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| - My night started with being surrounded by a group of college women (I'm just itching to call it a "scrunchie", like one would refer to a *colony* of ants, a *pack* of coyotes, a *gaggle* of geese, or a *screetch* of hens -- Ok, so I made that last one up. I dare you to spend three minutes waiting for a traffic light to change near these folks without seeing where I'm coming from.) discussing loudly just how "ratchet" they wanted to get. (Seriously - first time I've heard the term used un-ironically. Ugh.)
My silent prayers were answered when none of the nearby spots they discussed plans to boot in the near future included Ri Ra.
Don't know, don't care where they wound up (bless the single [if that many] beating hearts among 'em. [Yeah, I meant it that way - this was one creepy belligerent Borg-like group of sisters]); but my visit to Ri Ra was a definite success. Service was fairly efficient, the food was fairly good (my main complaint is that sides weren't seasoned (even salt and pepper) and chips could have benefited from a few more minutes in the fryer. But "Authentic Irish fare" - no. Really, no. Irish-ish, yes. Definitely. But there are too many nods to American chain cuisine to merit equating this to what one would find in Ireland, having spent a few months there.
In the "win" column: drafts were good and well-served, though mostly not particularly Irish (not a complaint, just reinforcing that 'authentic' is not the best word to use to describe this place accurately. Fair to good selection / variety.
And the setup is fairly good, even for nights when they're packed. Fair mix of tables and bar seats & service, with a decent amount of floor-space for when they're busy.
The house ground burger was great - good mix of fat and lean, good grind size.
The kitchen makes one hell of an egg. And that's no small thing, especially in a pub / bar, which means the usual service hand-offs and oddness.
The malt vinegar mayo should be on the menu - it saved the otherwise fairly blah (undercooked) chips.
The fish and chips, though, falls on the other side of the ledger. Fries were blah, as above, and fish was unbelievably unseasoned, and overcooked. No one likes chewy, fishy fish.
I was a little puzzled by the two glasses of white zin that were perched on the back of the bar for several of my visits (which each lasted several hours)...Odd.
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