Māsa restaurant — Restaurant in Riga

Update: An unexpected, first-class response from management compels me to write an update. The management contacted me almost immediately after I posted this review, fully acknowledging their mistake and offering a sincere apology. This is an excellent example of crisis communication, where I truly felt that my opinion and personal experience mattered. I'm happy to remain a customer, knowing that my feedback is valued and that my next experience will undoubtedly be better. Well done! 4/5. Thank you! I want to start by expressing my gratitude to the administrator for finding a table for us, even though everything was fully booked a week before our desired date. When I mentioned that we wanted to celebrate birthdays at their restaurant, they kindly accommodated us. They informed us that the table would be available from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM, but afterward, we could move to the bar or terrace.

Generally, I never spend more than two hours dining at a restaurant—I manage to enjoy everything, including dessert, within that time. However, in our case, our main courses were only served at 7:45 PM, a full 1 hour and 20 minutes after we placed our order. We were not warned about such a delay. Then, at exactly 8:00 PM, we were approached and told that it was time to move while we were still eating.

This made us lose the desire to stay any longer. I've never experienced such slow service in any other restaurant in Riga. The food was decent, especially the appetizers, but this is not a place to visit for the food alone.

The design is beautiful, created by a Ukrainian studio, and I loved the way the lighting was done.

Rating: 3/5. I didn’t have time to try deserts, so maybe I will give it another try in about 6 months....

You should definitely give this place a chance.

Although the kitchen is currently working on the tempo to speed up the serving of dishes, your wait will certainly be worth it.

The staff constantly asked for our feedback, because the place is young and can still work out various little things both in service and in the quality of food. They really care about the quality of the products and try to support local producers.

The bartender can offer you alcoholic and non-alcoholic cocktails, and also prepare cocktails according to your wishes. The large piece of ice in the dry martini was a bit confusing, but this can be easily corrected.

As starters, we took trout crudo, tartare, kilka and dolma. My absolute favorite is kilka: very natural taste, good texture... and unexpectedly absolutely incredible pickled red onion. It is worth mentioning separately the bright range of different flavors in crudo.

As a main course, I highly recommend creamy rice with seafood. Be sure to use a tablespoon to collect absolutely all the sauce to the very last drop. You will not regret it!

As of the desserts, we managed to try chocolate mousse and poached pear. Chocolate mousse is definitely worth trying for its absolutely non-greasy airy texture and crunchy additive under the...

The restaurant has a stunning interior and an incredible atmosphere. The presentation of the dishes is beautiful, and the Spain bubbles bottle was simply exquisite, as was their bread with butter.

However, I can’t quite understand the hype about the food in the reviews. The dishes were utterly unimpressive. When you pay such a price for simple ingredients like cabbage, you expect to be wowed by the flavors. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. The same goes for the sprats, which were incredibly tender on their own, but the way they were meant to be eaten—on bread with tomato sauce—completely overpowered their delicate flavor. It felt like I was just eating bread with some sort of spread, and the taste of the sprats was lost entirely.

As for the seafood rice… it was the strangest thing; the bisque in the dish did not favor it at all, to put it politely! We had dinner with a group of eight, and no one was particularly impressed with their meals—some of us didn’t even finish our dishes. The highest praise any of us could give the food was that it was just average.

The service was slow and uninspired, which only added to our disappointment. Very, very disappointing, especially since it’s clear that the restaurant is really trying to make...