Riviera Restaurant — Restaurant in East Providence

I went to Riviera on a Saturday afternoon with my wife and two friends. We asked for a table of four, and told the waiter that we were waiting on a friend. In the meanwhile, we ordered appetizers and the waiter continually asked us when we were ready to order. Our friend had not arrived yet, and we kept telling him to wait until the friend arrived. Granted, I could understand if we were holding up restaurant business, but the restaurant was empty. And, our friend only took about half an hour to arrive.

When my friend did show up, we ordered Paella. It was awful. The cheap, fake crab meat tasted like wet, mushy flour, and the rice was greasy, undercooked, and entirely misflavored.

The waiter came to ask us if we wanted more to drink. We had kept the drinks coming steadily, and it seemed that he wanted us now to start on his wine list. I looked at the wine list, but there weren't any wines I recognized. We decided to continue with what we were drinking. This decision apparently bothered the waiter, who decided that he would appeal to each of us individually almost insisting that we try his wine. I felt like we had just entered a pawn shop, because at that point it was all about sales.

The drinks we ordered after we turned down the wine came dirty and watered down. They were served in dirty glasses, and black specks were floating in the drinks.

When we left, I looked back at the restaurant and the waiter was staring at us through the window. It was creepy. The food was bad. The service was bad. The experience was awful. I will never...

There were 3 of us. First off we had a wobbly table and had to move. Not a big deal. Our waitress was very nice but knew nothing about the menu. In her defense she was new...but there is such a thing as "training"! We had cheese for appitizer, that was good. My dad ordered a Portuguese pork plate which he enjoyed. Me and my boyfriend ordered Paella and were very excited. We waited a very long time for our food. The first thing we noticed about the Paella was there wasn't shrimp. When we asked our waitress about it....she didn't know if it was included. A few minutes later someone brought over a few shrimp. The second thing was we didn't recognize something in Paella and asked our waitress what it was....you guessed it, she didn't know. She asked a fellow worker who came over and said it was crab meat.....I was instantly turned off because I know what crab meat looks like! He confirmed it was imitation crab meat! At a fine dining ....NOT. I expressed how dissapointing the Paella was and they offered to buy a round of shots. Did I mention I ordered a bottle of red? Two glasses each I'm sure was enough. I asked for a discount instead (the bill came to about $68) They took the cheese off the bill...I didn't feel it was enough to make up for the fact that they gave us imitation crab meat instead of shrimp! One last thing....the seafood was dry over cooked and rubbery. It's not in my nature to complain, they just blew it! Never...

This is a restaurant we would go regularly. It used to be delicious with excellent service. We even used the banquet facilities for so many events. They just lost our business. We ordered pickup tonight and it was awful. The pork tasted like it was boiled. It looked like it was a soup rather than pork snd littlenecks.The seafood combination was gross. Cod was rough, lobster did not taste right, Calamari tasted like rubber. We actually went back to make them aware and the owner was going to offer us the same food again and defended that this never happens. We even showed them a picture of the food and they were surprised in just the appearance. The owner almost walked off with my fiancés phone to show the kitchen. I don’t know how the chef would be okay serving that and how the owner offered a poor solution. There was no refund or no gift card offered. We were offered to wait for another of the same dishes…yeah I’m good. And last we were there we ordered the seafood combination which the big ingredient is lobster and did not find out until we got our meals that they were out of lobster. The waiter was even upset bc the kitchen didn’t let him know and they did nothing at the time about that either. My in laws who were regulars are disgusted. We threw out over $50 in food last night. They lost our business. I don’t want people to waste their money the way we did. If you’re Portuguese this is not what pork and little necks look...