Copal

Copal

copalseattle.com

Address: 323 Occidental Ave S

Phone: 206.682.1117

Cuisine: Latin American

Price: $$-$$$

Rating: 3/5

I was cold in January.

Actually, now it’s May, and, fuck, man. I’m still cold.

I needed a warm-up, so, to remind myself of sunnier days in sunnier places, I invited a new-to-town girlfriend to join me for dinner at Seattle’s newest Latin-inspired venture, Copal, in Pioneer Square.

I was so, so excited to eat here, and not only because I’m from Southern California and know a thing or two about really good carne asada tacos, but also because the owner of Copal, James Beard Award-Winning chef Matthew Dillon, has a reputation in town as a serious cook who knows all about good food.

My verdict?

Herein lies the secret to the success of Copal: the ambiance.

It’s true.

Actually, all of Dillon’s restaurants are stunning.

At Sitka and Spruce in Melrose Market on Capitol Hill, guests dine in a bricky, old, open market kitchen. Strong wood tables dressed simply with white china and clear glass tumblers in a room of untreated wood surfaces makes the restaurant feel rustic and honest. Tables are pushed up close to kitchen prep tables and active stove tops, high flames licking the necks of diners sitting with their backs to the burners. It’s intimate. Romantic. A meal at Sitka and Spruce is made for just for you.

A week before I ate dinner at Copal with my girlfriend, Tim and I had lunch across the street at The London Plane, another one of Dillon’s Pioneer Square restaurants that had been on my list since forever.

At The London Plane, vintage pails of delicate petals and carts of leafy branches gathered in the doorway of the restaurant. Flower scents and pollen dusts floated in the air and mixed with smells of brewing coffee and rising bread doughs. Guests were greeted by servers wrapped-up in charming pinstriped aprons printed with accidental flour handprints and cake batter sprays. We were invited to sit in a space that feels bright and airy. Floor-to-ceiling windows flooded mild daylight into the adorable bakery-café and cast creamy shadows on to the stacks of sourdough loaves and egg-washed pretzel twists resting in the pastry case.

We had a pleasant enough lunch.

Tim had a tuna melt and I ordered lamb fattoush. They didn’t have an espresso machine, (odd for a bakery, no?) so I did not order a cappuccino.

Our server was polite and checked on us frequently. Could she refill Tim’s drip coffee? Did everything taste good? Was there anything we needed?

The food was good.

The lamb tasted like good lamb. The tuna tasted like good tuna. The portions were dainty. Lunch was not cheap.

(But! We ate in a garden!)

Anyways, I digress.

Copal, like the others, is a beautifully decorated restaurant. Downstairs, black and white tiles patten a central bar that glows under stands of globular lights that twist around ceiling beams and hang from invisible hooks. A long, turquoise bench situated under big windows offers seating to guests who prefer tables to bar stools. At the back of the restaurant a counter wraps around an open kitchen where cooks roast brisket meat and slice jalapeños and dice carrots for pickling. Pops of vibrant color around the restaurant- roses and corals and azuls and aquas- are festive and, for me, induce a homesickness for hot summers in Santa Barbara. For a minute, I felt warm in the middle of winter.

I’m happy to be handed a short menu with a list of about 12 items to choose from (I love small menus, remember? It inspires confidence in the diner that the chef has perfected the preparation of these dishes. It signals thoughtful attention paid to the seasonality of ingredients and their freshness).

I’m also happy to see that there are no cheesy bean dips or sides of sour cream to order.

This is real Mexican food.

Chicharrones and aguachilis. Whole roasted rotisserie chickens and poblano green salads. At the bar, Jote cocktails (red wine mixed with Coke) and cold cans of Tecate.

I was thirsty while waiting for my friend to meet me for dinner, so I ordered a glass of Santola Vinho Verde ($8). The wine was tart and crisp. The slightest hint of effervescence made for a refreshing sip. I may or may not have had five glasses that night.

But I ate, too, you guys.

To start, smashed avocado ($10) with queso fresco, tortillas and lime garnished with a dusting of chili powder and fresh cilantro.

The mild crumble of Mexican white cheese on a warmed tortilla smeared with avocado that was silky in its ripeness tasted fresh and authentic. When we ate all the tortillas in our tortilla basket, our waitress brought us more and didn’t charge us extra.

I liked the simplicity of this dish. That it required little manipulation of the ingredients. That the dish was successful because the avocado was perfectly ripe and the cheese only slightly warmed. That the integrity lay in its freshness.

Which leads me to the tortillas.

Flour tortillas at Copal are served warmed in a woven basket and wrapped up in a festive-colored linen. They are chewy soft and grilled to golden over open flame. Each tortilla takes on its own shape. Some are round and some are not. You might credit their misshapenness to being made in-house and I wouldn’t blame you. This is a Dillon restaurant, after all, and homemade flour tortillas are easy and relatively quick to make. They call for five staple pantry ingredients: flour, salt, vegetable shortening, baking powder and water. My guess is that all of those things can be found in the Copal kitchen.

