COD Robata Grill Bar — Restaurant in Riga

Disastrous Dining – Incompetent Service, Mediocre Food, Zero Michelin Standards. It completely embarrassed me in front of my guests.

My recent dinner at COD was hands down the worst dining experience of our two-week trip across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—and shockingly, this was a Michelin-recommended restaurant. From abysmal service to poorly executed dishes, nothing met expectations, especially for the price and reputation.

Service Was Either Racist or Simply Incompetent We were ignored for long stretches after being seated even for basic service like offering water. I had to flag down staff just to get served water serviced. The restaurant wasn’t busy as there were only 2 other tables and our waiter was visible chatting with kitchen staff while referring to something on his mobile phone. The waiter also got the wrong order while Genmaicha were ordered but Matcha was served. While I urged my dining companion to ask for replacement but she thought the waiter were “too unfriendly” to approach. When asked for feedback at the end of the meal, I mentioned the meal had "some hits but many misses." Instead of addressing concerns, the waiter walked away without asking for details, completely unprofessional and dismissive. Why ask for our feedback to begin with? Fellow diners felt the staff treated us differently, bordering on discriminatory behavior. At best, it was sheer incompetence. Not just the service itself, the body language was also very unfriendly.

Food Was Not Up to Michelin (or Even Casual Dining) Standards*p “Couscous" (Risotto-Style): A confused mess—Overpowering cheese clashed with sweet barbecue unagi, creating a jarring, unbalanced flavor. Black Angus: So much gristle and fat that my companion spent more time cutting away inedible parts than eating. "Lamb Shank": False advertising—it was just a few medium-cooked lamb pieces, not the slow-braised shank we expected.

An Insult to Michelin & TopJaw’s Reputation As fans of TopJaw, I trusted their recommendation, but COD single-handedly ruined their credibility for me. This was not fine dining-it was careless cooking and apathetic service wrapped in pretension.

Avoid this place. There are far better Michelin-recognized restaurants in Riga (like BABO and TAILS both we also dined at) that actually deserve their praise. COD, however, should be stripped of its recommendation until it fixes its...

Tl;Dr at the bottom.

The food was excellent although the portions were small. Me and my friend had to buy two main courses to stop being hungry, so considering the price for each course it got somewhat expensive for what you got.

For starters ordered the tuna with mushrooms and black caviar, and the wagyu beef. Both were excellent and the well worth the money. The meat was juicy and tender, the tuna was firm and full of taste and they were both well paired with sauces and vegetables.

For main courses, I ordered the wagyu with mushroom sauce and he ordered black Angus beef. Again the meat was perfectly cooked and tender so it almost melted in the mouth, and would have been well worth the money if we knew to order a side dish with the main course.

The second main dishes were veal with mushrooms and stone fish with sweet potato fries and a mustard sauce, and we both also ordered miso soup. Oh my god that veal was delicious! Probably the best meat I have ever tasted. The stone fish was pretty meh, so I would recommend spending your money on some other dish. The miso soup was miso soup, didn't taste a big difference from your average sushi place, but frankly it's very hard to fail with what is basically broth.

For dessert I had a passion fruit mousse and my friend had an earl grey creme brulee with passion fruit sorbet, which all were excellent as well. The mousse was firm and full of taste while the highlight of my friends dish was definitely the sorbet. Wow!

All in all the food was good, so if I was just judging the food the place would have gotten 5 stars. If the staff had been a bit more knowledgeable about their selection, and more interested in explaining the different dishes the service would have gotten 5 stars as well. The staff were all very pleasant, fun to talk to and the atmosphere was really calm and cozy. I would say this is an excellent place for a date, if you have the $$.

The whole dinner for two people with 10% tips ended up going for 174 euro. You could get away with 10 euro less per person if you order a side dish for your main course, then you don't have to order two main courses as we did.

Tl;dr : delicious food, pleasant staff. Too small portions makes it a bit more expensive than expected. Prices range from 16 - 30 euro for a...

Honestly, we weren't the happiest with the service and even tho I want to rank it higher because of the food, the service dragged it down. I'd rather go somewhere with less tasty food that has better service.

The food was good, the atmosphere was nice but the waiter kept bothering us. Too pushy and generally was standing around even when we asked if we could have some time to decide. I'm in the service industry and as someone who is in it, irritated the living crap out of me. We felt forced at every corner, I take it because we spoke English (from international school ascent) we were confused as Americans who if given great service even tip pretty well but all we got was more irritation the longer it went by.

We actually decided to not get dessert there because of this and even when the dessert Menu was half uncomfortably forced on us we looked at it and said "sorry we don't want any of the options". All this trying too hard really took away from the experience, we just wanted the food and to be left alone not constantly bothered. We were 4 people, averaged about 25 euros a person. Would have been higher, we wanted to order more but honestly we just wanted to get out of there.

At the end the waiter brought the bill, we asked to pay with card. We had a semi-awkward interaction where he was mentioning "tip" without using the word tip, service etc etc. I'm cringing even writing it 😭. The second waiter was a bit better but it wasn't a big improvement 😅. I'm sorry, im not trying to go on a rant or complain but that's the only thing I would give criticism to.

Overall the food is great, service not so much. The question is would I want to try again? Maybe. I've heard great things about COD but this wasn't the experience I've...