A night out in the Bay is not something I’ve indulged in some
time. There were many, in my 20s, when Skiffs Bar seemed a world away from
Watertown, a place to meet people from all over the country and occasionally, a
teacher I knew from high school. These days, though, Alexandria Bay can
sometimes feel overly glaring for a more seasoned gal such as me. The touristy
atmosphere and continual bustle sit in contrast to peaceful Clayton, which is
more my style, generally speaking.
So I’ve been looking for the perfect dinner spot to write
about in Alex Bay – to recapture the attraction I felt to this village in my
younger days. Recently, we tried out Riley’s by the River to see how it fit.
Riley’s sits directly on James Street, front and center to
all the action in Alexandria Bay, and across from Captain Thompson’s floating
empire, which used to have its own restaurant, and which is owned by the same
family. You can see the river from the windows dominating one wall of the
dining room, and Uncle Sam Boat Tours’ launch space, which also is owned by the
Riley’s family.
What’s not made up of windows inside Riley’s is all
attractive dark wood and coffered ceilings – its innate elegance made more
casual by bistro and pop culture-themed décor. A diner would be comfortable
here either in a sundress or shorts and a t-shirt – the ambiance dictated by whoever
happens to be eating, whether couples or families. When people are in the Bay,
they’re mostly on vacation, and that easy feeling is reflected here.
We were impressed right away by the presentation of the
shrimp cocktail ($10.99): five shot glasses lined on a white platter, layered
with house made cocktail sauce, large, succulent steamed shrimp, a bite of
lobster meat, and a slice of lemon. The cocktail sauce tasted tangy and fresh –
unlike the somewhat stale flavor the stuff in the jar can have. The small bit
of lobster topping each shrimp added sweetness to the overall flavor, and
having a slice of lemon for each serving meant you never ran short of that hit
of sharp citrus essence which so well pairs with fresh shellfish.

Loaded potato chips ($8.99) were every bit as junky and
decadent as the shrimp cocktail was refined and modern, to our glee. Homemade
crinkle cut fried potato chips formed the base of this dish, served on an old
school sizzle platter. Perfectly cooked, tender and juicy pulled pork topped
the chips, but unfortunately, there’s wasn’t much of it. I had to actively hunt
for some to sample in order to take notes on its flavor, because there was so
little of it – certainly not enough on the platter, as a whole, to have a bite
of pork with each chip.

Cheddar cheese covered the chips, with scant drizzles of
both BBQ sauce and ranch dressing. I was pleased with the ranch, as the cool,
herbal flavor served to counter the aggressive sweetness BBQ can often bring to
the party, but honestly, again, there was so little of both these sauces, most
of the balancing was unnecessary. Mostly, this dish was melted cheese-covered
chips – savory, crisp, but with much less BBQ flavor than we expected when we
ordered it.
Our waitress was fun, joking and entertaining us, and we
enjoyed her so much, we didn’t realize for a while that she was doing a lot
more socializing than she was actually waiting on our table. Our dirty
appetizer plates sat in in a pile in the middle of our table for the duration
of the entrée course.
The vegetable Panini ($10.99) came dressed with one of my
favorite ingredients: goat cheese. Have you tried it? First off, it’s tangy –
with loads of flavor and personality but none of the salinity you get from feta.
Secondly, it’s creamy – you can use it almost as a spread, to add moisture
without the fatty, bland mouth feel of mayonnaise. It’s a brilliant sandwich
cheese, honestly, and when paired with grilled vegetables, you get a wonderful
combination of sweetness, earthy dimension, piquancy and richness. The toasty
flatbread anchored the sandwich with charred flavor that just contributed more
to the delight of eating this treat.
The sweet potato fries served alongside were not such a
delight. These originated from the freezer, if I’m not mistaken, and were
lacking the earthy sweetness and caramelized depth you usually get from a
homemade sweet potato French fry. They were bland and undercooked.
Fettucine alfredo with shrimp ($20.99) was overall, fairly
tasty, but I’m sad to report: the pasta was overcooked by a good bit, so the
overall chew factor was gummy. The sauce was rich with cream but underwhelming
when it came to the authentic, nutty aged flavor of real parmesan cheese. And
for $21, only three shrimp were topping this massive bowl of pasta. Now, shrimp
are what they call a loss leader in the restaurant business – people love to
order this sweet seafood, but there’s typically no profit to the enterprise
when they sell them, because the wholesale product is expensive and consumers
typically won’t tolerate much mark-up. So skimping on portion size is not
unusual for this product.

