Riva Italian restaurant — Restaurant in Rochdale

Nice looking restaurant inside and friendly staff.

However the food is lacking in a lot of ways. Quality of ingredients and general lack of care in dishes was the main thing

You can tell when olives are from a jar (or definitely not fresh), there's no flavour. When serving bread and olives, there needs to be some form of dip (olive oil/balsamic) this is usually fine if there's olive oil on the olives themselves. There wasn't.

Likewise with the caprese salad, very plain, just shredded mozzarella and tomatoes, no seasoning (that I could taste) or any drizzle of sorts.

Seafood risotto, was, ok. The fish was cooked well, the risotto again, was lacking in flavour, I can't 100% say, but it tasted of cream rather than parmesan. But this may have just been down to using "hard cheese" as was used to sprinkle on top.

Overall it wasn't terrible, but honestly, I wouldn't go back for food.

The fact the Sunday menu was an actual roast dinner and duck rolls on the menu, kind of says it all about the lack of focus on "Italian food"

If you're looking for actual Italian food, I'd give it a miss and head up the Bella Vista round the corner for authentic...

Our first visit here for our wedding anniversary weekend away, 🥰 stumbled across this place for the first time I’m so glad we stop here to eat.. “And..WOW” the food is to die for i can’t express that enough, put it this way I’m quite the faffy eater picking bits out of my carbonara usually fatty bacon in most places I’ve been to the plate never goes back to the kitchen empty. Well I can tell you it did make it back to the kitchen empty here it was beautiful the bacon was perfect not a single oz of fat, I could actually eat all of it without the faffing and enjoy it!! My husband had some sort of spaghetti & meatball he also devoured that 😁 we also had starters that was also delicious 🤤 we will definitely be coming back and bringing our families who we have already told about this place so we will be seeing you again soon!! Thank you for making our anniversary a very pleasant experience with you guys. Wonderful staff very friendly and a warm welcoming. 100% RECOMMENDED!!!! You won’t be disappointed 😋😁 So happy we found our favourite little place to go for a decent meal....

I was a little disappointed with this place because of the good reviews. Our table wasn't ready so we waited and were shown to another part of the restaurant where there were few customers. The starters were nice although a little overpriced in my opinion. 4 prawns for a tenna with a small piece of cracker type bread is a bit much but they were tasty. My partner enjoyed their beef stroganoff which was nice but I sent my chicken dish back as there was far too much olive oil poured on top. This was changed without any issues. My main frustration was the table next to us complained about one of the waitresses and reprimanded them all directly in front of us so they were all standing around near our table including the waitress concerned. This should have been done out the back not in front of customers trying to enjoy their dinner. There seemed to be far too many waitresses on that evening and it felt an unrelaxed evening because of that. I doubt we...