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.
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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 didnât have soy sauce or yuzu kosho for most of the handrolls, but they were still delicious. Canât wait to go back to try more stuff.
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That cabbage with the clam dashi 
W: I didnât much like it. Most dishes didnât 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. Iâve traveled to the west side several times just to dine at Gjelina, but I donât plan to return to RVR unless itâs in my neighborhood
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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
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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. Itâs probably some of the worst of either category that Iâve had.
Very disappointing since I love gjelina and gjusta so much.
But had a great time with the crew!
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+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, Iâm no expert, but it felt like the noodles were missing the bouncy chew youâd normally see with ramen noodles. Seemed closer to a conventional pasta and perhaps without the same usage of alkalinity?
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Another great meal. Couple of daiquiris, Hitachino yuzu lager, Shrimp gyoza, fennel salad, maitake, hand rolls: rock cod tempura/tuna/kanpachi, sweet potato, chicken thigh & lamb shoulder skewers, buckwheat carrot cake with miso caramel & butter pecan ice cream.
The two dishes I didnât love were the fennel salad and chicken thigh skewer. The salad didnât pop like the persimmon salad, which we sorely missed and the chicken thigh was just not tasty. The anchovy miso butter sauce on the Miatake was plate-licking good. Lamb shoulder was excellent. After half a dozen meals here, Iâve yet to encounter issues with seasoning. The gyoza are good but not great, though I do like the crispy veil. I love the energy, music, service. Something just clicks for me. Chef delivered a few dishes to us and asked how we liked the food.
1 Like
Had a very good and fun dinner here, but the pricing felt obscene. We had two drinks each and ended up spending $360 for two. Handrolls were very good. Japanese sweet potatoes were literally perfectâcould not be better. Other things were more hit or missâtoro sashimi was a swing and a miss, as was the miso cauliflower, which was way too salty and unbalanced. Drinks were great.
I feel bad complaining about price. Restaurants are in an impossible position right now. To survive and provide a living wage, they must charge more. But very few people can afford to eat at this price point regularly. Hard to know how to solve for this.
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