Laivas

Laivas sits in the middle of Jomas iela, Jūrmala's long pedestrianised high street, in a restored timber building whose dining room opens directly onto the open kitchen. The room is small — forty covers — and deliberately unfussed: bare-wood tables, Latvian ceramics on the walls, a jazz playlist kept down.

Chef Kaspars Jansons runs a modern-Latvian line with unusual rigour. Smoked beef tartare with quail yolk and black garlic. Zander fillet with birch-smoked butter and sorrel. Slow-cooked pork shoulder with fermented cabbage and mustard jus. A signature Baltic sea-buckthorn dessert that has survived three menu cycles on guest demand alone. Bread is baked in-house; butter is cultured on site.

Wine is a short, thoughtful international list with a proper Baltic-Georgian bench; the by-the-glass programme is unusually generous for a room this size.

Service is warm, knowledgeable, and treats a two-person working dinner with the same focus as a six-person celebration. Dinner for two with wine lands at 100–160€.

Laivas is the working-dinner room in Jūrmala. Tables are well spaced for conversation, the kitchen is serious enough to signal care, and the bill is genuinely fair — which, when a deal needs quiet progress rather than theatre, is often exactly the right signal. Most Riga-business dinners on the coast end up here.