Last Friday night, J.S. and I decided to give Copa Cafe a try, after seeing pictures from a friend and having passed by it gazillions of times on the bus.
Copa Cafe is a Hong Kong-style restaurant that serves Western food cooked like they are in Hong Kong, as well as more traditional Chinese dishes. I LOVE Hong Kong food!
I was drawn to the restaurant by its cheery mascot of a smiling chef with a bright red nose. The mascot's picture was everywhere -- on its signboard, its menu booklets, and even in this cute piece of art on the wall when we first entered the restaurant!
The interior gives patrons a classy, modern feel with its boldly coloured white and red furniture but yellow and orange hues on the wallpaper, enhanced with warm ceiling lighting. It provides a nice atmosphere but it was playing soft rock radio, which turned it into a casual dining environment as opposed to an ambient dining atmosphere. But the casual dining scene is quite common in Hong Kong, so no surprises there.
And the reason for so many pictures of the interior? We were standing at the entrance, waiting to be seated. We stood there and as you can see, the restaurant was not even half full and no waitresses saw us. We decided to remain civilized and not wave for attention; that would look kind of rude. After trying to make eye contact for one minute, a waitress with a suit [let's call her the Suit Waitress] finally saw us, but did not say anything and looked away.
After another minute of making frantic eye contact, she finally came over and asked us what we wanted, but not before dropping off a bag of food at a table. She did not greet us nor speak to us kindly; she said in a no-nonsense tone in Cantonese, something along the lines of "What do you want?" We reply politely and said we would like a table for two, and she looked somewhat surprised and then quickly showed us to a table at the corner of the restaurant, next to its big windows facing the sidewalk.
As we sat down, I began taking more pictures and placed my menu on the adjacent table. Our alarm bells were already ringing with regards to the service. After a few minutes, another waitress came to clear the table and she asked almost angrily, "Do you want this menu or not?" I felt obliged to put away my camera, which seemed unreasonable to me. Nevertheless I started looking at the menu.
There's the cute mascot again, on the first page of the menu! I browsed through it quickly and most of the items were over $14, especially for the Western meals, like steak etc. I like my rice so I flipped to the more Chinese-style pages and had a look. I decided on the Baked Chicken Steak on Rice in Portuguese Style. I am familiar with this dish and I quite like it. J.S. decided on a Chinese set meal with soup, a main dish with rice, and dessert.
There was a choice of tom yum soup, hot and sour soup and wanton soup. J.S. chose the wanton soup because I did not really fancy the first two. The small bowl of soup came with a generous serving of 5 to 6 wantons with half a bunch of Shanghai bok choy.
I was impressed with the wanton -- thin silky cover encompassing a flavourful burst of pork and shrimp. The taste of the meat was really good, but the soup was a little salty and had a little too much MSG for my liking.
J.S. chose the lemon chicken dish, and it was gigantic! It was a large chicken steak fried with batter and slathered with clear lemon sauce. There was also a generous portion of white rice, as well as the bunches of Shanghai bok choy on both sides. The chicken tasted fresh and the outside was crispy and not too soggy. The lemon sauce tasted homemade and pretty good! Pity the entire plate had an uneven bottom and the plate of food was wobbling nonstop throughout the entire meal. Epic FAIL on their cutlery part.
My Portuguese sauce chicken baked rice. This picture makes it look like Aladdin's magic lamp. But oh boy, it was GIGANTIC! A heaped dish of rice topped with a mound of chicken, and the "Portuguese sauce" is actually a kind of curry. The curry is mild and not spicy at all, essentially flavoured with coconut milk. The cheese is also golden brown at the top -- my favourite!
A slight fail on their part -- not covering a small portion of the rice resulting in that little section being dried up. Nevertheless, the impeccable taste was certainly up to my standards and the generous amount of chicken and rice was unbelievable. There were also small wedges of potato and onion hidden into the seams of the chicken and rice.
Here's how much was left by the time I was done with it. I only ate about one-third of the whole dish! The amount of chicken in there is about the same amount of meat I consume in a week! Definitely taking home leftovers! The waitress came to take it away and I presumed she would pack it in a box for me. She did not ask, also assuming that I wanted it packed. This might be a mistake on my part and I ran after her to make sure she was not about to dump it into the trash.
After that, the dessert arrived. The waitress came by hurriedly and literally PLONKED the dish down. She set the dish down so hard you could see the drop of milk on the bottom left corner of the picture that spilled out. The dessert was mango pudding in evaporated milk. There was no choice on the dessert in the set meal, so it came just like that.
It came with only ONE spoon, and we had to flag them down to get us another spoon. Believe me, I have been to restaurants when they are customer-attentive enough that they give us two spoons even for one dish. The spoon came without even a glimmer of a smile, just the same can-you-people-get-out-of-my-way face the whole time.
The pudding is another story to speak of. It was smooth and silky, and instantly melts in your mouth. The evaporated milk takes out some of the sweetness and balances out the taste. The pudding was not the usual wobbly jelly texture; it was very delicate and fragile. The taste also had genuine mango in it, leading us to think about whether it is homemade. Whatever it is, it was good!
***
Who would think the drama ends there? We had to wave our hands for 5 whole minutes before someone finally noticed us when we tried to ask for the bill. Yes, BOTH of us waved our hands. Who cares about civilized behaviour when you seem to be intentionally being ignored by waitresses?
When the bill came, it came up to $22.29 including tax. I was pleased with the total as it was within my expectations. When I went up to the counter to pay with my debit card, the manager (presumably) said to me, "Excuse me, if you are paying with card for bills below $25, we have to charge you 50 cents."
WHAT!? I can get a $1+ charge on my debit card at Safeway! You are telling me here that I have to spend $25 at your horrendous restaurant to pay with debit/credit card!? Good thing J.S. had cash on him or else we would have to suck it up to them.
Anyway, we ended up paying just a couple pennies more than the bill amount. These people do NOT deserve any form of tip, seriously. If the food was bad, I might have left without paying altogether! We scuttled out quickly in case they decide to be vicious and force us to pay a tip.
Conclusion:
Fantastic food with portions large enough to feed a small army. Definitely worth the price. Service? It makes me want to throw tomatoes at them and never ever go within 10 feet of the restaurant again. Since I don't get to eat Hong Kong food that often, I definitely want to eat more of it. But I really doubt that this restaurant deserves my money. I don't usually feel so strongly against a place but J.S. and I both agree that we would not be back. I might just get take-out if I am really craving for their food.
Copa Cafe is located at 4030 Cambie Street, Vancouver, B.C.
♥ Nikki
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