At COPA, a meal could be leisurely and, to a certain degree, dramaturgical: a stiff aperitif, to start, followed by a succession of small plates, a slow-roasted showstopper, a coffee pot denouement, a dark rum resolution.
That is, if you wanted it to be. Patrons of the nuevo latino bistro, which closed permanently last week after six years on West Main Street in Durham, didn’t always opt for the full arc. In a downtown where nice restaurants are de facto DPAC pregames and where, as in many rapidly swelling American cities, the pace of life verges on anxious, the fact that one of COPA’s entrées explicitly took 45 minutes to prepare was enough to make some customers announce their orders at the host stand: “Hello, table for two, we’re getting the paella.” (“We’re excited, yes, and we don’t have a second to spare.”)
On the restaurant’s penultimate Saturday night of service, though, everyone seems down to lounge.
I’m here for dinner with my friend Gabi. She and I both worked in the front of house at COPA two years ago; she also worked for a time at Terra Sacra, the Hillsborough produce farm that COPA owners Roberto Copa Matos and Elizabeth Turnbull also own.
Familiar faces dot the tables around us. Copa Matos and Turnbull, who are married and at COPA acted as chef and, for several years, beverage director, respectively, opted against issuing a public announcement that the restaurant’s last day would be August 3, instead privately notifying regulars, friends, collaborators, and former employees a few weeks in advance. The result, at least this evening, is a clientele who sit at a low simmer, savoring the moment as they do the food.
Doug Addington, our server for the night, is savoring time with the clientele, too, lingering at nearby tables and chatting; at one point, patrons ask to take a photo with him. Not that we mind: When Addington finally makes it to our table, he offers a characteristic laugh and says, “Forgive me.” Then he grins, folds his hands together, and adds, all in one breath: “FatherforIhavesinned.”
It’s a reference we get, having worked with Addington: he spent a full career as a pastor before retiring and starting a new career in the restaurant industry at age 55. He met Turnbull and Copa Matos as a customer of the couple’s previous venture, Old Havana Sandwich Shop, and has been with COPA since day one.
Addington’s position at COPA is technically head server and, as of the past few years, after Turnbull took maternity leave, beverage manager. But his role more closely resembles that of a general manager and he runs the entire front of house. He cares so much about the business and its people that you might assume he has a financial stake in it (he doesn’t). He put together the list of contacts who received advance notice of the closure.
“Most of them I did not know before I worked at COPA,” Addington told me, over the phone, two days before Gabi and I came in for dinner. “And now I have friendships with them.”
After we put in our drink orders, Gabi and I examine the dinner menu. It’s undergone some not-insignificant changes since we left. The ropa vieja, a national dish of Cuba that was once exalted by News & Observer food critic Greg Cox, has been cut from the list of mains. The duck leg confit, previously served whole on a bed of refried beans and mushrooms, is now being shredded into tacos. There’s no paella.
We decide we’ll let Addington take the reins with the order. There are just two things we know we want, we tell him: the croquetas and the Cuban sandwich.
COPA opened in March 2018, less than a month after Turnbull and Copa Matos, who is Cuban, shut down their sandwich shop. Old Havana stood for seven years in a building just down the street from COPA’s future location. It was lunch-only and had a cult-like fan base.
Turnbull and Copa Matos did notify the public ahead of shutting down Old Havana, disclosing in a release that the restaurant’s last day was imminent but that customers could rest assured that most of the menu would be available for lunch at their soon-to-be-open restaurant, COPA. Billed as “the nation’s first truly farm-to-table Cuban restaurant,” COPA would also serve a dinner menu inspired by Latin American recipes “that have been lost to time and memory,” the release described.
COPA had a rosy first few years. But the pandemic was hard on upscale restaurants, particularly ones like COPA that care about their staff. COPA paid employees even when the restaurant shut down at the start of the pandemic and, at the risk of putting off customers, implemented a 20 percent auto-gratuity immediately upon reopening to make up for the loss in tips (“People are notoriously low tippers on takeout,” Turnbull told the INDY in 2021). It kept not just a mask mandate but a vaccine mandate in place for months.
As stalwarts of the Durham restaurant scene, Turnbull and Copa Matos also spearheaded a number of efforts to drum up foot traffic on behalf of their business and others. They pressed the city council for a legitimate outdoor dining program and organized a Thursday night “small plates crawl.” But the traffic never came back. COPA couldn’t afford to stay open during the day, and dinner traffic fell off as well. The opening time bumped up to 5:30.
In April of this year, Turnbull and Copa Matos broke the news to customers that they were nearing foreclosure and needed to file for bankruptcy. A friend launched a GoFundMe on the couple’s behalf, citing “the variable rate loan offered by the Small Business Administration in an era when interest rates have skyrocketed” and “the sharp increase in the cost of doing business due to rising prices and supply chain issues” as reasons that “the two of them urgently need legal assistance to hold off foreclosure.”
The GoFundMe raised $27,188—nearly double the stated goal of $16,000—but, Copa Matos told the N&O last week, it still wasn’t enough to sustain operations, given the consistent lull in traffic.
That’s why we’re here, marking one of the restaurant’s final nights.
The plates start coming. Addington chose well: Braised beef in mole. Shrimp in a frothy coconut curry sauce. A king-size empanada stuffed with potatoes and leeks. An off-menu bowl of succulent meat chunks and slaw that neither Gabi nor I have seen before; Addington calls it “Catalan lamb.” The Cuban sandwich and croquetas take the cake, but the lamb is a close third.
As we’re boxing up remnants of the meal, Copa Matos moseys over and offers to make us each a cocktail. We nod and he returns a few minutes later with glasses of amber liquid.
The drink is called La Diosa Negra. A blend of spiced rum, coffee liqueur, orange bitters, and Haitian vanilla, it’s topped off, tableside, with a cloud of Cuban cigar smoke that’s been trapped inside a mason jar.
“It’s a nice way to end a meal,” Copa Matos says. As he pours the smoke, we ask him if there are certain occasions when he feels compelled to smoke a cigar. He thinks for a while.
“The occasion is emotion,” he says.
There are a few factors required for him to smoke one, he adds. He needs to be either “pleased or concerned.” And he needs to have the time.
It feels like a natural close. We thank him.
“I have something else to say,” Copa Matos adds. “When I was in my twenties, I had a friend who would always say, ‘Good luck, bad luck, who knows?’”
“Sometimes, something very good happens,” Copa Matos continues, “but it turns into something very bad. And sometimes, something very bad happens. But afterwards, you say, ‘I’m so glad.’”
He smiles and steps back from the table. “So. Good luck, bad luck, who knows?”
He walks away. Then he comes back.
“Something else,” Copa Matos says. “A cigar goes very well with straight Peruvian pisco.”
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