I went out to a weeknight dinner with a few friends here last week. I was very impressed.
Gotta say, I did not go in with high expectations. With the exception of some Lettuce/Hogsalt operations, I am perpetually underwhelmed by Rivernorth/Streeterville destinations. Something about appealing to such a mainstream, broad audience often leads to mediocrity. So, I was primed to be unhappy.
Entering the restaurant did not help said primed perception. It feels Californian no question, but in a sort of stereotypical way. There's a lot of white, it's bright and airy inside, with ultra tall ceilings, and the space itself is huge. It reminds me of Instagram trends.
But everything I ate was pretty damn impressive. I started with a sungold tomato and burrata dish that was out of this world. Burrata is clearly a hot item right now, but it was balanced with good acidity from little jewel-like orange grape tomatoes. Kind of like caprese but... bougie? Interesting sesame sauce lined the plate. Next were the ricotta dumplings, which reminded me of the ones
April Bloomfield has written about. They too were delicious, sort of like if gnocchi and ravioli had a baby. A thin, nearly papery skin of semolina coated these wonderfully light, fluffy quenelles of ricotta. Very comforting.
We had a pizza, which was also nice. Great texture, the crust wasn't too dense or chewy, but held the unique toppings nicely.
But the best main dish was the skirt steak. I'm not usually for over-seasoning a steak with spices; there's definitely "salt and pepper only" dogma that rings through my ears whenever I see a steak on a menu with copious seasonings. But this was also really tasty, it had a wonderful spice rub to it, like curry almost. It came with fried polenta. So... yeah I liked that too.
Even with all this good stuff, I agree with
spinynorman99, the desserts were the highlight. We also had the coconut panacotta; which was absurdly balanced, a combination of creamy, crunchy, coconut, acidity, just hitting all the right notes. We also had the strawberry shortcake. The cake was perfectly moist, with a soft, yielding crumb, and a unique flavor.
Would go back for sure.