The newest addition to the downtown Baton Rouge restaurant scene, Cocha, offers an international take on traditional Southern cuisine.
Saskia Spanhoff and Enrique Pinerua opened Cocha last December. The couple uses their heritage and travel experience to inspire this new restaurant. Pinerua is from Venezuela with a Basque mother and Saskia’s family is Dutch.
“We have both traveled extensively around the world, and that has inspired us and what we like to eat,” Spanhoff said. “All of this has influenced the direction of Cocha.”
Spanhoff said it’s been her lifelong dream to open a restaurant.
“My husband and I met in the restaurant business,” she said. “We both have 25 years of combined experience in restaurants, and this is where we found our love for food, wine and caring for people.”
The restaurant combines locally grown ingredients with international flavors to bring Baton Rouge a delicious and healthy menu. The couple moved to Baton Rouge from California, where they were exposed to a plethora of farmers’ markets.
“As we started to work on the restaurant concept, we knew we wanted to focus on seasonal, locally sourced products that were organic or at the very least, pesticide free.” Spanhoff said. “We feel that it is our responsibility to help educate people by feeding them the best quality food we can get.”
Though they said they don’t consider their restaurant’s offerings to be true Southern cuisine, the restaurant is Southern in the sense that most of their ingredients come from the local area.
Spanhoff added that she and her husband believe people want to know more about where their food comes from and they want to support their local communities to keep local food traditions alive.
At Cocha, all of the food is made from scratch. Because of the availability of certain ingredients, Cocha’s menu changes seasonally. The restaurant’s winter menu offers a variety of dishes from Gulf-caught, grilled redfish veracruz to duck gnocchi.
The couple chose to build their restaurant in downtown Baton Rouge because of the changing landscape.
“With the increase of new businesses to the downtown area and city as a whole, people with more diverse cultures started to move in,” Spanhoff said. “Baton Rouge has plenty of chain and Southern restaurants, but not much in the way of global food.”
The duo said they hope to fill a void for people who are vegetarian and people with dietary issues — such as gluten allergies — who sometimes have a hard time finding a place to eat.
Cocha is located on North 6th Street in downtown Baton Rouge. They’re closed on Tuesdays but open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. every other day, with extended hours on Friday and Saturday.

Gallery • 3 Photos

Kim Nguyen

Co-owner Enrique Pinerua sits at his bar in Cocha on Feb. 20, 2017.