February 23, 2007
Beirut, Lebanon

A Real Review of a Surreal Experience: Copas Restaurant, Brummana, Mount Lebanon

A couple of friends and I headed to Copas in Brummana, across from the Manhattan's for a hot wine and wild boar roast... The formula was simple, 25$ eat all you can eat, drink all you can drink. Sounds fair...

I arrived at about 9:15 ahead of my friends and ahead of most people in the joint, the place was almost empty. By the time my friends got there some 10 minutes later it was still relatively empty... So we ordered as people started arriving. A while later the food was here and the boar was not bad at all... Relatively small portions but hey, it's eat all you can. After we were done we were nowhere close to being satiated so we ordered another portion as we sipped our hot wine... By then the place was packed. About 45 minutes later we called the waiter to enquire about our food and he said he'll go find out.

About 15 minutes later, he comes back only to announce that there was no wild boar left and that they were sorry. Now don't mistake this review for a squabble about food or money, it's a review about the way NOT to treat your clients. We replied that that was not our problem but rather theirs and that they had to figure out a way to fix it to which they gave us the exact same answer: there is no boar left and they're sorry.

So we asked to speak with someone with a double digit IQ. A few minutes later the "maitre d" shows up and starts sweet talking one of my friends (who happens to be a girl whom he knows from before). And the basic transcript of the conversation was: hayeteh why didn't you tell me that you weren't served?" to which she replied that we did ask the waiter about the food. So another 10 to 15 minutes later, my two friends who happen to be girls are served with a plate of what seems to be wild boar whereas I (a guy) am served absolutely nothing. Kudos on the macho act...

However after looking at what they were served they soon found out that it was nothing but boar FAT without a shred of meat, the kind of parts a jackal wouldn't eat off a rotting carcass. By now they didn't even bother to heat the wine at all and we were served cold wine which tasted like grapejuice. Again we complain, so they offer to replace with a meal, which they picked, quesadillas, a plate of quesadillas for three famished people...

The final explanation, and i shit you not, was that there was no boar left because the high class people (that is my translation of el ness el mrattabin) were served ahead: the conclusion is, better prospective customers (ie the old males with cigars and their herds of cows that were too old even back when the music they're dancing to today was released; TWENTY YEARS AGO and dressed like they're 60 going on 16 with clothes from mango or zara you'd swear are for girls too young for you to date at the age of 25) are reserved preferential treatment, followed by women (that would be the girls I was with) followed by young men: that would be me...

In the end I was so pissed I left, and later found out that we each paid 25$, "and that the quesadillas and bear" were on the house. What puzzles me the most is the amount of crap we got while getting reservations, given that they "needed to know EXACTLY how many people were coming" to calculate how many wild boars they were going to get, in the end the place was packed, and they got just one wild boar...

The worst thing about the typical lebanese ripoff is not the ripoff or the embarrassment of having to squabble over a service you paid for, or the fact that it is so much a reflection of what life has come to be in this country over the past 30 some years and a bitter reminder that you, the people will always come last.

The very worst thing about the typical Lebanese ripoff is that even if you're the biggest idiot on the face of this earth, it's still insulting to your intelligence...

Copas, don't go there, even if you're the biggest idiot on the face of the earth...

review by phoenix

tags: copas, brummana, restaurant, lebanon, bad service, wild boar, preferential treatment, ripoff, hot wine, quesadillas, grape juice, lebanese, reservations

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