Osteria Coppa 
139 "B" Street, San Mateo, CA
http://www.osteriacoppa.com/food-wine/dinner.html 
Review date: May 2012

We had dinner with our friends Rob and Beth, meeting them at this well-regarded neighborhood trattoria in downtown San Mateo. 

Three of the starters were shared around the table. The first was the trout salad: smoked trout, fingerling potatoes, Castelvetrano olives and capers. Executive Chef Chanan Kamen, who has an impressive resume which includes Jardinere and Quince, uses the pink-fleshed trout, which has much more flavor than the usual farm-raised trout, even before smoking. This is a lovely dish, with great balance and simplicity.

The salumi platter is a generously sized platter that had some crisp breadsticks, caperberries, olives, marcona almonds, and terrific housemade salumi. We loved all of them: two types of salame, one tangy with red wine, the other milder and sweeter. There were generous slices of a superb mortadella and paper-thin slices of cured pork loin. There was also a thin wedge of an herbed pork shoulder pate that was so good, even Carlos loved it although he normally doesn't care for the coarser "country-style" pates.

Carlos chose the fritto misto to share, which the waiter warned had changed slightly from when Beth had it last. It's now shrimp, mozzarella, zucchini and basil, in a light, greaseless batter with two sauces – a pesto mayonnaise and a marinara. Beth ordered the fritto misto as her entree, saying it was her favorite dish here. Rob chose the mushroom lasagne – I didn't get a chance to ask him how he liked it, but he cleaned out the casserole dish. 

I picked the California King salmon, one of the nightly specials. It's seldom one can get King salmon, Coho being more common.  A small filet of local King Salmon, well pan-seared with a great crispy skin, was on top of a pile of braised baby spinach, with a smooth sweet puree of Jerusalem Artichokes underlying both.  An outer ring of beurre blanc had thin slivers of sugar snap pears and tiny English peas. This was a lovely plate, beautifully balanced with clean, rich flavors.

Carlos opted for the lamb sausage pizza with the addition of caramelized onions. This generously sized pizza seemed oven-baked, but with a good crust. The lamb sausage was flavored with rosemary but there was very little of it, and unfortunately a bit too much tomato sauce overwhelmed the fresh ricotta cheese. The caramelized onions had a lovely sweet wine-accented flavor, but the generously scattered heaps overwhelmed the sausage and cheese flavors. All the ingredients were good, but they weren't balanced against one another as deftly as they could have been.

Beth had a glass of chardonnay, and as Rob had brought a bottle of wine for dinner, there was a corkage fee of $15. Carlos and I finished with cappuccinos – lovely foam, but only single shots, lost in the depth of regular-sized coffeecups. They were properly dry as requested, but not a good match as far as size of cup to the amount of coffee.

Osteria Coppa is a lively, stylish space, with comfortably upholstered booths and efficient, well-trained waitstaff. If you're in downtown San Mateo, it's an excellent choice for lunch or dinner.

Four people, dinner: Four starters, three entrees, 1 glass of white wine and one corkage fee, two beverages with tip was $202.