La Coppola Ristorante & Oyster Bar — Restaurant in Warwick

Celebrating a special occasion with a large group of people, from the outset the fresco style ceiling of the establishment threw me right back into the Sistine chapel, beautiful. Secondly the decor around the tables felt relaxed and formal yet gives that rustic Italian style that makes you feel you can relax with family and friends without feeling like hushed tones are all that is allowed. Finally on to the food. I begin my review with the first course, a antipasti bruschetta and arancini there is not much more to say here than splendid, well balanced flavour profiles, nothing overpowered one another, I enjoyed the fact your bruschetta was served separate so it allowed everyone to top there toast with the amount desired personally. And on to the main courses, I’ll begin with the positives, I ordered the quadrelli con agnello, I was mesmerised by this dish, wonderfully braised lamb, gorgeous sauce all elements sang to me as if they were from the voices of choir boys in St. Peter’s basilica. Unfortunately we move on to the dish that really fuelled this review, when an Italian states on a menu “just a simple classic” well that’s what you expect, I was horrified to find what I could only describe as a plate of spaghetti with pancetta and a sauce that I can only assume was made with cream, I speak of course of the classic carbonara, however a classic one to me is, spaghettoni/ linguine, with an egg yolk, guanciale, pecorino and black pepper in the sauce. Unfortunately this dish contained none of the above to my knowledge, I can only assume the stain of yellow across the top is the egg yolk sauce the chef forgot to make the dish with, unsure no idea what parley is doing anywhere near a carbonara. Alas after tasting many carbonara in Rome and other places across Italy, this just didn’t have the hallmarks that you come to expect, it lacks the punchy flavours and intense fattiness from the guanciale. Would be great to see if this dish could be brought up to the same level of the rest of the menu tried, finally it would of helped the carbonara if the comically sized pepper grinder could of made up for the distinct lack found in the recipe, but alas it failed to. Bar this one staple pasta dish the restaurant and food is delicious, I just feel it lacks the 5th star for this mishap, I am excited to come back to and explore further across this menu, and delve deeper into the Italian wine...

A wonderful restaurant in the heart of Leamington. This place truly deserves 5 stars for the quality of the ingredients, the exquisite courtesy of the personnel, and the sublime atmosphere… but… I gave it four stars because of how those ingredients are prepared in the meals that they serve. Don’t get me wrong, the food here is far from being bad, but given the effort, the quality of the meats and fish used, the experience of the Metre d’, it is a shame that some of the cooking is over complicated with too many ingredients which rarely mix well. Let me give you an example, I ordered the melanzane alla parmigiana, it was wonderful and as good as my Italian grandmother used to cook, but also I ordered the fegatini di pollo… which were tender, fresh and abundant but cooked with sweet red dessert wine and Barbeque sauce… I had to ask the staff about what it was the sweet tangy smoky flavour.. at first I could not believe that someone would ruin such first class meat in this way… but then the lamb arrived ( I ordered slow cooked lamb), the meat was cooked to perfection over I am sure many hours of lovingly attentive care… but then it was laid down on a inedible concoction of cheese (seriously???!!!) mashed potato, bbq sauce ( again) and some other herbs I was unable to identify. Lamb is such delicate flavour, how could someone possibly think to associate it with such strong flavours? The result was that I had to scrape all the condiments and ate the lamb which was of another planet for quality and cooking and it would have been a crime to let it go to waste. So mixed feelings really, this restaurant could be of Michelins star quality but it is let down by some ( not all) over complicated dishes with too many condiments which don’t go very well with each other. I will go back for sure in the future as you should do too, but please, when you go, candidly ask the staff to indicate you which dishes contain bbq sauce and ketchup and avoid those dishes! Final note: price wise it is extremely reasonable given the quality of everything, portions are very big for a restaurant of this calibre and certainly one does not starve after eating here, so I wholeheartedly recommend this place to anyone, and I am writing this review in the hope the food will get increasingly free of tangy, smoky,...

I’m never one to usually write a review but todays experience definitely needs one. Coming from a catering background I’m always the first to give the benefit of the doubt because I understand how things are sometimes, but this was inexcusable. I won’t even comment on having to wait at least 10 minutes to even be acknowledged, I’ll comment on the rest of our experience. We didn’t have a booking so decided to try our luck at the door, which we were then told we couldn’t take our pushchair into the restaurant because there was ‘no room’ by our table they’d given us and to just leave it by the entrance. After going to our table I could clearly see there was plenty of room for our baby as the table behind was only for 1 and asked again if there was any chance we could bring our pushchair because our baby is too young for a high chair, to then be told ‘but the chair for that table is downstairs’ - I mean, really? Oh and that the table for 1 was to expected very shortly. After finally sitting down, I don’t think I’ve ever been so rushed to order in my life, almost as if we were a burden! The starter was nice, my husbands lasagne had pesto all over it which is a definite first for lasagne and my spaghetti vongole was not what I expected at all. I asked if there was anywhere to change my baby - No baby changing facilities and had to change my baby on the chair downstairs. After all of this, the supposed customer who had booked the table for 1 hadn’t arrived in all the time we were there!! We asked for the bill, and the waiter tried to make out the card machine wasn’t working so we could pay cash, but it definitely worked absolutely fine. It’s safe to say our experience here was diabolical and we won’t be...