COCO

Control carried into the coffee bar

Remco Kuijpers sets the standard from the kitchen side, as Chef for COCO in Gouda, where the Weeshuis Gouda day begins with coffee, pastry and a quieter kind of service. His route to this station came through the Dutch brigade system: apprenticeship at De Swaen in Oisterwijk, then chef roles at Da Vinci and Vermeer, before a longer period as chef-kok at Fitzgerald from 2015 to 2021. That path matters here because COCO is not built around display. It asks for repeatable care, for breakfast that lands cleanly, lunch that moves without strain, and an Afternoon Tea tier that needs the same discipline as a plated course, only in smaller gestures.

Remco Kuijpers now works within the WSHS house in Gouda, with LIZZ and COCO forming different expressions of the same property-level kitchen culture. At LIZZ, he has spoken plainly about the temperament of the team: “We at LIZZ* and WSHS are very down to earth and working very hard to create something beautiful.” COCO takes that ambition into a lighter register. The pass does not announce itself with a tasting menu; it shows itself in the cut of cake, the pacing of small plates, the way sweet and savory pieces hold together for tea.

Afternoon Tea as a small-plate discipline

The program at COCO is daytime and occasion-led: breakfast with coffee and pastries, coffee with cake, relaxed lunch, refreshing drinks, cocktails, champagne, and a Luxe Afternoon Tea tier with sweets and bites. The house also speaks of refined dishes, surprising bites and mignardises with an international twist, made with responsible products that have “a soul.” Those are broad words until they reach the bench. Then they become portion, temperature, texture, and timing.

COCO’s craft sits in that narrowing. A cake for coffee has to be generous without losing its edge. A lunch plate has to remain casual without becoming careless. Afternoon Tea asks the kitchen to think in small units, where pastry, savory bite, cream, crumb and garnish all have to keep their place on the tier. The beverage side follows the same rhythm. Coffee carries the morning and the afternoon pause; tea gives the tier its spine; cocktails and champagne pull the room toward a more social hour without turning it into a formal bar. The house does not name a separate beverage lead for COCO, so the clearest reading is a program shaped by occasion rather than by a public cellar or a single signature bottle.

The room inside the Weeshuis

The room belongs to a historic Weeshuis setting, and WSHS makes that history part of the way the place is used. COCO is stylish, but its work is not stiff. It has to absorb a hotel guest over breakfast, a local guest stopping for coffee and cake, a table gathered over small plates, and a slower afternoon built around tea. Conversation is part of the atmosphere. The counter and the room carry more weight than ceremony.

That range gives the place its particular test. COCO has to feel polished at several speeds: early coffee, quiet lunch, cakes in the afternoon, champagne when the day loosens. Kuijpers’s background in controlled kitchens gives the casual format a firmer hand. Nothing here needs to strain toward spectacle. The next service returns to the same objects, pastries, small plates, tea, cocktails, and the Luxe Afternoon Tea tier at COCO.