It can be easy to become jaded in a restaurant town like Houston, where dining out is often less of a pastime and more of a competitive sport. Chefs often take similar approaches to their food, scrambling to incorporate the next big ingredient or feature the next heretofore unknown cut of meat. It can be exhausting as often as it can be exhilarating.
But at Coppa, it's tough to be jaded — even when you eat out every night of the week. The welcome is always warm here, a tribute to the servers and staff that seem to stay on with Clark and Cooper from place to place, and have affectionately bestowed nicknames like Meatball and Cougar Bait. But part of the sentiment goes back to Key's food.
Troy Fields
Fall in a bowl: the duck agnolotti.
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In our city, it's common to see Italian food aggrandized and steroidal, plated in portions large enough for a rugby team and swaggering under snowy mounds of grated Parmesan. At Coppa, there is a decidedly feminine touch to the food, whether Key intends it or not. The dishes are clearly born of a woman in their understated construction and simple, harmonious flavors. There's not a lot of braggadocio here, to borrow an Italian term. Just straightforward, well-cooked food. Chef Key impresses with her simple refusal to over-impress.
The fall-inspired pumpkin ravioli that was recently added to the menu is a good example of this: Where other restaurants might feel the need to gild the lily, the plump pouches need no other garnish aside from the dried cranberries, toasted pumpkin seeds and simple brown butter sauce. It's a delicious exercise in restraint. Ditto the agnolotti, the delicate pasta filled with savory roasted duck and finished off with a few dates, pine nuts and wonderfully crisped Brussels sprouts leaves. The bowl is an entire fall meal in and of itself, without ever having — as Emperor Joseph II would say — too many notes.
Even more impressive is the kitchen's decision to know which foods to make themselves, and which to outsource, such as the milky white burrata cheese. Only one restaurant in town — Capri, in Spring — makes a good burrata in-house. Coppa smartly ships its in from Puglia, then pairs the soft mound of cream-infused mozzarella with a pile of arugula topped with ruby red tomatoes, olive oil, salt and — true to its name — a few dark red, slick slices of coppa. It's a bittersweet reminder of Shepherd's cured meat heritage at Catalan, where coppa was one of his signature pork products, and a spirited proclamation that Coppa is here now — and intends to shine just as brightly as Catalan once did.
katharine.shilcutt@houstonpress.com
