In light of the CJ's 3.5 star rating of Rivue, I thought I should share my experience at the new restaurant just in case some of you might be tempted to try it. I will start by saying that I was wary of Rivue to begin with because I don't like gimmicky restaurants and every ad I have seen for Rivue touts the view and the fact that the floor rotates. But I wanted to like it and I thought maybe this was a step in the right direction for this restaurant. Boy, was I wrong. The space is quite attractive and modern, and the view is nice. The bread and butter are good but the service was painfully awkward from the start. The wine list is short and boring, and I think it explains what this restaurant is all about. It is the same thing it has always been about, which is tricking people who don't know any better into coming there because of the view and making a lot of money off of them. If they cared at all about providing a dining experience on par with their pricing then they would have a more creative wine list and their selection of "import" beers would extend beyond heineken and corona. All of the wines were mass market with markups around 3x retail. When I asked the server what kinds of beer they had, she replied "all the domestics, plus heieken and corona." I only wish I could have seen my face, but apparently she thought I was wondering what "all the domestics" meant, so she proceeded to list all of the michelob ultras and miller lites which comprise the beer list at Rivue. No thanks. A "charcuterie" appetizer sounded good on the menu: pate, duck liver mousse, some sort of cheese concoction and seafood sausage. Unfortunately the pate was the only part that was even mildly good. The seafood sausage was hardly edible, and the taste of duck liver in the mousse was barely there. Entrees didn't fare much better. One of us had the Pork medallions with stone ground dijon cream sauce and angel hair pasta. This was the most foul of the lot, and hardly edible. In addition to arriving at the table with the sauce already congealed, the scaloppine style pork was leathery and had a very off taste. The angel hair pasta was an odd orange color, and the mushrooms served alongside were cold and sort of musty tasting, in a bad way. I also sampled a dish which was supposed to be a melange of seafood over pasta with a thermidor cream sauce. There were maybe two shrimp tails peeking out of the ocean of cream which was this dish. I never saw any pasta nor much seafood for that matter. Just lots and lots of cream. The final entree was the lamb shank, and it was really the only edible one of the lot. I know that it isn't that hard to braise a lamb shank though, so I'm not going to give them much credit. The meat was good, and the sauce was pretty good too, but there was quite a bit more fat on the shank than when I have had it elsewhere. The risotto that it was served with was another story. It was so laden with some sort of gooey cheese that every time I lifted the fork it looked like i was lifting a bite of pizza. After that we couldn't wait to get out, so no dessert was to be had. And also, to comment on the candy cart which is brought around with the check (and which Marty liked in his review), it really isn't very amusing when everything else sucks so badly.
Anyway, I just wanted to share that, and also make the point that I think Marty's reviews are off. I am not saying he didn't have better food at Rivue than I did, but I am saying that it is impossible that Rivue is capable of delivering the same type of experience as 610 Magnolia, which got the same rating for a silly srvice issue. Robin, I really hope you get to Rivue soon and rip it to shreds because it does not deserve to coexist with the wonderful restaurants that we have in this town.
