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| - SUMMARY:
Food - 4 stars
Service - negative 4 stars
Management needs to review how to run a smooth operation, because this definitely is not.
I have been here 3x now, 2x to regular Copa and once to the "Copa by the Sea" that is going on for December. Compared to the Eglinton location, this place is SLOW. The food comes out at a medium slow pace. for the regular Copa, and practically a stand still for the Sea. They said that there is a 2 hours seating limit but maybe if I got my food a little bit faster, I could be out of here in an hour or less and my food won't digest by the time the next food comes. My 1st visit, I didn't even get full, but my 2nd visit was good, but still not as fast as @ Eglinton
Copa by the Sea had delicious food, but the management of the operation was a complete flop.
You are only allowed to order 3 items per pair at a time, and you are not allowed to order again until all orders are served & eaten. We didn't get our first order for almost an hour, and for our friends it took over an hour. We were starving. They are supposed to have food come by on skewers, they were very few and far between. It was near the end of our meal that food started to come out a bit quicker, but there was still quite a delay. We were there for 3 hours, and I think they let us stay past the "2 hour seating limit" because at the 1.5 hour mark we told the servers, "we're starving, can we please get more orders?"
What I liked:
Sea Bass Ceviche - 5 stars - the flavours went together quite well, I liked the grapes, it was a nice touch
Shrimp Ceviche - 4 stars
Tuna Ceviche - 2 stars - flavours did not go well together, the nuts inside it was odd
charcoal black cod - 5 stars - Excellent...if they have it in stock
lobster mac and cheese - 4 stars - very good, rich and flavourful
octopus - 2 stars - said pan seared but it was soggy
panko fried oyster - 3 stars - good, nothing special
cashew encrusted sea bass - 4 stars - but needed a little more salt
garlic shrimp - 4 stars - nice and garlicky
coconut shrimp - 3.5 stars - ok, but i only go half a shrimp because they gave us one shrimp per pair, and they were small shrimp so I just had a little taste
shrimp tacos - 1 star - taco part was gross and inedible but inside was ok
the stuff on the skewers were mostly good but we only got one little piece and it didn't come out that often so I can't remember what we got.
When the food did come, most of it was quite good. The information that my friends had gathered from chatting to the staff is that this "Copa by the Sea" was only on its third day. Shi Bui was going to open up next door in around 6 months so the main chef left until the new opening. The person that was cooking for "Copa by the Sea" was one of the chefs from Shi Bui, and I have to say that the seafood did taste delicious. One of the servers said that it takes around 20 minutes to charcoal BBQ the fish. (Once again, this is second hand information so I'm not 100% sure if all of this is 100% accurate). So when you look over at the chef, there is only one person BBQing, and if it takes 20 minutes to BBQ a fish, then why are you limiting the amount that can be ordered at a time? They also ran out of black cod, and we heard that they only have 20 slices per night. How can you say all you can eat if you don't purchase enough to serve the patrons? They need to put something on the menu, like they do in a lot of all you can eat sushi places, "limit one per person" so we know, and then to actually purchase enough black cod to last past 8pm.
I really felt bad for the staff. Most of them were quite nice but of course were stressed because food was not coming out, and we were all starving. When the cheese bread came out at the salad station, everyone jumped on it. One of my friends ate almost 2 loaves of it because he was so hungry. In the end, it's really the management of the restaurant as opposed to the quality of the food, that's why I was so conflicted with how many stars to ultimately give. If the food is excellent, and service may not be 100%, it doesn't bother me too much. But in this case, the service was so horrible, I could not give a good rating. I was going to give one star, but really, the food at Copa by the Sea was very good, and the regular Copa good. Copa by the Sea was downstairs where Shi Bui used to be, and it was way too cramped, it took way too long to get our food, and it was way too loud. The music was blaring so loud that we could barely talk When we left, I thought that we can figure out what we are doing afterwards while we went outside, but then they had a speaker blaring out into the sidewalk. It doesn't need to be deafening!! And they have scantily clad women dancing around in a cramped area where they might accidentally push you over. On our way out we saw the dancers on the stairs away from the people eating, which was logistically much better.
They need new management. I definitely will not return
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