldn’t we with 17 minutes to review the menus? Drinks took another 12 minutes to come, our first of three appetizers came nearly 70 minutes after we were seated. The gemischter salat was fine. Nothing inspirational and definitely a little lacking for $17.

Next came the croquettes which were actually horrible. You should seriously consider removing this from the menu. It was closer to a hush puppy with only a single shred of mushroom in one of the three fried balls. Disgusting, bland, and a misleading menu item if you were expecting mushrooms.

We ordered the escargot after hearing it was the best thing on the menu. Our server forgot to put it in. So it never came.

Our entrees came, and they were fine. Frankly, after the time we’d spent waiting and munching on less than satisfying apps, I would’ve eaten anything. I am really not a harsh critic. At all.

But your mushroom risotto is among the least inspired I’ve eaten. I make better in my instant pot each month. A mess of an emulsion, drenched in olive oil. The mushrooms need to be cooked much more conservatively in significantly less oil, otherwise it just tastes vaguely umami. They are lost in the richness (read: oiliness of the risotto itself) which mostly just tasted like vegetable stock and onions. Please consider a better textural experience.

The trout was fine. Crispy as expected with flash fried fish, the sauce was up to par. A (maybe bright) vegetable side is desperately needed for this one to break up a mostly neutral fishy experience.

The service was slow, awkward, and also just downright bad. Forgotten, tucked away in a corner, items left in his brain and not on our table. Just a very bad experience.

Overall, I would not recommend to anyone I care about, and I will not be back. Almost two and a half hours, and $200 for an extremely underwhelming experience is sorely disappointing.

Absolutely do not make a reservation here if you think you’re going to do anything afterwards. You will be stuck waiting for...

My wife and I spent our NYE night here, and when I say night, I mean all night and morning, stuck in misery. We had reserved the 9:30PM to midnight seating, and prepared for the 9 courses all day by avoiding a big meal. On our arrival at 9:30 I was met by a clearly already stressed hostess who I’d assume had already handed out her last care a few hours ago. She told us they were running behind, maybe 20-30 mins, No we can’t come out of the cold, wait outside, and if you’d like to purchase a drink while you wait, we will oblige. If not, you can go explore the ghost town Marfa had become that late night. 30mins, not that bad, we will make lemonade… well, after an hour, and observing people getting served their salad course instead, my powerful observation skills kicked in that they were not being honest about a 30 minute wait. So, I walked in and asked a table, and was overwhelmed with the entire table trying to complain and save me all at once. So we got another drink on our empty stomachs. It was 11:30PM by the time we got seated. The magical champagne toast was just after the second course. The food was actually pretty good, but was still on the cold/Luke warm side many times. The service was apologetic and good (and we honestly felt bad; who’d want to spend their NYE working this cluster). We ended our night early at 3AM (not a typo) with the remaining courses boxed. Over $500 poorer. And exhausted, feeling strongly that was a evil joke bleed over of 2021 into our fresh start year. I cant blame the staff. I can blame the incompetent management of this restaurant. They clearly choose greed over quality in a really extreme way. Packing way more seatings (3 that night) and way more people into that tiny restaurant than they could ever logically handle. I don’t do food for a living, never have, but you take one look at their kitchen and it’s completely obvious they couldn’t handle the load of people dropped on them. In summary: don’t go here. Do fancy food in a city that a single restaurant doesn’t have a monopoly on...