The Riverbar Steakhouse and Grill — Restaurant in Cambridge

We found this place on Google, we liked the look of it and reviews looked great, on arriving we were not disappointed, the restaurant was lovely, very stylish, clean and we were greeted well. Our waitress took us to our table, she was lovely but spoke little English, we also had another waitress who was fantastic, very helpful and attentive, she brought us our drinks and we had some nut nibbles and olives, both of which were really tasty, I'm sorry that I didn't get her name as she was great at her job. The waitress took our order, we both chose New York strip, mine rare, my partners medium. Our steak arrived, my partners was just over medium mine was more blue than rare, they were not New York steaks, we decided to give the benefit of the doubt and see what they tasted like, my partners was average, however I was struggling to cut mine, I had it sent back to be cooked more to see if it would help, it did not. I tried to eat mine but it was still difficult to cut, was bland and was just a poor cut of meat. I said that I couldn't eat my meal, we would pay for my partners meal but we don't want to be paying for mine, these weren't £12-£15 steaks, these were nearly £30 steaks, we don't mind paying money for good food but this really wasn't good. The manager was summoned for us to talk to, he unfortunately talked over me, which annoyed my partner and he asked firmly for the manager to listen to me. I said that it had come out undercooked to start with I was told its a thin cut so needed to be treated carefully, I responded that a good chef should be able to cook it to the right temperature no matter what cut and size it was. We stated that it wasn't New York strip (we have had new yorkstrip in New York), I was told that this was an English cow it was not going to be the same, I responded that it shouldn't be sold as New York strip if it isn't that. He then went on to ask if we were questioning the quality of his product, yes of course we were, it wasn't up to standard for the price charged. The manager wouldn't listen to us and said he had to speak to a deputy manager? We had the bill and they thankfully only charged us for one of the steaks and for the drinks. Unfortunately the manager, who could have sorted this discreetly, decided to argue with us, if it was handled better I probably would never have left this review, if you look at my reviews, I just don't like to leave bad ones, but he unfortunately really did not handle it well. The two stars are for the waitresses as they...

Organised a meal for my partners 30th birthday. I emailed a few days before hand as she’s celiac to just make sure she could be catered for, we got a yes we can comfortably cater for celiacs. When we got to the restaurant we had to ask for the allergen menu to then be told that even though majority of the items that were gluten free they aren’t because of how they’re cooked. My partner politely just asked is there any chance the chef could just shallow fry or sauté some potato’s for here. Not too much to ask. We got a firm NO then a she can have salad. We did ask the manager to see if he could do anything. He went and spoke to the chef and you could visibly see the chef being rude and shutting it down. This made my partner feel so bad she can’t help having an auto immune disease and the rudeness from the chef was unacceptable. There was barely any full tables so it wasn’t like it was busy.

After the manager had successfully failed to do anything he then came to push for my partner to have the salad. I’m sorry we’re not paying £30 and up for a piece of steak and some leaves.

The way the staff handled the whole situation was below standard. They were rude not friendly and came across as arrogant. I have also seen that this is not an uncommon review of the staff. They don’t seem to want to do anything about it.

All in all we had looked forward to this meal after being assured it could all be catered for we’d have a great time. Which was not the case.

I would highly recommend not going to this place. If you want a good atmosphere friendly staff and an all round good experience I would highly recommend going to the ivy, we had walked out of the river steakhouse and went looking for somewhere to fit us in. We walked to the ivy. The were fully booked to take a table of 6 but we were outside trying to find somewhere and the host came out and managed to find us a slightly smaller table just so we had somewhere we could enjoy the 30th birthday. Absolute champ. After the whole debacle we ended up having a great time and had an outstanding meal with great...

This review comes a little late as we had our occasion booked for 6th Dec 2019, however the excellence of the service and the food still stands out prominently in my mind.

We had booked one of their private function rooms for just over 30 people for a work Christmas dinner from 1-5pm. It was incredibly easy to book a place, we were communicating via email with Amber who would promptly respond to all of our emails and answer all of our questions.

When we arrived at the restaurant's private function room, everything was laid out beautifully on the table with crackers and hats included. They also have a speaker system through which can you play your own music, so we had a Christmas playlist playing in the background. There was ample space for moving around to talk with people and for playing our Christmas games.

The service was really second-to-none, we were served by Sal and Zareth who were incredibly conscientious and accommodating - even with a few latecomers we communicated between each other well so that the timing of the food being served was spot on. We were also asked about when we would like drinks served, about top-ups for water and how we were finding the food and drink. They would discreetly tidy up throughout the afternoon too and even though we did run a bit over our time slot we were not at all pressured about having to leave. Highly recommended just for the excellent service!

On top of this, the food itself was incredibly delicious, with an excellent choice of dishes on their Christmas menu. All of our attendees commented on the high quality of the food and the portion sizes were very good (I even had trouble finishing my dishes), the meats were very well cooked and bursting with flavour, outstanding work by the chefs especially for such a large group. The wines we were served were splendid, having ordered both red and white wines for our tables.

Overall we all enjoyed the service, food, and atmosphere and would definitely recommend this place for...