About 3 Pavaru Restorans (Three Chefs)
3 Pavaru Restorans (literally 'Three Chefs Restaurant') has been Riga's fine-dining benchmark since opening in 2013. The three eponymous chefs — Martins Ritins, Maris Jansons, and Maris Astics — are among the pioneers of modern Latvian cooking, and the restaurant's menu reads like a definitive statement of the style: Baltic sprat and beetroot, wild boar from the Latgale forests, cold-smoked Baltic salmon with rye, and the foraged ingredients (spruce tips, chanterelles, sea buckthorn) that have come to define the region's culinary identity.
The room is small (44 covers) in a stone-walled Old Town townhouse on Torna iela. Design is contemporary-Scandi — light wood, soft directional lighting, linen-covered tables — in a space that could easily sit in Copenhagen or Stockholm without adjustment. Service is formal but warm and the staff speak English, Russian, and Latvian fluently.
The tasting menu at five or seven courses is the expected order; a la carte is offered. The wine pairings are serious and include a well-selected non-alcoholic option (herb infusions, fermented juices) that has become popular with visiting Nordic business travellers. The sommelier can guide a client through a flight of Moselle Rieslings or Burgundy whites depending on the conversation.
Pricing sits below Nordic equivalents — a full tasting with pairings runs around 120-150 EUR per person — which makes 3 Pavaru unusually good value for a restaurant operating at this technical level. The restaurant closes for three weeks each summer for the chefs' foraging trips.
Best Occasion Fit
Client dinners in Riga work best when the restaurant establishes the Baltic region's culinary seriousness in a single sitting. 3 Pavaru does this with authority: the cooking is technically at pan-European fine-dining level, the ingredient story is distinctively Latvian, and the price point gives the client the comfortable sense of getting more than expected. The signal to the counterparty is professional without being showy.
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