Copine Seattle, you are fantastic!

Guys – I have been dying to tell you about this fantastic dinner we had recently at Copine in Seattle!

This dinner was actually over a year in the making for us. Christmas 2017 my sister played a trick on me. She told me she had a coworker traveling to Seattle and was looking to entertain business guests at a restaurant and asked for some recommendations. She gave me a list of places she was considering and asked me what I thought. Copine was on there, and I told her though I have never been I have heard great things and have wanted to try it for some time. To my total surprise, a gift certificate to Copine showed up in the mail with love from my sister as a Christmas present! I admired her tactic because she really did surprise me – I had absolutely no clue that was why she was fishing for the info.

We have a toddler so our date nights are no longer impromptu, but we promised ourselves we would plan an outing to Copine once we made it through the rest of the busy holiday season (January is a big work event month for me too, so February was our plan). Low and behold, sometime in January I got pregnant! I know being pregnant sounds like no excuse to cancel a date night out, but for me it totally is. My morning sickness is the all-day, every-day kind, and this time around my food aversions were off the charts. Cereal and fresh fruit were the only two things I could stomach, so we figured we would be wasting our gift if we went out to dinner and my pregnant nose/stomach rejected everything on the menu, so we set it on the back burner until I was feeling better. Sadly, I wasn’t feeling any better until about 2 months postpartum, so it was set to the side for a while.

Well, fast-forward to this January 2019 and we now have a sweet little 3-month-old baby and were ready to venture out for our first date night! We decided it would be fun to try season tickets to the Seattle Opera this year, and for our date night thought dinner at Copine would pair nicely with opening weekend of il Travatore and made our reservations.

Copine is located in Ballard underneath a condo building – something I bet we have driven past a million times but never noticed. We easily found street parking around the corner and walked in. The interior has a very modern Seattle vibe, with the exposed industrial hardware and reclaimed wood bar tops. For a Saturday night they weren’t very busy – my husband told me it was because we are old and were out early for the weekend (it was like 6:30pm), but I still feel their cuisine was good enough that they should have been busier regardless.

We were seated quickly and brought some homemade rolls (we always try to not eat dinner rolls to save room for the good stuff, but who says no to homemade bread?) and a clever little salmon amuse bouche that was perfectly balanced on its little serving fork. I admire the server’s ability to make it out without losing any eggs.

The menu all looked fantastic and we couldn’t help but partake in a few appetizers – foie gras and tartare are two of our favorites, so when we saw them we just HAD to give them a try. I was raving over how buttery and indulgent the foie gras was and my husband swore it was the best tartare he has ever had. If you decide to give Copine a try and these are on the menu, do yourself a favor and order both!

On to the entrees. I was leaning towards the Caramelized Sea Scallops but then a menu item caught my eye. “Pithiviers Au Poulet Confit”. I had no idea what “Pithivier” is so we had a shameful moment at the table Google-ing menu items to try and decipher them. If you are not familiar, a Pithivier is a round, stuffed puff pastry (French), which in this case was filled with the chicken confit. It was too interesting to pass up and my feeling was this was something they would really do right… luckily for me my intuition steered me in the right direction and it was fantastic. Hubby went with the Valley Farms Rabbit, which was bacon-wrapped and came with gnocchi… another obvious win.

Sadly, we did not allot ourselves enough time for dessert (or admittedly enough room in our stomachs), so we had to leave without partaking so that we could make opening bell at the opera. By intermission we were regretting our decision and craving some sweets and wished we had just ordered something anyways. Next time we surely will make our dinner reservation the main event of our date night so we have more time to slow down and enjoy our whole meal with them. I have seen that for some special events they offer special several-course prix fixe meals, and that would likely be what we will partake in.

So, if you are looking for semi-fancy date night in Ballard with some fantastic cuisine, Copine would be a fantastic choice! In all we thoroughly enjoyed our meal and are very much looking forward to our next visit. Job well done chefs!

X.O. – Abbey Co.