Copra

Srijith Gopinathan's mother watched him cook luxury American food at Campton Place and asked when he would cook his own. Copra is the answer. The Chronicle's critics rank it fourth in the Bay Area for 2026.

Why go

Gopinathan was born in coastal Kerala and grew up in Tamil Nadu, and he worked in the Maldives, where he learned Sri Lankan cooking. All three are on this Fillmore Street menu. There is a dedicated chutney station in the kitchen, and the cooks working it wear two masks, because toasting that many peppers fills a small room with capsaicin. Gopinathan also developed Mamu, a meat alternative built from mushroom mycelium and chickpeas, and it turns up as spicy vegan meatballs.

Gopinathan and his partner Ayesha Thapar were 2026 James Beard Outstanding Restaurateur finalists for this room, Ettan in Palo Alto and Eylan in Menlo Park. Dana Street of Fore Street in Portland, Maine took the award.

Order this / avoid

Order: the chutney sampler. Four chutneys, poppadom and quinoa crisps, and the standout is a paste of three scorched peppers with coconut oil that eats like a coconut salsa macha. It was $17 in April 2023.1
Order: the rasam poori. You pour a cold, passion-fruit-sharp rasam into puri puffs stuffed with potato and watermelon radish, then bite the whole thing.1
Order: the black cod pollichathu, wrapped in banana leaf, or the hamachi collar in fish-head gravy.1
Avoid: the Dindigul-style chicken biryani, and do not try to eat the Konkan crab curry together with its egg appam.1
Wear something you do not mind losing. The crab curry comes shell-on and you crack the claws yourself4, and the MICHELIN inspector notes that its sticky sauce of tamarind, dried chiles and shallot makes dressy attire a risky, albeit delicious, proposition.6

What locals & experts say

Cesar Hernandez, San Francisco Chronicle, April 2023: the room looks like a grandiose brunch restaurant off the Las Vegas strip, so he asked Gopinathan whether the cooking had been softened to match. The chef's answer was I didn't want it to be watered down.1
MacKenzie Chung Fegan and Cesar Hernandez, San Francisco Chronicle, March 2026, at No. 4: He was tired of commuting to the South Bay to find the food he grew up with in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, so he built the restaurant he wanted to see in the world.2
A year before that they were blunter: Of all the world-class Indian restaurants in the region, Copra is the most shining example.7 The dessert they single out is the Gods Own coconut variation.
One dish gave The Infatuation's Julia Chen pause, and she scored the room 8.3 anyway. Nineteen dollars for a single octopus tentacle is a hard pill to swallow, but it's a damn good octopus tentacle.5
The MICHELIN Guide California inspector reads the room as Gopinathan's love letter to Kerala, and points out that the name is the dried coconut meat that cooking runs on.6

Good to know

Getting in: book a table, or arrive early for a bar seat. That is the Chronicle's own advice.1
Open every night, and Saturday and Sunday add a midday service.6
Where: 1700 Fillmore Street, on the edge of Japantown.

Verdict

must-visit — Come with four people. This menu is built to be covered, and a table of two has to choose between the snacks and the big plates.