La Copella in Horsforth, Leeds - worth a visit?

I have enjoyed some wonderful Italian food and hospitality over the years. I expected more of the same when we entered La Copella in Horsforth, Leeds, yesterday. However, it seems that their anagram - a pace loll - is quite appropriate. To top it off, we should have realised that this was not a place to go when we saw all of its apostrophe errors.

We followed a party of four into the restaurant; they had not booked, but were seated right away - perhaps because they did not require a non-smoking table. We were told that it would be ten or fifteen minutes' wait for a table, maybe less, and so we decided to wait at the bar, rather than look elsewhere. The trouble started when my drink, purporting to be a diet coke, arrived. I took a sip and thought it tasted unlike diet coke, perhaps it was coke. I asked the barmaid if she'd accidentally provided me with a coke. She insisted she had not and gave me a second drink, just to make sure. Perhaps it would have been nice for her to put the ice and lemon in the second drink, but at least she showed some willing.

I can confirm, having drunk two and tasted a third, that their diet coke drink is abysmal. I can only assume that their proportions are off or that they bought some out of date syrup.

About half an hour after we arrived, no table was forthcoming. I stopped a waiter, who told me to grab the chap who had promised us the fifteen minute lead time "He's quite forgetful" apparently. Perhaps he should take this into account when he promises tables to patrons. Perhaps the waiter should have followed our request through, rather than telling me, basically, to go away and ask someone else.

When we caught up with the gentleman in question, it was apparently, our fault we had not been seated, and the wait had certainly not been longer than the fifteen minutes he had originally promised. When presented with the evidence that we had been there longer, we were told to excuse him on account of his watch being slow.

When we arrived at our table, in the virtually empty upstairs seating area, the waiter up there seemed most disturbed that we did not speak Italian. He took the drinks order for our second round of drinks and then buggered off for twenty minutes. During this time, we discovered that we do speak some Italian, some lessons had been taken by members of our party of three, and we could have asked where to find the railway station, for two tickets, and something to do with announcing our names; none of these skills was useful for the purpose of ordering three pizzas, something we could have done while still at the bar.

Our table was clearly the these-guys-are-trouble-don't-serve-them table. When the pizzas eventually arrived (their quality being on the higher end of the scale), we ate with much enthusiasm, but puzzled, since a pizza is only meant to be cooked for about one minute... and so we could have probably been seated and served three or four times over by the time we were eventually provided with the food.

We were offered the dessert menu and were in mid after-dinner conversation when the waiter arrived a couple of minutes later to see what we wanted. We asked for a little more time and he made a joke about being able to take longer, but needing to be aware that the place shut at 2am. The irony of him making a joke about our delaying was astounding.

The desserts took forever to arrive - a tarte tatin and a slice of hot chocolate fudge cake - surely, it's just a bung-in-microwave job? The rapidly diminishing tip was going negative! To top it off, the waitress was slow to bring the bill, slow to pick up the credit-card (it did not strike the payer that it would be quicker to thrust the card forward the second the bill arrived, in order to avoid the delay, until it was too late), and then slow to remember whose card it was in order to get a signature.

Quality of food: 8/10
Atmosphere: 8/10
Service: -10/10
Tip: 0

20 May 2001
Ashley Frieze