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Le Dome Fish Restaurant
Restaurants
By Howard Jarvis.
15.01.2013
Le Dome Fish Restaurant is a long way from being a typical hotel eatery. There are separate entrances for the restaurant and the five-star Le Dome Hotel & Spa, and most of the restaurant’s visitors are not staying in the luxury suites upstairs. Located on one of the Old Town’s more secluded cobblestone lanes close to Riga’s grand Dome Church – the views of the spire from the rooftop grill in summer are an unusual and picturesque spot – this is one of the best places in the city to impress a romantic or business partner with an evening of excellent fine dining. It certainly feels cozy on a winter’s night as you step in from the snow and the waitress takes your coat to hang it in the antique wardrobe by the door.
The menu is succinct as befitting a small but experienced restaurant that knows it doesn’t have to be overly ambitious with its range of dishes. There are five fish-based mains, for example, although two of these – an international catch of the day and choice of whole freshwater fish or fillet – offer further depth depending on what’s fresh that particular day. For the international catch, for example, we were offered either pikeperch or sturgeon.
Elsewhere the menu lists Baltic herring in spicy breading with black root, spinach and horseradish-butter sauce (€14), oysters and caviar, Atlantic mussels, and “scorched seafood”, as well as several meat dishes (lamb, game, beef), and two pasta dishes – one with fish, one vegetarian.
Unusually for Riga, vegetarians are well catered for at Le Dome. They could opt for, say, caramelized honey-roasted pumpkin and carrot cream soup (€7), followed by barley risotto with autumn root vegetables and Parmesan cheese (€11).
Entrees are suitably fish-centric, including ravioli with tiger shrimp or hot smoked sturgeon croquettes, but there are always exceptions, such as the presence of a classic French onion soup.
We can never resist fish soup, so we opted for traditional Baltic fish soup with sea asparagus (€13), and the catch of the day (sturgeon fish fillet) with mashed potatoes, seasonal vegetables and porcini mushroom Velouté sauce (€21).
No sooner has we ordered than the super-efficient waitress brought a selection of homemade breads – mini-ciabatta and grain-heavy rye – with plump Kalamata olives, butter, and a generous blob of delicious olive-and-sundried-tomato paste.
The fish fork and spoon were placed on the white tablecloth and with a confident swish the waitress laid the napkin across our laps.
The dishes arrived quickly on elegant plates. At the center of the soup were two lavish chunks of fish, one pink (sea trout), one white (sturgeon). Both with firm yet tender flesh, each kept their own different and very perceptible tastes. Also in the orange-brown bisque-like broth lay spinach, dill and a few tiger prawns. It tasted fantastic – this was everything fish soup should be, and rarely is. A word of warning though – take care the strands of herbs and onion don’t splash your clothes as you spoon them up.
The catch of the day consisted of two large cubes of meaty sturgeon, either side of which chunks of carrot and kale and cherry tomatoes grilled on their stalks had been delicately placed – and the creamiest mashed potato you can imagine.
We soon felt full. But there was one more thing we had to try – Le Dome’s special rye bread dessert with peppermint syrup, Mascarpone cheese cream and sea-buckthorn dressing (€7), a dessert we’d heard a lot about. With other options including vanilla crème brûlée with passion fruit sauce and calvados-glazed Latvian country apples, and chocolate fondant with hazelnut sorbet and crackling sugar flakes, it was a tough choice. But we were not disappointed.
Served in a tall glass with pieces of melon, strawberry, grape, and pear on top, sorbet, minty syrup and oodles of creamy sauce, the thousands of tiny compressed balls of traditional Latvian black bread add texture to this most local of desserts. We’ve had it before in other restaurants, but Le Dome does it best.
Service at Le Dome is multilingual and attentive, with two waitresses tending to ten guests on the night we were there. Our glasses of Acqua Panna water were topped up whenever they reached half-empty. The music was virtually inaudible but chirpy and tropical. Reserve ahead – this diminutive restaurant is well-known to be one of the best in Riga and can quickly fill up.
