
The Access Interview San Francisco
How S.F.’s Copra Became a Home for Groundbreaking Indian Cooking
The current moment for Indian food in this country has been a long time coming. That path has been forged by restaurants like Tabla, where the celebrated chef Floyd Cardoz reinterpreted South Asian cooking for a New York audience in the early 2000s, boldly innovating by remixing Indian flavors, western techniques, and his own savoir-faire. More recently, chefs like Vikas Khanna (Bungalow) and Chintan Pandya (Dhamaka, Adda) in New York, and Meherwan Irani (Chai Pani) in North Carolina have made their respective claims to shaping the way Americans eat South Asian food.
At least one other restaurant arguably more than belongs on that list: Copra, the South Indian restaurant on San Francisco’s Fillmore Street run by Srijith Gopinathan, who has perfected his own style of cooking that blends Indian traditions with California ingredients and inspiration. Certainly his talents are well known: On any given night he might be serving 250 or more guests. And yet Copra often doesn’t make it into the conversation of groundbreaking Indian cooking today.
Certainly Gopinathan’s experience — and talents — should have drawn attention. He’s been a chef for more than 20 years in restaurants all over the world, from Bangalore to England to the Maldives and, most recently, at two Michelin-starred Taj Campton Place in San Francisco. Regarding the latter, Gopinathan didn’t just cook at the Michelin-starred restaurant; as executive chef, it was his vision of Californian Indian cooking — and the impressive execution of it — that landed the restaurant its two stars in 2010, barely one year after he took the job.
He was the first Indian chef, globally, to earn such an honor. The acclaim, in other words, has been there.
Indeed, Gopinathan’s career in America has been built on a pioneering style of finessed Indian cuisine that flaunts Californian sensibilities. His signature dishes from Campton Place, like butter-poached lobster with green mango and coconut, joyously blurred the lines between South Asian food and Californian cuisine in the same way that Cardoz blended and remixed traditions on the East Coast nearly two decades ago. Were his efforts shrouded by the impersonal luxury hotel setting, which isn’t the platform for culinary talent here as in other parts of the world? Was his notion of creating a ultra high-end Indian-inspired tasting menu just ahead of its time? (On these shores at least; London has embraced such things for years.)


The path that led to Copra became clear in 2022, when Gopinathan left Campton Place to focus on running his own restaurants. He’d already branched out with Ettan, a pan-Indian restaurant in Palo Alto, in 2020. It was a stark departure from the finery of Campton Place, trading out formal tasting menus for high-volume shared plates. Then, last year, as national coversation heated up on more regionally specialized South Asian cooking, Gopinathan followed up with Copra — in the old space once inhabited by the pioneering Indian restaurant Dosa, no less — with food inspired by his hometown in Kerala. His menu there is filled with seafood- and spice-driven fare inspired by his mother and grandmother’s cooking. The lush, boho-ish space was designed by Gopinathan’s business partner Ayesha Thapar, who also co-owns Ettan.
With these new ventures, Gopinathan has stepped out on his own to tell a more personal story. And he’s ready for a limelight that arguably should have been on him for a while now.
Resy caught up with Gopinathan to learn more about his journey from Cal-Indian hotel fine dining to opening two (soon to be three) restaurants that showcase a spectrum of regional Indian cuisine. We talked about how South Asian cooking has changed in America, the East Coast bias in food media, and why he’s not quite done with fine dining.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.


RESY: Let’s start from the top. Why did you move to America to become a chef?
Srijith Gopinathan: America was never planned. I was actually working in the Maldives, helping to open a hotel chain. But you can only live so long on an island, so at that point, the company had bought something in San Francisco and I was asked to move. I was not super keen at first because I knew hotels in America were not known for food. So, I looked it up, and I saw Campton Place, and I saw the people who’d been there before were really amazing chefs like Daniel Humm [who moved from there to Eleven Madison Park]. Everything changed for me at that point.
Your background was already in hotel restaurants. What about your food? What were you cooking? Clearly, it wasn’t yet the Cal-Indian cuisine you are now known for.
The beginning of my career was not Indian food. I always enjoyed and ate Indian food at home. And when I traveled around the world, I ate Indian food. But the opportunity [to learn how to cook] in India wasn’t the best at that point, it was not like today. Western chefs were more accommodating in those days. They [would] travel to India, they had recipes, and you could actually learn things from them.
I always say, we call it Indian cuisine, but there’s nothing called Indian cuisine. It’s the cuisines of India. There are so many cuisines in the subcontinent, and so many have not showed up yet.— Srijith Gopinathan
You landed at Campton Place in 2007. How did you define your cooking style here in America? Why did you shift the menu there to Indian cuisine?
Because I was at a hotel, my biggest focal point was not running a restaurant. The need of the hour was having the right kind of cuisine at Campton Place. Then the 2008 recession happened so I thought, if I have to be in this country, I have to position myself from strength. Me trying to cook non-Indian food in California did not make much sense. But Indian cuisine was my strength. And there was a lot of room for Indian food, because I didn’t see amazing places here at all. So, there was a right opportunity, right timing, and I was prepared for it.
This is when you developed your signature cuisine. What was your inspiration?
I’ve always been a little bit of a maverick. I was going to farmer’s markets. I was talking to farmers. I was talking to other chefs. I was traveling to see Indian food across the U.S., from east to west. I was taking advantage of all this studying. I saw a lot of things in California which I did not see in India. It would be very unfair to all these ingredients and all these farmers if I just queued up something that already existed. So, I had to create something new at that point. I had to use ingredients locally available, and I had to use techniques from both parts of the world.
So how do you define Cal-Indian? Is it ingredient driven? Is it spice driven? Is it seasonal?
It is definitely ingredient driven. No doubt. It is definitely crossover technique. It’s also crafting whatever is available. In summers, I use a lot of fruits. I never got peaches and cherries in my hometown. It’s not just technique, ingredient, seasonality. It’s all of it coming together.


