San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Mother knows best: Copra brings South India to S.F.
A new, palatial Indian restaurant is an acclaimed chef ’s most thrilling yet
A mother’s advice can be so incisive that it lives with you. Such is the case with Srijith Gopinathan, whose mom visited him when he was the chef at Michelin-starred Campton Place in San Francisco. While she was impressed with the food, luxury American fare with some Indian touches, she had one question for him: When are you going to cook the youyou cuisine?
At Copra, Gopinathan and partner Ayesha Thapar’s latest restaurant following the success of Ettan in Palo Alto, the chef is putting his real self on the plate, presenting a complex taste of South India through elaborate chutneys, resplendent seafood curries and prodigious desserts. The restaurant opened in early 2023 on the edge of San Francisco’s Japantown, paying homage to the Southern Indian states of the chef ’s upbringing: his birthplace of coastal Kerala, the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu, where he grew up, and neighboring Sri Lanka, whose rich cuisine he experienced while working in the Maldives. With Copra, he’s creating a port for Malayalees (South Indians) to eat and drink.
Immediately, Copra’s grand scale jumps out. The aesthetic is equal parts boho chic and hip plant nursery; some walls are covered in tropical plant wallpaper, while shelves stretch from floor to ceiling stocked with baskets and decorative books that, puzzlingly, have no spines. One area, dubbed the “greenhouse,” is sort of like a boutique beach cabana, surrounded by dangling (artificial) vegetation and walls made of ropes. Altogether, the place looks more like a grandiose brunch restaurant you might encounter on the Las Vegas strip, not Fillmore Street.
On appearance alone, you might expect a meal sanitized of flavor, yet Copra doesn’t pull punches, especially as it pertains to spice. “I didn’t want it to be watered down,” the chef told me over the phone.
Like its setting, Copra’s menu is imposing. The best
place to start is the chutney sampler ($17), a painter’s palette of four distinct chutneys and a basket of poppadom (chickpea wafers) and quinoa crisps. These were the Cadillac of chutneys, the most noteworthy of which was the breezy, emerald-green coconut; another was made with grilled gooseberries; and another was a potent paste of three types of scorched peppers — some for body, some for spice and some for taste — along with coconut oil. The result is like a tangy, coconut salsa macha.
Creating these bold sauces and dips is a labor of love: There’s a dedicated chutney station in the kitchen where
cooks wear two masks to reduce the chemical warfare of pepper toasting.
The menu is stocked with delectable snacks like the “kola urundai” ($9), juicy and sensationally spicy vegan meatballs, with a similar profile to the Ethiopian spice mix mitmita. They’re made with Mamu, a meat alternative made from mushroom mycelium and chickpeas that Gopinathan developed. The Thattukada fried chicken ($16) was aggressively fragrant with spice and a delicate crunch, while the bajji pav sliders ($14) were petite packages of sweet, peppery tastes.
The rasam poori ($14) — the
chef ’s bridge to North Indians — are a cold version of that region’s tomato-based soup, presented as pani puri, with puffs as the delivery method. This version of rasam prominently features tart acidity of passion fruit juice and is scintillatingly perfumed with curry leaves. You pour the tart mixture into the hollow puri puffs, which are stuffed with potatoes and watermelon radish slivers that stick up like birthday candles, and bite into the explosive orb of flavor.
Two smaller dishes, the bone marrow ($18) and octopus ($19), are excellent transitions into the entrees. The bone marrow dish was madly