Biscuit
Restaurants
By Anatol Steven.
21.02.2012
Everything about the appearance of Biscuit, a restaurant that recently popped up in Riga’s upscale embassy district, has a sense and smell of sterile newness about it.
From the just-bought pinewood furniture and freshly sandpapered bookshelves to the perfectly upholstered chairs and neatly renovated red bricks in the ceiling, Biscuit appears ideally poised to take advantage of hungry diplomats with fat expense accounts and pretty employees to take out to lunch.
When their conversation becomes sterile, there are always the flat-screen televisions mounted on the walls to entertain wandering eyes. These display a constant, silent feed of Fashion TV. Ubiquitous cocktail-music versions of popular hits provide much of the aural entertainment.
Designed, it seems, for old-fashioned British diplomats in particular, Biscuit is not only named after every 19th-century English gentleman’s favorite teatime snack – it’s also conveniently located in the British Embassy’s very basement.
That may be its undoing – it’s concealed on one of central Riga’s quietest streets with few wandering passers-by. But we wish the restaurant luck in teasing people in through the doors via word-of-mouth recommendations.
The restaurant’s name is a bit misleading as the food is not English but, the waiter says, a mix of Italian and Russian. Risotto and pasta dishes (€7-13) contain seafood, porcini mushrooms and the like, but a better and lighter option is the spinach ravioli with ragout of rabbit (€7).
Caesar salads with shrimp (€8) or chicken (€6.25) are also reasonable without being out of this world. Pizza eaters should go for the satisfying pizza with Parma ham and arugula.
Fish lovers will appreciate the melt-in-the-mouth dorada fillet with tomato and pepper salad (€10). Like the ribeye steak and other meat dishes, the dorada can also be toasted on an open fire.
Russian elements in the menu are hard to spot but take the form of recognizable mainstays such as beef stroganoff.
Side dishes for the mains cost extra. Confusingly, we were charged for the chewy focaccia that was offered to us when we ordered, but not for a complimentary pre-meal “lemon-twist champagne” or a post-meal avocado mini-tatare.
It was unclear whether these two tiny but welcome complements of the house were presented to us because the newly opened restaurant was giving them to all guests kind enough to give Biscuit a try, or if they will be handed out indefinitely. Either way, they characterized this most uncharacterizable of dining spots – attractive but slight.
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