Copine — Restaurant in Seattle

TLDR: The dishes at Copine are beautiful (except for 1 - see below), but when it comes to the taste, nearly every dish falls flat on its face. Most aspects of the meal are underwhelming. I rate this 1 star because this seems to be pretty consistent problems patrons have experienced here and it doesn't seem like a problem the chefs have addressed.

The prefix meal started at $140 a person with optional additions for extra cost. My girlfriend and I went for Valentines day where we each got the prefix menu, the optional $15 second course add on, and a cocktail each. Pre-tip the whole meal came out to be around ~$375.

First, I will start with the positives. The service staff was friendly and attentive. The dishes are pretty. 1 of the 8 dishes we had was great. Shout out to the butternut squash agnolotti - I don't think there is a single thing I would've changed about it, but my girlfriend did think it was a little too salty. It is disappointing though that the best thing that I ate the entire meal was an add on though.

Now onto the negatives. Besides the dish I highlighted above, none of the dishes stood out in any positive way. Everything was extremely underwhelming. Most dishes were too salty, and the flavors were unbalanced. The best example of this was the Citrus Cured and Smoked Ora King Salmon - which was one of the main courses. The salmon was too salty, the citrus was too sweet, and the sauce tasted like a runny tartar sauce.

The other main course we got was the Beef Bavette. The flavors on this dish were fine. But for a high end restaurant, serving a tough flank steak with a sauce even I could replicate (not a professional chef) hardly met my expectations.

The starters and deserts were both disappointing, not bad, but not very good either. I got the Chocolate crepe cake with mint ice cream and there was just no balance at all. The mint flavors completely overwhelmed every other taste in the dish when eaten together to the point where I would've just preferred to eat it alone than with the cake.

The Swiss cheese fondue was laughable. It came out with a cup of cheese, 3 pieces of prosciutto, 3 "balls" of apple, and 2 croutons with the laziest presentation of any of the dishes from the night. The ingredients were tasty, but frankly it reminded me of something I would prepare when I get home from a night of drinking, and I am too lazy to cook anything. Just look at the picture below (#4), is this something that you'd be happy if you got from a high end meal? It honestly felt like we were being mocked for paying as much as we did.

The last dish to go over is the Hamachi crudo which was good, and that is about it. Not notable, just tastes like any other Hamachi crudo you could get at a typical Japanese restaurant in the area for ~$15.

The last point I want to make about this experience was the the restaurant did not feel upscale. The restaurant was clean, but it felt very sterile and had no personality. The lighting in the entrance was harsh, and most walls were relatively bare.

With all of this being said, a lot of what I commented on literally wouldn't have crossed my mind if the meal was half as expensive, but for this price, my expectations were much higher and I left sorely...

Dinner for four on 1/20/24. I’ll start with service because that was the highlight of our experience. Servers were friendly and provided a high touch experience with only a couple fumbles. Our server struggled at times to remember menu options and one of our courses was brought to the table when two of our party members were in the restroom.

Food: sadly the courses were underwhelming. •Of the amuse-bouche, we really only enjoyed 1 out of the 2 offered as one was much too tart. •For the starters, both my husband and I got carrots while our friends got the hamachi tartare. The salad of heirloom carrots was really delicious with tender carrots, and elements of crunch. Overall the textures and flavors were delightful. Our friends seemed to enjoy the tartare as well. •We all opted for the supplemental mid course, and this was our favorite part of the meal. The spinach and ricotta tortellini was served in a yummy, savory prosciutto broth. The accompanying balls of pear provided an interesting and bright contrast to the pasta. The falafel was outstanding and our #1 dish of the night. •For the main we got chicken and this was the most disappointing dish. I personally did not love any of the options so that was not ideal, but thought the chicken would be the best. Unfortunately the truffle taste (in the foam on the chicken and in the sauce around it) was overwhelming and unpleasant. I found none of the accompanying parts of the dish to be enjoyable. •to finish we got the grilled cheese which I really wanted to love, but did not. The tomato paste with it had a great robust flavor, but the sandwich itself was just okay. It would have been better to have a grilled piece of cheese such as halloumi.

The ambiance was okay. It was quiet (perhaps a bonus), but felt cold and industrial. I would have enjoyed it more with music and some cozy aspects.

Having dined in several high end restaurants in the US and internationally we expected better service, food, and ambiance...

Overall, it was a very nice experience. However, for the price and the credentials of the chef, I was a little disappointed in the food. Several courses were too bland while others were too salty. They started with a cauliflower soup and burrata amuse-bouche -- the soup was under-seasoned and had a bitter cauliflower taste rather than savory. The burrata one was good however.

The Waldorf salad was fine, though I felt that the presentation was at the expense of the taste due to it kind of being deconstructed. The dressing was more decorative than functional, so many elements felt weak in flavor.

The middle course of carnaroli risotto sounded good on paper, but when it came out the risotto itself tasted undercooked and was swimming in a sea of very bland asparagus sauce, while the copious amounts of pecorino mousseline was too salty. The texture of the mousseline and the risotto sauce were so similar as to give the whole dish a kind of soupy taste, though the black truffle was a nice as a garnish.

The main course of king salmon was cooked very well, and presented with a nicely crisp skin facing upwards on a bed of forbidden rice. However, the meyer lemon flavor was weak and the saffron almost nonexistent, and while the salmon texture was perfect the flavor was again lacking.

The dessert was maybe the most disappointing course. I had the crepe tagliatelle, which is a fun idea but in practice the crepe was dense, dry and flavorless and did not pair well with the blood orange sorbet.

The pairings (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic) were very interesting. The non-alcoholic one featured a lot of botanicals -- a few kombuchas and teas that were very interesting. Some of the wines were a bit on the sweet side, and it was odd that some seafood and poultry dishes (which my partner had) were paired with some fairly robust reds.

The service on the other hand was...