RVR Named Esquire’s Best New Restaurant of 2025

From: Esquire
By: Jeff Gordinier, Joshua David Stein, and Amethyst Ganaway

What lures me back is an inexplicable pixie dust that occasionally turns a restaurant into a happening. I come back to RVR for the things that stay put on the menu, such as the house pickles and the Santa Barbara uni hand roll and the duck meatballs and the baby bok choy with sesame tonnato, and I come back to catch the seasonal delights that float in and out, such as a persimmon salad with orange-fleshed fruit so ripe it seemed to blaze like a lamp. Robinson and Lett have created RVR as a mash note from California to Japan—the listening bars with stacks of old vinyl, the highballs, the sake, the respect for nature, the sacredness of community—and the only logical response is to reciprocate that love again and again.