So I must admit I felt duped when I learned that the tortillas here aren’t actually made fresh, but rather, pre-made and reheated. Why? It seems a little bit lazy to me.

We ordered tacos. I had the barbacoa, beef that is slow cooked over open fire until tender. The meat was succulent and topped with crunchy white onions and fresh cilantro, just like I like.

And then…

Let me ask you something. Have you ever met a watermelon that was at its peak ripeness in the dead of winter? Me neither. And I’m going to go ahead and bet that Dillon hasn’t, either.

So, then, tell me.

What is Copal doing putting a watermelon, jicama and lime salad on the menu in January? Perhaps In July, when watermelons are plump and heavy with sweet, red juice, the salad is a total knockout. But it was snowing outside in January and hardly watermelon weather.

Do you guys think I’m stupid?

To prove a point, I ordered the melon salad at $6.50 a plate and the dish was exactly what I had expected it would be: a disappointment. You win this round, Copal. And I guess the joke’s on me because I ordered the dish and now I’m out the cost.

In front of us, a pile of crudely chopped watermelon, barely mustering up a pink hue under a thick with white rind, stirred together with slimy jicama and wilted cucumber. A drizzle of olive oil and a garnish of fresh chopped mint did little to liven the sad fruits and vegetables that lay dying on my plate.

That’s the thing about a small menu. You better make damn sure that all the plates are successful because none of them can hide.

I wanted to make sure I was right about that watermelon salad. Maybe I had just tasted a bad batch.

I went back, this time with Tim, this time on a warm day in May. Balmy winds blew my hair into tangles and a high 2:30 p.m. sun kissed us all over with hotness. I hoped for a lunch that would refresh. We ordered two tall, milky horchata’s at the lunch counter. 

I hate so much to say that, again, I was disappointed with the salad.

And it’s not because I’m hard to please, okay, you guys? I’ll eat anything. But if I’m going to pay good money to eat at an acclaimed chef’s restaurant, then you can bet that I have expectations. I want my food to be worth the hype. And really, I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Though a little pinker in color the second time around, still, the melon in our salad was slippery and soggy. Slices of red onion that had been over-marinated in citrus and oil lost their purple color and sunk limply to bottom of the bowl. Only the addition of thin jalapeño slices added an element of interest to an otherwise boring bite.

I really do wish I loved the dish. I make my own watermelon salad at home (in the summer, of course) and it’s my favorite. In a big bowl I mix cubes of ripe melon together with spicy red onion and salty feta cheese. I dress it with squeezes of lime and finish with a pinches of crushed red pepper flakes. Maybe I’ll send Copal my recipe.

To follow, Tim ordered one of each of the tacos: beef barbacoa ($4), chicken mole de xico ($4), poblano ($4). The barbacoa was tender and smoky drips of greasy beef juice seasoned Tim’s beard. The mole tasted chocolatey rich and the poblanos piled high onto corn tortillas were meaty and robust. They were good tacos.

But in Southern California, great tacos are $1.50. And they usually come on hand pressed tortillas, too.

For my lunch, I tried a half rotisserie chicken ($14) on for size. I’ll give fair credit where it’s due.

The dish was delicious.

The half bird was roasted over an open flame and painted with a sticky citrus glaze. Tender chicken meat pulled off the bone with little effort from a fork. Tim used warm tortillas to mop up the sticky marinate left on the plate. I ate forkfuls of the vinegary cabbage served on the side.

We cleaned our plates and asked for the check.

Lunch for two cost $49 and although our meal was enjoyable, I’m not sure that enjoyable. The most memorable part of my lunch at Copal was the decorations.

Let me try and explain what I mean.

Take a break from reading this review and search for @vivacopal in your Instagram app.

Did you find it?

Open it up.

Look at the pictures.

What do you see?

I see pictures of piñatas and pictures of the staff goofing around behind the bar. And so many pictures of the restaurant itself, (They sure are proud of those pink ombré stairs!) that the food seems like an afterthought.

Which is too bad because, come back to me from your Instagram apps now, this is not just any, old Seattle restaurant we’re talking about here. This is a James Beard award-winning chef’s restaurant!

And isn’t the food what we should care about?

But then I realized something important: social media isn’t selling this place on its food because it isn’t about the food. Let’s be honest, if it were all about the food, then there wouldn’t be a watermelon salad on the menu in January. Perhaps if I want to eat a real Dillon meal, maybe I’ll have to book a table at the Corson Building or Sitka and Spruce.

No, Copal isn’t about the food so much as it’s about the space. It’s an oasis offering an exotic escape from perpetual grey. It’s a cool, bar hang-out place to sip on slushee margaritas garnished with a pink paper umbrella and chew on chicharrones and forget that you, unfortunately, have to live in Seattle.

And, hey. You know what? I could get into that.