While living in the UK, I grew to have a deep appreciation for curry. However, British curry and nice Indian food are often miles apart. British curry is often just some meat and vegetables cooked in a rich sauce, and then you just get yourself a nice bread (I prefer Paratha, but a great Peshwari naan was a solid second choice) and rice, start with some pappadoms and chutney, and you have a great night out after a few pints at the pub. I think a lot of places have really refined Indian food from that concept, both in the states and the UK, and I had suggested an Indian fine dining restaurant to my parents when they were heading to London for a Queen concert, but sadly, due to unforeseen circumstances, they had to cancel. They decided to come to San Francisco for a second Queen concert (yes my parents might be slightly cool), so I decided I should try to get us into Copra, the new, hip Indian place, to make up for their cancellation.
The menu is split into snacks, small plates and larger plates. It took a little while to decided on the wine, and sadly, the service wasn’t the best as when the server came to take our order, we weren’t completely sure on what would be a reasonable selection from the menu for four people. How many of each should we get? And even after he went through the menu with us, it was unclear really if we were ordering correctly, but we chose one from the snacks, three small plates and three large plates to go with the bottle of wine we ordered.
The food definitely was all very well thought out, and overall we enjoyed a majority of the savory dishes. We started with an egg appam with truffles which was stunningly visual as well as having stellar flavors, even if splitting it proved difficult. The chutney platter with assorted pappadam seemed like a must, and it was well received with an interesting selection of unusual chutneys. The crispy sambal peppers were also a winner with a great level of flavor. Sadly, the bone marrow was the least exciting. I love a good bone marrow dish, but the sauce kind of overpowered it all, and on top of that the tiny Roti served with it really didn’t help us lap up the sauce that was there.
The tiny amount of bread with the courses was a continuous problem into the mains. While the slow roasted duck tasted excellent, the tiny Roti really wasn’t enough to go with all the rich sauce. The Hamachi collar was a nice dish overall, even if I wasn’t as excited by fish collar as I had been at other places, but there was a very small amount of rice served with it. The lamb shoulder was an excellent slow braised dish with amazing curry flavors, but again, the dosa served with it was just not enough to really sop up the sauce the way I would want to at an English curry house.
The food was definitely good enough to warrant dessert, so we went with the house specialty of the “God’s Own” Coconut Variation and the Watalappan, a dish of pineapple, cashews and butterscotch cream. The Coconut Variation was nice, but overall a bit watered down with the sheer amount of frozen ice on top. The Watalappan was also nice, but clearly the two parts weren’t really designed to go together as they were served at different temperatures in different dishes. There was no real dessert wine on the menu, so we decided to order a couple of cocktails to go with, but the waiter also kind of rushed us through the order, so it took a lot longer for our drinks to arrive than the dessert items.
I really enjoyed the food at Copas immensely, but the service was really poor. We were ignored much of the night when we needed, or we were really rushed when the server arrived when we did, even though we really were asking a lot of question about the menu. It was also incredibly loud in the entire restaurant which is a bit difficult when you’re trying to enjoy a nice meal with friends and family. It definitely was some of the best Indian I’ve eaten in San Francisco though, so if service and noise levels aren’t a deal-breaker, Copra is definitely a place you’ll enjoy.
Score: 4/5
Recommendation: Chutney Platter and Egg Appam
Copra
1700 Filmore St.
San Francisco, CA 94115
