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Image of Copia Urban Winery dining room and bar
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Image of crab cakes
The name just touts the vino, but you'll sing the food's praises, too.
By Dave Lowry
You assume that, if duck’s on the menu and the restaurant’s aim is toward contemporary cuisine, it’ll be either a confit or a grilled breast. Here, it’s both. A hefty leg, slow-cooked in its own succulent juices until the meat’s just hanging on the bone and then given a short sentence on the grill to crisp the skin, is matched with a plump breast, grilled until the interior is delicately roseate, the meat juicy and tender. Graced with a spray of sautéed vegetables and a dollop of beautifully pungent goat-cheese risotto, the plate defies the diner to be lukewarm about it ($24.95).
But wait—we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The place is Copia Urban Winery, one of the newer hot spots for dining in the culinary furnace of Washington Avenue. The idea behind it is a creative one: Combine a restaurant with a winery where big tanks complete the vinification process in the same space. The fruits of that labor will later be sold and served with meals; the first récolte will be poured sometime this spring. And if it’s half as good as the food here, it will be a splendid success.
Copia’s menu is compact, its choices overwhelming. In addition to that inspiring duck, a filet mignon benefits wonderfully from a rich butter with wine-soaked onions, garlic and soy sauce ($29.95). The side of a potato cake spiked with green chiles gives another dimension to a plate of pan-roasted sea scallops ($19.95). And no restaurant in the area serves a better smoked rack of ribs. A heaping platter of them, topped with a generous tangle of crispy, satisfyingly sweet batter-fried onion rings cut into spidery threads, is daunting—the meat pink, the crust fragrant with smoke and salt. Sides of a chunky potato gratin topped with three cheeses and a ramekin of baked beans—this is a dish the proprietors of many barbecue joints would commit multiple felonies to be able to serve ($17.95). Also on the carnivore side of things is a surf-and-turf: king crab atop thick slices of beef tenderloin, dressed with a Hollandaise sauce ($31.95).
Slices of lobster and grilled shrimp were perfectly prepared in a dish of pasta, but a gloppy, heavy saffron-and-sherry cream sauce overpowered the pappardelle ($18.95). Consider instead the angel hair tossed with sautéed clams, shrimp and tomatoes in a basil-and-garlic–flavored olive oil ($16.95). If they’re your thing, pizzas of the corrente innovativo persuasion are available: a tomato and-basil combination with mozzarella, Asiago and Provolone cheeses ($9.95); a meat-heavy pepperoni–and–Italian sausage number with marinara sauce ($10.95); and one—we’re not making this up—with roasted corn, caramelized onions, goat and Cheddar cheeses and barbecued chicken ($10.95).
Starters include a pleasant take on the Burgundy specialty of escargots en croûte, the snails wrapped in a flaky golden pastry crust along with slivers of prosciutto in a mild garlic-and-champagne cream sauce ($8.95). The crab cakes are suitably moist and lumpy—with just enough herbed breading to hold them together—and served with a citrusy chile aioli that accentuates rather than disguises the crab ($11.95). Littleneck clams are steamed in a sauce of garlic, wine and butter that will remind old-timers of the same appetizer at the long-gone Nantucket Cove. A tuna appetizer is misidentified as sashimi; it is actually tataki, the surface seared and the cubes of fish attractively arranged on slices of fresh cucumber with a jicama relish ($10.95). The house salad is distinctly above average: spicy greens, tomatoes and goat cheese crostini with a balsamic vinaigrette that ties it all together ($5.95); demand that your waiter bring more of the excellent bread that goes so well with this salad.
It would be a disappointment to have an inferior wine list in a self-described urban winery; Copia’s is extensive and well chosen. Prepare to spend a little time; it’s worth the effort. We found several good Chardonnays, including one bearing the Toasted Head label. Toasted Head’s parent winery, R.H. Phillips, more completely toasts the barrels for these wines than is common and rotates the wine in its own lees as it ages. The results so far are vintages that are uneven but, when they hit, hit big, such as the ’02 here at a wonderful price ($12). Cabernets also abound. Try the sturdy, long-finishing ’02 from Mount Veeder, an old-timer in the California wine business ($39).
Copia’s interior is dark but cozy and attractive, with high ceilings, brick walls and an open kitchen that provides a look into the heart of a busy restaurant. You enter through a lively bar with its own fireplace, and there is a wine cellar room to the side of the main dining area, the walls lined with racks. A room squeezed in between holds the tanks and a counter for selling wine and its accoutrements. Service is attentive, professional and timely, even when the place is buzzing. Copia stumbles awkwardly, however, with an odd step in the dining dance. The wineglasses, which have no stems, look more like squat water tumblers. “It’s really big in California,” our waiter explained. So are earthquakes. Stems on wineglasses serve a purpose. A winery, urban or not, should understand that.
(A more personal gripe: It’s irritating enough when a restaurant usurps legal parking slots for its valet service, a specialty of Clayton eateries, but it’s even more egregious and less civic-minded when the restaurant commandeers an actual driving lane on the street with its valet cones, as Copia does. Parking’s always iffy in this part of downtown. Diners and dining spots should deal with it and not expect local traffic to crawl by.)
Copia sits near the center of Washington Avenue’s bustling and burgeoning entertainment scene; in terms of quality, it’s quite near the top. And did we mention that the duck was good?
Address: 1122 Washington Ave.
Phone: 314-621-7275
Average Main Course: $25
Reservations: Absolutely
Dress: As haberdasher Madeleine Finn said, "We ought always aspire to live: simply and elegantly."
Bottom Line: Intimate, stylish new eatery with excellent food and an extravagant in-house winery
