Mill Valley Kitchen — Restaurant in Rochester

Pleasantly surprised!

We generally try out every restaurant that opens in town, and frankly Mill Valley has some really tough competition with the other newer places. When I first looked at their menu and prices online I was really underwhelmed and wondered who the target audience actually was. I don't really know why that was my knee jerk reaction, but when we actually got there and ate the food it was great.

1. Ambience - it has light wood tables and floors with natural-themed decorations. It feels very nice and fresh when you come in.

2. Service - Our server was fine. I think still getting used to the menu himself a little bit, but overall very good and attentive, kept our drinks full and could provide some recommendations.

3. Food (the important part) - Genuinely really good. We had a larger group so we were able to order a spread of items - We had Ahi Poke, Tempura Veggies, Walleye (I believe that was a special of the day), pork tenderloin, fig flatbread, and a variety of cocktails.

The tempura veggies are extremely dill forward - they use a fresh dill and salt on top. I am generally not a huge dill fan and found that some bites were absolutely amazing and others were a little "too much". My husband disagreed and said that the tempura veggies were fantastic all the way through.

The tuna poke was great - I really liked getting the bib lettuce with it to make little poke wraps. I think the ratio between the filling and the lettuce was a little off - could maybe do a little less lettuce to match the filling, but I'm nitpicking. The flavors were good, it was marinated nicely, and the bites of avocado really balanced out the acidity of the marinade. (I'm having a hard time believing there's multiple 1* reviews about undercooked tuna... poke is always raw and the other option is also a tuna steak, traditionally served rare in the middle? thats just what that food is? what??? what do you mean that's bad and unexpected, i'd never expect well-done tuna? its not a can of Chicken of the Sea? I digress...)

The bites of everything else I tried were also all well cooked and seasoned. Presentations were also nice. I think the Martini might be a bit over engineered with all the little bottles and vials and having to add your own sprits of vermouth, but I suppose that's a good way to stop people from complaining about vermouth after ordering a drink with vermouth in it.

I think I'd love to have a few more white wine options by the glass instead of bottle, but I'm just a picky drinker. There were still plenty of options to choose from.

Overall, we really liked this place, it exceeded my expectations, my initial reaction to photos and menu was it looked cheap and basic and was overpriced, but once actually inside it's quite nice with very well done food and the cost is entirely acceptable for how good...

Won’t be going back here. The food was good and it’s a healthy option, but portions too small and NOT worth the price. I wouldn’t go back and risk the bad service again. Save your money, or if you are ok with spending a lot, go to Terza or even Bleu Duck.

The worst part was the service. We were sat at the bar and were the only people at the bar. It was not a crazy busy night by any means, at least not from my perspective. We sat down and the bartender ignored us, walked away, didn’t talk to us at all for a good 10-15 mins (not even a greeting). She finally came over to take our dinner order. She didn’t bring us our waters until after we ordered. Imo water should be the very first step, and there should be a greeting of some kind, esp from a bartender ? We felt pretty ignored.

Throughout the meal she was absent and literally did not check on us once. She didn’t seem busy, just kind of seemed like she didn’t really care.

We got the wings for an appetizer - they were pretty good, but no appetizer plates (and we were at the bar) so we had to huddle around one plate. Little details that made this meal unpleasant, details that a restaurant in this price range should be better at.

I got the miso glazed seabass, my bf got the pork tenderloin. Both were delicious and the ingredients tasted fresh. However the portions were very small and the food was so unreasonably overpriced for what it was. Despite getting an appetizer and entrees (and eating all of our food), we left hungry. I don’t normally complain about price but a meal at that price should be like gourmet level, or at least a decent portion size. If you’re looking for somewhere to have dinner in Rochester, skip this place. Better food and better prices at Five West, Twigs, or even Victoria’s (which is one of my least favorite restaurants in...

If I could give zero stars I would. Once we got seated and waited 15 minutes for a server to even greet us, we should have known. Once we ordered, it took over an hour to get our food. There were only 4 other tables. The food was awful. My Son ordered a chicken wrap and the chicken was pink and cold, clearly very undercooked, and even had pink juices running from it. I got the seabass and it was charcoal and super hard on the outside, cold on the inside, was the smallest piece of fish I've ever seen. There was no seasoning that I could taste on my fish, or my quinoa. There also wasn't any sauce or otjer toppings as described. Neither looked anything like the picture or were as the menu had described. My daughter got the bison burger which was also cooked horribly: hard and charcoal on the outside, cold and very raw on the inside. We also ordered items we never got. I don't recommend and will never go back. After spending overnight $125 to eat, I had to come home and make a meal due to our...