Riva Fish House

About Riva Fish House

Riva began, in 1981, as a fish market. It was supposed to be the best on the West Coast. A regular asked for some bay shrimp in a cup; someone added red sauce; someone else pulled up a chair and a bottle of wine. Within a year the market had become a restaurant. Four decades later Riva is the wharf's elder statesman — a dining room built directly above the Pacific, named for Riva Trigoso on the Ligurian coast, where a generation of Santa Cruz fishermen started their lives. If you want to understand what the Monterey Bay tasted like before the region remembered it had a tourism department, this is where you begin.

The menu reads like a love letter to the working waterfront: beer-battered calamari from the original house recipe, Alaskan cod and chips, cioppino heaving with cod, prawns, scallops, mussels, clams, and crab in a spiced tomato broth. Broiled oysters arrive three ways — Rockefeller, guacamole, and diabla. The clam chowder is served in a sourdough bread bowl that Riva bakes in-house. The house-made cheesy garlic bread, a concoction of butter, parmesan, cheddar, mayonnaise, and herbs, is the kind of indulgence that stops apologising halfway through the second slice. Nothing on the menu costs more than thirty dollars. Almost everything is worth eating.

Inside, Riva is a wood-panelled, casually nautical room: bar at the entrance, tables lining the wharf-side windows, seagulls banking past the glass. Outside, the deck tables — when the fog lifts — are the most valuable real estate in the county for a Tuesday lunch. Service runs laid-back and knowledgeable. Ask what came off the boat that morning and you will be given an honest answer. Order Lupe's Mighty Fish Tacos with halibut, a Bargetto Pinot Grigio by the glass, and a side of broiled oysters if you want the Santa Cruz equivalent of a perfect day.

Riva also operates as the town's de facto solo-dining counter. The bar seats twelve, the bartenders know the regulars and are quick with visitors, and a working fisherman, a tech migrant, and a Kauai-bound honeymoon couple can all feel equally at home with a glass of Riva's handmade cocktail and a plate of fried zucchini. The gelato program — Chocolate Decadence, Sea Salted Caramel, Coffee Dutch Almond from Berkeley's Latest Scoop — is a reminder that value does not have to mean ordinary. Riva has been voted the city's best restaurant and best seafood restaurant for a reason.

Best for Solo Dining

Solo dining at Riva works the way the best wharf bars work: the bartender remembers you within one visit, the menu is large enough to reward curiosity over repeat visits, and nobody — not a single person — looks up when you sit down with a book. The chowder bread bowl is built for one. The raw oyster list is built for the person who wants six of something without the performance of ordering a dozen. If you are new to Santa Cruz, sit at the bar, order Lupe's fish tacos, and let the bartender tell you which Santa Cruz Mountain Pinot to drink with it.