Riva

One of the original restaurants to open on Navy Pier, this seafood restaurant from the Steffani group has a wonderful location. A nice big dark wooden bar area and dining rooms looking back at the city and Lake Michigan make it a great place to eat and sightsee. The menu has an assortment of oysters, fresh fish and seafood and several pastas and steaks. The salads are large enough to share and most of the entrees are a la carte. The wine list is manageable and mostly in the moderate to expensive range. We started with the spicy tuna roll and the coconut shrimp. I had the tomato and onion salad which had a nice balsamic dressing. The pumpkin seed crusted halibut on butternut squash risotto was very good as was the sea bass wrapped in prosciutto and potato on a bed of sauted spinach. It was moist and delicious. I also tried the jumbo shrimp on soba noodles. The crab cakes with an aiolli sauce and an herb mayonnaise sauce were full of crab and very good but they were deep fried with a thick crust, more like a croquette. I also tried the sashi platter entree of marlin and tuna which was on the special daily menu. Both were fresh and delicious. During my latest visit, I enjoyed the seared Alaskan halibut with a lobster risotto. For dessert, we tried the chocolate peanut butter cake and the apple tart. The key lime pie was more like a tart with only a bottom graham cracker crust.