Middle of the road
There are a number of chain restaurants that come and go and leave not much of a trace behind. I suspect that is the fate of Cote that in a few years will disappear to be replaced by some eatery theme that hits the spot of the moment. This one lies about half way between a Café Rouge and a decent London Brasserie such as Les Deux Salons. It looks like a chain from the inside and the out.
The menu contains most of the usual suspects, from which my wife chose French Onion Soup and Boeuf Bourguignon, and I chose a small portion of mussels with the cream in the sauce replaced by tomato, and a rib-eye steak and skinny fries. All told it was okay and I'd probably take more issue with the sourcing of the meat than with the cooking of it. My rib-eye wasn't a great piece of steak, and I did spy a piece of my wife's boeuf hidden under a piece of toast served with her main, consigned there because it was gristly she said. Altogether it was an acceptable rather than exciting meal for which we paid around £62 for two courses a glass of wine each and coffee. The food was served in a timely fashion by wait-staff who were pleasant throughout. It won't however be regarded as a memorable meal by either of us- more "food as fuel, and we don't have to cook at home tonight".
Thinking of ways to make it a little better, maybe I'd suggest the following beyond sourcing the beef better.
Please serve some bread with the mussels, and do it without being asked and do it free. It really is getting to be an irritation to find you can't get bread without asking/paying for it. Maybe that's our punishment for the fact that most people now drink tap water and don't permit themselves to be ripped off on the mineral water? Maybe bread's the new mineral water?
Can you please start serving espresso in small coffee cups and not horrid little glasses.
When you're training staff to interact with customers, try and get then to ask how everything is at the right moment ( like when I don't have a mouthful) and try to persuade them to sound like they care, but not too much. Yesterdays waiter didn't get these quite right and responded "fan-TAS-tic " to each nod in the same tone he'd use if someone told him he'd won the Lottery. Its an ok chain brasserie- there's no "fantastic" in sight.