Restaurant Review: The River Café Brooklyn 

I heard about The River Café, under the Brooklyn Bridge, years go on a travel show. I knew immediately that I needed to try the Brooklyn Bridge dessert. It’s literally a chocolate Brooklyn Bridge! And everyone knows I love the Brooklyn Bridge.

Unfortunately, every time I go to NYC it’s usually last minute and there are no reservations available. But this time, I planned early! Well, my girlfriend wanted to go for her birthday and she planned early but I was smart enough to make a reservation right away!

The restaurant itself is worth going to, just to see. The gardens outside are gorgeous and the displays inside are equally impressive. HINT: They have a bar, in the front corner of the restaurant, and you do not need a reservation to have a drink there! Go early, when they first open, and you can enjoy their delicious wine menu and spectacular views. It’s a very romantic restaurant: there were three engagements while we were there!

The weather was rainy and miserable, but that didn’t stop the view from being gorgeous! That’s my old neighborhood, straight across the water!

Cheers!

Part of the outdoor garden and the bridge! It was too rainy to walk around…

The beautiful indoor arrangements.

Back to the restaurant. The service was exactly what you would expect from a place where the meal is $130 per person: attentive, kind, quick. Although is a prix fix menu, they have a large selection of meals.

Even the plates were beautiful!

I had the octopus as the appetizer. The sauce was delicious and the octopus was cooked perfectly. It was soft and not rubbery at all. I could have eaten five more servings!

For my dinner, I chose the lobster. Again, cooked perfectly and the sauce was delicious. Now, I appreciate any pasta, and anything with squid ink, but the pasta looked a little bit too much like the creatures I find in my yard in Florida. Yes, it was hard to take the first bite, for fear I was being punked and it was going to be alive, but rest assured: it was more certainly pasta and absolutely fantastic.

Now, for the best part. The dessert. They had many options but I obviously had to get the Chocolate Brooklyn Bridge. It was rich, creamy, and beautiful. Definitely worth the years of waiting!

So good!

Happy Birthday Carolyn!

The River Café is open for breakfast, Sunday brunch, lunch, and dinner. There is a dress code: breakfast, lunch, and brunch can be slightly casual, but not too casual, and a jacket is required at dinner, a tie referred but not required. So get dressed up and have a spectacular dinner under the Brooklyn Bridge!