Conversely, pasta and cream are cheap, and since there was
almost no real cheese flavor going on in this dish, I would suggest the price
tag could have withstood a couple more crustaceans. Even the diner who ordered
this, one of the easiest to please in my crew, was disappointed with how few
shrimp were in her dinner. I don’t blame her. For $21, you needed to bring it
with either great parmesan flavor or lots of shellfish, and this dish delivered
neither.
The delmonico steak ($26.99) was sunk before it even got
sailing, because while the menu at Riley’s brags that all the steaks are cut
in-house, this thing was about a third of an inch thick – way too thin for this
cut of meat. It was grievously overcooked from the requested medium, grisly and
tough. What a shame that this typically rich, juicy protein was (forgive the
pun) butchered so terribly.
I was excited for the mushroom compound butter served on
top, but it had little seasoning, and couldn’t save the rubbery, bland protein
upon which it was perched.
To further add insult, while the steamed broccoli florets
were wonderfully fresh and cooked perfectly crisp-tender, there were only six small
ones served with this $27 plate. The small baked potato was fine, but delivered
with very little butter to fix it up. Since no bread course came with our meal,
there was no extra on the table to steal for the spud.
A bigger portion size ruled the chicken parmesan ($16.99),
which was anchored by a thick, ungainly fried breast, rather than a pounded
cutlet. It was under-seasoned, and therefore tasted more like fried breading
than anything else. A bright, loose tomato sauce seasoned with dried Italian
seasoning coated a mountain of spaghetti surrounding the chicken. This was a
huge pile of really uninspiring food, to me. As in, I was not inspired to eat
more than a single bite of it. It all lacked the hallmarks of a classically
authentic Italian-American red-sauce dish – the slow-cooked tomato gravy flavored
with aromatic vegetables, garlic and fresh herbs, juicy, flash-fried protein,
and aged cheese. This brought to mind a dish comprised of canned, jarred
ingredients thrown together because chicken parmesan is a required item on
north country menus, rather than a family recipe handed down through the
generations.
Regrettably, things did not perk up with the fish tacos
($11.99). The crunchy fried cod nuggets nestled in these three flour tortillas
were utterly flavorless. The lime slaw in there with them had a hint of
personality, but not enough to save the white fish blandness. And rather than
serve them with some salsa, a flavored crema, some pickled chile peppers, or
any other kind of south of the border accoutrements, these came with a side of
fries and ketchup.

Look, please don’t attempt Mexican food, or even Tex-Mex, if you
can’t deliver on a single of its telltale flavors or ingredients, OK? Let’s
agree to a pact on that. In fact, don’t attempt any ethnic cuisine if you aren’t
familiar enough with its tenants to comprise a dish that makes sense. In San
Diego, where fish tacos are king, the fish pieces would have been dressed with
lime juice and salt immediately after leaving the fryer, then finished with
crunchy cabbage, a white sauce perked up with ancho chile powder and maybe some
avocado puree, and a fresh lime wedge alongside. Each taco would be topped with
fresh cilantro. You need those verdant, strong ingredients to bring the fish to
life. Otherwise, you’re stuck with what we got at Riley’s: a tasteless mouthful
of flour tortilla with mild, plain fish and a tiny blip of sour citrus. No
thank you.
Oooo-kay, let me step off my culinary soapbox. That was very
preachy. I apologize. Apparently, I have big thoughts about chicken parm and
fish tacos that I needed to work out. But you understand where I’m coming from,
I hope? Even in a tourist town, you expect that if a dish is on a menu, there’s
going to be some level of competence in its preparation. These two dishes
illustrated that a lot of food is being served here just to make money rather
than to really cater to the customer. If you’re going to be a professional
cook, you’d better be able to actually execute the cuisine your kitchen
promises to crank out. Or you’re not living up to your end of the bargain the
diners make.
We plunged forward into dessert, even though, with the
exception of the Panini, we had been really disappointed by the entrees. The
coconut cream pie ($6.99) was homemade, and the stand out of the course. The
pastry cream actually tasted like coconut and vanilla and wasn’t too sweet. The
crust was a little blonde for me – I like a crunchier, darker and more
developed flavor, but this was still a creamy, yummy dessert.
The skillet cookie ($6.99) oddly, was not cookie dough baked
in a cast iron skillet, but instead a cookie placed in a skillet and warmed up.
Now, a warm chocolate chip cookie is always better than a cold one, or no
cookie at all for that matter, so I guess I can credit that; but to me, the
whole point of the skillet is for the cookie to be caramelized and crunchy at
the edges and warm and gooey in the center, which this was not, at all. The whole
thing was crisped through, and even the melting vanilla ice cream and caramel
sauce over top couldn’t save it.
We had been anticipating the salted caramel vanilla cream
puff ($6.99) through the whole meal, because how good does that sound? But this
was another creamy, but ultimately bland dish. Even the salted caramel failed
to taste like anything at all. Where was the salt? The cream puff was denser
than the word puff implies, and whatever filled it was unidentifiable, flat,
flavorless goo.

If you remember way back to the shrimp cocktail, we had high
hopes for this meal. That dish was creative, well-executed, tasty and somewhat
inspired, with the twist of lobster topping each bite. The vegetable panini was
good, as well, but just about every other dish that arrived at our table had
major issues. None of it was worth its price, and the overall experience was
underwhelming, especially considering that our fun, cheerful waitress kept on
leaving dirty dishes at the table as she brought new ones to us. That’s a pet
peeve of mine that’s hard to overlook when you consider that this casual dinner for five
came to $158.92.
I give Riley’s by the River a five on the BHS scale. While the
view commanded a high rating and things began so well early in the meal, dinner
here is, frankly, not worth what it costs. Diners in Northern New York work too
hard for their money to waste it on overcooked, poorly cut steaks, three shrimp
drowning in a sea of overcooked pasta, or utterly bland, non-seasoned food. I
dislike even more the notion of visitors experiencing a meal like this and
thinking this is the best we have to offer when a view of the St. Lawrence is
at stake.
I hope such hungry travellers, instead, will find their way
to Foxy’s in Fisher’s Landing, or the Seaway Grille inside the 1000 Islands
Harbor Hotel in Clayton, where they might enjoy a glorious sunset over the
river plus a terrific meal. This was an uneven repast, for us, and I find
myself frustrated that, despite a couple of decent dishes, I can’t recommend
this well-positioned eatery to diners looking for a great dinner with a view.
Stop back soon, as I'll have reports from Rochester and Saratoga Springs, plus more from NNY and the Southern Tier right here on the blog. We may no longer have food reviews in the Watertown Daly Times, but I promise not to fail you here! My personality is big; my hunger is bigger!