You had so much success with this style of cooking at Campton Place. Why did you leave?
Every good thing has to come to an end. If you hold on to the good things, it becomes not so good. So, it is always good to leave things that are at its height.
And my goal, like most chefs, was to build a restaurant company where I could decide my destiny. Where I could do multiple sides of Indian food. For example, if you look at Ettan, I do very eclectic, progressive Indian food. And then I do something very South Indian at Copra. That’s the food I grew up eating. I have a small place called Little Blue Door in Los Altos, basically a casual counter concept. And now I’m building something in Menlo Park, which is focusing on Indian food cooked around a wood fire grill. It’s opening up any day now.
Copra is arguably your most personal project so far, so what are some of the dishes that you are most excited about?
Honestly, it keeps changing. I’ve started cooking and eating seafood a lot, because I’m a coastal boy, I come from very coastal town. Every four miles you go, you see the ocean. A dish I really enjoy cooking is from Campton Place, which is a basic fish curry, what my grandma used to make. It’s coconut, tamarind, turmeric, a little ginger and garlic. Second thing is a very traditional dish called black cod pollichathu, which is always on the menu. It is black cod lightly seared with basic spices like coriander, turmeric, and chilies, and then crusted with shallot. The shallot is cooked with coconut milk and tamarind then you crush the whole thing on top of the black cod in a banana leaf, and you cook the whole thing on top of a griddle.
That sounds amazing.
I make 25 portions of it at Copra, and it sells out halfway through the service. Another very popular dish is sesame leaf chaat. It’s been there from day one. In India, we use the oil, but not sesame leaves. I put it on the menu as lightly battered in chickpea batter with sweet yogurt, tamarind, mint—classic chaat accoutrements. And I finish it with some black sesame brittle. I change it to apple, persimmon, or mangoes, based on what’s available. It’s an excellent dish.
It sounds like you’re still doing the Cal-Indian thing, but it’s slightly different now, where you’re using more traditional recipes to create familiar flavors.
After cooking for the last 20 years in the Bay Area, my culinary DNA is different.


You mentioned that South Asian food in America was really different when you first started cooking. Could Copra or Ettan have existed back then?
Five, 10 years ago, I would have been a little more cautious, for sure. I didn’t know as much as I know today. And I don’t know if the city would have been ready for it. Any businessman, for example, if he doesn’t understand his surroundings, he’s not a smart business guy. As much as I have a chef’s role, I also have a part to play to make sure that my business runs seamlessly and successfully.
If you don’t think San Francisco was ready for this kind of high-quality regional cooking back then, how have things changed?
The Bay Area has always had a good South Asian population and it is only increasing. Awareness among non-Indians, and their affinity towards Indian food, is also increasing. The comfort level has increased. Spicy doesn’t mean it is hot. The complexness of the flavor is higher. The growth of Indian food in the last 10 years is more than its growth over the last 50 years.
Do you think there’s still room to grow?
Oh, there’s definitely room to grow. I always say, we call it Indian cuisine, but there’s nothing called Indian cuisine. It’s the cuisines of India. There are so many cuisines in the subcontinent, and so many have not showed up yet. What’s happening in Bay Area, the exact phenomenon is happening in New York, in places like Raleigh. And that is helping the growth of this cuisine.


Copra took over the old Dosa space, which feels symbolic because Dosa belonged to an older generation of Indian restaurants in San Francisco. And now Copra has stepped in to carry the torch forward.
Yes, that’s probably an advantage of being in the same place.
What has been the most rewarding thing about being a part of the restaurant community in San Francisco?
Everything I’ve earned and everything I have today, including my family’s wellness, is all out of cooking good food in the Bay Area. And we all know how hard it is in this industry to make money.
I also want to say, living on the West Coast, you don’t get a lot of the shiny objects you can get on the East Coast. Had I done all these things on the East Coast, I would have probably been recognized by a lot more American media. And I want to shout out Michelin, who did actually jump in and recognize me, while others … not so much.
So then how do you feel about the success of Semma in New York? Not too many people know this, but Semma’s chef Vijay Kumar worked for you at Rasa in Burlingame, which in many ways felt like a precursor to Semma.
I co-owned Rasa. I devised the concept, I did [a lot of] the cooking. And I hired Vijay Kumar. I never wanted to take credit, and Vijay knows that. He respects that. Anything you can say for Indian cuisine, all the recognition, especially the South Indian part, is amazing. Of course, I’m not in any competition with them. Because, first of all, it’s too far away. And the second thing is, the guy worked for me for almost a decade.
Fair enough. What about fine dining. Are you finished with it? Do you miss it?
Knowing who I am, knowing what type of person I am, because I do like changes, once I finish the project I’m doing right now, I may do something with fine dining again before I hang my hat. My wife is not very keen about that, because it takes a lot of my personal time, but I’m thinking about it.