Coppa

Update: Since this post was published Coppa have made some changes to the menu. Antipasti is now £8 per head and all the skewers and arancini are now served in pairs. 

When reading any of my blog posts, my mother and sister both accuse me of being too nice. I can honestly say that this is the first time either of them have accused me of this. I do however explain that a lot of the places I’ve been visiting have simply just been good.

The sister emailed me whilst I was away a few weeks ago, asking if I wanted to go the soft opening of Coppa – the new roof terrace pop up on London Fields run by the people behind Lardo’s – one of our favourite restaurants in Hackney. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to get into the soft opening but reserved a table for the following Friday.

I am straight away going to acknowledge that Coppa did not have an easy opening night. Having torrential rain and winter temperatures on your first night at the end of May was not exactly predictable nor ideal. The staff tried to be as chirpy as possible and even thanked us for still coming and braving the weather.

Coppa is a pop up this summer on a roof on London Fields near the Pub on the Park. They have put up some little wooden cabanas in bright colours which will look great on a sunny day. We were however ushered into a little glass room they have which was sheltered much to our relief. The only downside was, the 3 of us were put on a small table right by the door when the rest of the place was empty, meaning that everytime the staff went in and out to get food we were still freezing. Also below was not quite the rooftop view I was expecting! 

The gist of the menu is that each person had the general antipasti for £10 per head and then a few hot and grilled dishes can be ordered as extras. Now I thought £10 was a bit steep for some anti-pasti. We were given some olives, salted almonds, slightly bizarre dried peppers, caponato and chickpea salad. All of these things were perfectly pleasant – my favourite part was probably the caponato as it was the only warm element and we were bloody cold. On the other hand though for £10 a head I think they could have provided some hams or salamis, particular as Lardo’s is known for curing their own meats - Also the name Coppa (a type of salami) seemed slightly misleading... 

Now we ordered one each of the 3 different skewers which costs from around £3.5—4.50 each and then the other 2 had a mini calzone each for around £4.50 and I had arancini for £2.50. One rice ball arriving with a wedge of lemon which is roughly the same size did not really impress me. It was tasty, don’t get me wrong – but just looked lonely. It would have made more sense to charge more like £3 or 3.50 and have 2 or 3. But this was nothing compare to paying £4.50 for one skewered prawn. One prawn. One of the other skewers was some sort of fried bread skewer which had such a strong soapy taste to it due to one of the herbs.

The majority of the food was perfectly nice. The calzones were tasty and the only items which I would say were actually good value for money. The staff were also incredibly friendly and obviously trying to make the best of a pretty crappy rainy situation. But I think we all agreed that generally speaking it was pretty expensive for what it was in particular the antipasti and one prawn. The bill came to roughly £85 - £30 of this accounted for by our mixed veggie antipasti.

I’m going to come back to Coppa on a sunny weekend afternoon – but this time probably for a drink and if I get peckish maybe a calzone or 2. Hopefully the view will look a bit brighter than this! 

Coppa
Hothouse Rooftop
Access via Mortello Street
London
E8 3QW