Riverside Bar & Kitchen

Fresh mussels, rich pâté, and mains that absolutely slapped — my pork and black pudding Wellington was spot‑on, and my wife’s beef and bone marrow burger was a flavoured perfectly Cocktails were strong, mojitos crisp, zombies dangerously drinkable. Great food, great drinks, great night. Service was impeccable and couldn’t fault anything at all. Will definitely be back!

+1

Recently visited here for Sunday roast. The place itself is decorated beautifully and all the staff were welcoming and professional. We had the Gravalax Sallon starter and a beef Sunday roast and can honestly say it was the best roast I’ve had, the starter was just amazing too. I will definitely be back again 10/10

Wow.... Simply sublime. The chef's Michelin background is evident. Every dish was a masterpiece of flavour, texture, and creativity. This place is a true hidden gem! If you're looking for a meal that will completely blow you away, this is it. We will definitely be going back! #FineDining #LancashireFood #MichelinGuide #Foodie #HiddenGem #SimplySublime #RestaurantReview

+3

I have to say this is my favourite restaurant!!! We love dining out and do so at least once a week and we often have to travel at least 30 mins to somewhere we feel is worth eating as we seem to be missing good quality restaurants near by where bc he’d serve top quality produce food and experience. UNTIL NOW! CDJs delivers on every element food ✅, quality ✅, atmosphere ✅, service ✅ drink ✅ interior ✅ basically this restaurant has it all and I’m so pleased I only have to travel 10-15 mins to get here! Our family and friends love it here too as we all rave about it! Thanks and we’ll be back again next week more than likely 🤣❤️ (Pics from different nights and visits but you can see the presentation and quality is outstanding)

+6

Came here with my family and it was excellent all-round. The service was fast, courteous and prompt and done with a smile. The food was of the highest quality and we were all full by the end. My young daughters loved the Margherita pizza and chips and the brownie for dessert. Myself and my wife had pies each and they both were brilliant. The sourdough starter we had was great as well. The decor in the restaurant is stunning and it is definitely the best place in Darwen to visit for people of all ages. Also, my daughter accidentally knocked over her drink and was upset which wasn’t a problem for the staff who tidied up promptly and also brought over a replacement drink which was very much appreciated. One member of staff even brought over some mini chocolates to cheer her up which was an amazing gesture. We’ll be back!

Been wanting to go for a while, and the things I've heard have really lived up to it. The restaurant is amazing and the bar brilliant didn't want to take a picture of it with everyone being busy, but it looks amazing. Now the food didn't have the tapas but that will happen next time I visit, I had the chicken burger and my wife had the fish and chips. Amazing great food at a really good price, credit to chef Dan and the whole team. Great to have a place like this in Darwen.

+2

Loved our experience at CDJ! The food was excellent! We chose the small plates menu, and every dish was delicious. The staff were really friendly and helped recommend some items to us. The restaurant itself is such a surprise - it’s a really beautiful setting that made the evening even more special. Highly recommend a visit!

CDJ Riverside is an absolute gem! The food was delicious — every dish was full of flavour and beautifully presented. The atmosphere was warm, welcoming, and perfect.To top it off, I had the best company, which made the experience even more special. Can’t wait to come back!

Visited for the 1st time on Friday evening. Everything from the moment we arrived was perfect. Our servers couldn't do enough and explained all the menus perfectly. We both ordered from the steak menu (surf and turf) and a side between us. The food was excellent and the whole evening was perfect. Already booked to come back in a couple of weeks with friends and can't wait to try the tapas menu. Thank you

Incredible food!! Came across this place through Instagram and gave it ago. We did the Sunday menu which was the Sunday lunch and I've got to say it's one of the best dinners I've ever had😁. We eat out every week and this is my new favourite place. Nice work chefs👩‍🍳

+1

Popped in for lunch today with my wife. Such a beautiful place, the staff are warm and friendly. The food was amazing, hands down the best fish and chips I have ever had. Phenomenal, will be coming again

I have previously reviewed CDJ but after trying the new Tapas menu on its first night, I thought it was worth another review due to the high quality. Absolutely fantastic food, as always at CDJ. A wide variety of dishes to choose from; meat dishes, fish dishes, veggie dishes and of course desserts. We had a table for 8 booked, so, as you can imagine, a lot of dishes required - all the food came out in good time and was super fresh I cannot compliment Dan and the team enough for maintaining such a high standard of service and cooking Would give 6 stars if I could - 110% recommend that everybody tries it!

+2

I came here for a meal recently, and thoroughly enjoyed. The service was 10/10, the restaurant is lovely with nice lighting and atmosphere. I have coeliac disease, and our waitress was knowledgeable on procedures like a separate gluten free fryer. They have a great gluten free menu. I got the ribeye steak, which was cooked perfectly, and then a lovely gluten free sticky toffee pudding.

Had a beautiful meal 27/02/26. The food was delicious and the service great. This was the first time we have dined here since the change of chef and the food was exceptional! We will be back

We have visited this restaurant many times and always enjoy great food here. It's a first-class restaurant, the only one of it's kind in Darwen and Blackburn. The food is top notch, and presented beautifully. The decor is aesthetically pleasing, modern and relaxing. We look forward to enjoying the beautiful garden area in the warmer weather. The staff are so professional and friendly, and look like they want to be there, which is refreshing these days.We love the new menu and how each dish is paired with a wine by the sommelier. We will keep coming back. Thank you to everyone involved for all your hard work making this restaurant a success.

