Overall:
The partner and I visited Ria on Friday night for the first time in a fair while which reminded of a minor annoyance of the restaurant “no bookings” and a new one which I wish they had told me about before we turned up with a bottle of wine as per usual, no BYO on Friday to Sunday nights anymore.
We were met at the door at 9pm and fortunately there was a free table, though we were left standing at the door and then asked by 2 different waitstaff whether we were ok. The table was cleared and we were eventually shown through and brought water, but not menus. After around 5 minutes we were about to leave when the owner/maîtreD noticed we had been forgotten and delivered the menus and apologies. He returned soon after to take our orders and the experience improved from this point on.
While we waited for the starter tasting plate special we took in the atmosphere which is dominated by the cutting edge fit out, hard surfaces and noise. Last time we were here we didn’t really notice the noise as we were in a noisy group of our own but with only the 2 of us we struggled to hear each other speak across the table. But this is also partly because the table is commendably generous for a small venue which is good if you are sharing a few meals around.
The starters came out after a short wait and consisted of satay chicken sticks, dahl fritters and fried mushroom/fish concotions. They were all very high standard and reminded us why we keep coming back. When the starters were finished the waiter asked if we would like our mains now, which is unusual and commendable.
We had around a 5 to 10 minute polite wait and the mains of the special chicken curry and Malay baked fish with rice were delivered with a side of snowpeas. Again the standard of the food was excellent; the chicken curry which tasted somewhere between a red Thai curry and Indian butter chicken was a generous sized serving with many large pieces of well cooked and tender quality pieces of chicken in a very flavoursome spicy but not overly hot sauce. Magnificent. The fish was a good sized piece of quality fish presented on a banana leaf cooked in a spicy star anise/cinnamon sauce and was also one of the best meals we have had for a while. The snowpeas were also very good, fresh and cooked well and the rice was as it should be.
After we had finished our mains there was definitely no room for desserts so we ordered coffees after attracting the attention of the waitstaff. This also matched the standard of the meal and was very good. All up for the starter plate, 2 mains, rice, side, coffee, 1 pint of beer and a bottle of wine was $108 which considering the quality of the food was excellent value for money. It is noisy (bring a group and make some of your own) and you can’t guarantee a table but if you enjoy innovative and well-prepared Asian cuisine then Ria has much to recommend it, we’ll return for sure.