Went last night - ended up using Resy Notify and got a spot. Place was packed and got a ton of food! Highly recommend! Favorites were the hay smoked sawara, the cabbage in clam dashi, japanese sweet potato, and the pickle plate, but honestly everything was pretty great! Only thing I would skip were the roasted radishes which were just alright.
Travis sure does know how to cook good food. The sweet potato and fuyu persimmon dishes were my favorites of the night. The pickle plate, maitake, duck rice, duck meatballs, and mazemen were so good. It was a hectic private event so we didn’t have soy sauce or yuzu kosho for most of the handrolls, but they were still delicious. Can’t wait to go back to try more stuff.
That cabbage with the clam dashi
W: I didn’t much like it. Most dishes didn’t taste good to me. Many dishes were over seasoned, over salted, too tangy, over watery, over sauced, and not at all Japanese. The only dishes that tasted right to me were a natto hand roll and the gelato. Peony liked it a little more.
P: RVR is a good neighborhood restaurant with some dishes I enjoy. However, I much prefer the food at Gjelina. I’ve traveled to the west side several times just to dine at Gjelina, but I don’t plan to return to RVR unless it’s in my neighborhood
ordered almost ooe so hit to miss ratio was lower, main issue was salt.
review forthcoming @CiaoBob @hungryhungryhippos @LouisianaMouth @boourns @bluebarb
highlights
- persimmon salad
- sashimi
- pork collar tonkatsu
- hand rolls
- black cod
- japanese sweet potato
- carrot cake
misses
- ramen (salty)
- squid (salty)
- skewers
- maitake mushroom (salty)
- salad (salty)
fuyu persimmon, purple daikon, myoga, soba furikake & shiso
santa barbara uni, shiso, cucumber & half moon bay wasabi
wild kanpachi sashimi, daikon & mandarin kosho
roasted citrus-shoyu santa barbara black cod
grilled japanese sweet potato, miso butter, scallion & katsuobushi
lone mountain wagyu rib steak, nori butter, lemon & black pepper
warm carrot & buckwheat cake with miso caramel & butter pecan gelato
passion fruit & coconut swirl sorbet
black sesame & matcha-stracciatella gelatos
Talk about a latergram lol
I will be the first to say that I did not really enjoy rvr, company excluded.
Loved the salads, sashimi, and potato.
Otherwise most of the other stuff bordered from unmemorable to bad. Specifically bad were the ramen and gyozas. It’s probably some of the worst of either category that I’ve had.
Very disappointing since I love gjelina and gjusta so much.
But had a great time with the crew!
+1 on the good dishes. Salt levels uneven, example: the salad was well seasoned in some parts and too salty in others. Maybe it was an off night, because that aspect was so inconsistent between dishes. The ramen noodle texture was unconventional and not to my taste, I’m no expert, but it felt like the noodles were missing the bouncy chew you’d normally see with ramen noodles. Seemed closer to a conventional pasta and perhaps without the same usage of alkalinity?