Coupa Café

This past Sunday we went to the Beverly Hills Art Fair, which has a much more elegant name to match the elegant art that is shown there. I love to attend that fair. As I walk among the beautiful pieces I have in my mind that I own a huge mansion with extremely large grounds, sort of like the White House, so I have the room and the money to buy everything I would want. However, I found a very nice 20 by 5 inch photo put on wood that only cost $200. That was the least expensive art I found and I didn’t like it well enough to pay that money for it. They have a very nice food court that we could have eaten at plus a wine garden but we decided to walk down the street to see what we could find – some place different and that is what we found at the Coupa Café.

I didn’t know until I just looked this café up on line that it is known for its coffee. I didn’t get that idea from their menu or I would have had some. I did see that it was a Venezuelan restaurant and that was interesting to me. They serve breakfast all day and they have a full menu. Since it was a beautiful day, we sat outside watching the people and talking to some who were sitting next to us. I wondered what they were eating and so I asked them. Getting older has made me much more outspoken. I am sorry to say I can’t write the name of what she had because it was Venezuelan. There was no menu I could take home and none posted on line so even without a name, it looked like a delicious omelet but the outside wasn’t eggs but a cornmeal pancake. She told me it was very good but very sweet. Since there are moments when I decide not to have sweet things because of the diabetes factor, I asked the man what he was eating and he told me a crepe. It looked interesting so that is what I ordered – the breakfast crepe which was scrambled eggs with gouda cheese in a buckwheat crepe. BK ordered a Black Forest ham frittata which came with a mixed greens salad. We split out meals so we could taste both.

They asked if we would like bread and I immediately said yes because I saw the bread on the next table and it looked different to me. And it was. There was some good focaccia and then these somewhat round things that were crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. I asked the waitress what they were and she gave me the Venezuelan name but I can’t remember it. However, she said they were cornmeal and, although I liked the crunchy outside and soft inside, it was tasteless. BK put salt on it and I put butter on it but neither helped much. That wasn’t the case with the food. I received my breakfast crepe and saw a lot of ham on it. I looked inside and it had cheese as well but this wasn’t what I ordered. It was something I would like so I decided not to point it out to the waitstaff. When the waiter came to ask how everything was, I told him I had ordered the breakfast crepe and this wasn’t it. He offered to take it back and get me what I wanted but I chose to keep it since it was really tasty. BK said it didn’t have any eggs in it and so he offered to bring some scrambled eggs at no charge which she immediately said that would be good. In a very short time, he reappears with some very nice scrambled eggs. Both the frittata and the crepe were excellent.

I want to go back. I didn’t realize that they also have some special chocolate and hot chocolate. And I want to order some real Venezuelan food. They have two other cafes – one in Palo Alto and the other in Caracas, Venezuela. The prices are very reasonable, our meals costing about $8.50 each. The Coupa Café is located at 419 N. Canon Dr. in Beverly Hills.