Ive left a review before but thought I needed to leave another after the rebrand. I didn't think this place could get any better but I am sure the food gets better every time I go. Ive eaten their twice in a week and would more if I could. Excellent venue, excellent team. The service is fantastic especially Suzy who looked after us all night!

Came for a Christmas date night & went for the 3 course Christmas menu they had on. We was offered a table at the chefs table overlooking the kitchen or a normal table, we chose the chefs table. We was greeted by the chefs & given some bread & dip to share whilst we ordered drinks & food. Service was excellent, the food was incredible from start to finish & the wine was also lovely. We asked to delay our desserts so we could sit for longer to enjoy our wine & let the food settle before the third course & they were more than happy to oblige. Overall a very good meal, we will happily return time & time again & I can’t wait to try other dishes.

Food is easily the best in Lancashire, never had a bad experience dining at CDJ’s and staff are always so nice and can’t do enough for us. Would highly recommend!

We tried the new breakfast/brunch menu at CDJ and everything we had was absolutely incredible! Great service too, we will definitely be back!

Holy cow, wow! Blown away. Every single thing we tried was absolutely delicious. Quality ingredients used, excellent friendly and efficient service. Great ambiance. One very happy customer

You can always judge a good chef on how they cook a steak... and the steak at CDJs was perfect. Thick piece of rump cooked exactly how I liked it, beautiful fresh tempura onion rings, the chips were like little fluffy clouds of perfect potato and lovely peppery peppercorn sauce. We had to wait for the rice pudding dessert to be cooked fresh! Which gave us time to let the steak settle a bit, but it was also amazing! Highly recommended!

Second time back (and second review) - this place is absolutely amazing. It's a 90-minute round trip for me, and I'm going back next week. Dan is a top top chef.

Great service and food that came out quickly, special attention to my little one and a lovely ambience about the place, will be going back soon

Eaten here a few times and never disappointed, Chef Dan is extremely talented and the team are so polite amd look after the customer. Food is so tasty, no matter what you try its fresh and tasty. Been for breakfast with my son today and going back later with the wife its that good.

I’ve visited several times now over the past few weeks and can safely say this is one of the best restaurants around & most definitely the best in town Tasty, fresh and plenty of choice. Staff are all really nice and very helpful and attentive and the quality of the food is next level Have introduced several friends and family to CDJ and all have loved it Cannot recommend enough 🙌🏼

Absolutely impeccable service, delicious food + beautiful setting 🩷

Little Gem of a place. Food is amazing and so is the staff and the setting. Heart warming and cozy. Would recommend

Ive eaten there twice and have to say it is the best Sunday lunch I have ever had. I also went in with work colleagues and every one said they would return and bring their partners! Dan the chef also takes the time to discuss the food which is a lovely touch.

We visited for breakfast and got the pulled lamb flatbread and French toast, the food was 10/10 and so was the service from Sam! They even brought out a happy birthday brownie, as we was celebrating a birthday. The whole experience was lovely and Sam was so attentive and couldn’t do more for us, this is the 5th time we have been to CDJ and it never fails to impress me!

Lovely food for work Xmas lunch. Everything was super tasty. Nice quiet atmosphere Would definitely come back

Food was fantastic! So much thought put into each dish. Lovely, clean, and definitely worth the money. Can’t wait to come back ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Another beautiful meal with 12 work friends. Well done CDJs. Christmas festive menu fantastic value. Staff lovely and attentive.

Got to say I was told the food was good and it did not disappoint. The Carbonara is probably the best I have ever had, the cod was to die for and the chicken and chorizo was absolutely bang on. I highly recommend CDJ. Steak night next.

Just back from another 10/10 meal at CDJS. This was our first time having the Sunday roast, we’d heard loads about it from lots of people so treated ourselves today. We had 2 courses each and loved it all. The lamb just fell off the bone & the beef was cooked to perfection! The beetroot, feta & watermelon salad to start was just amazing too. The waiting on team were attentive & always checking in on us. Seeing as the sun had made an appearance, we finished lunch and sat out with a few drinks, what a great way to round off the weekend. Can’t wait to return for our bottomless brunch in October.

Decided to try CDJ after a recommendation and we were not disappointed. The place is lovely.Both interior and exterior decor is very impressive.We went on a Sunday and both of us opted for the Sunday roast.My partner going for the chicken and I went for the lamb and an extra order of cauliflower cheese.We were not disappointed as both roasts were delicious. We will certainly be returning in the near future.

The best Sunday lunch I’ve had in a long time! I started with the Ham Hock Terrine, followed by perfectly cooked beef sirloin roast, and finished with the sticky toffee pudding. Every dish was full of flavour and beautifully presented. The modern setting created a warm and welcoming atmosphere that made the whole experience even better. Highly recommended. I’ll definitely be back!

Our 10th anniversary we choose to stay local. Very nice welcome. Good service and very good food. Quite place too. You can actually have nice conversation without having to raise your voice. We will definitely go back.

Great food, pity about the service. Apparently after 6pm they only serve tapas, which I was disappointed by initially but the food was delicious. Whilst there were some vegetarian dishes I would have preferred more to choose from. I also wasn't keen on the courses coming out as and when, it meant that I was sat there a good 10 minutes not eating whilst my friends tucked into their meat dishes. Everyone loved their dishes but I was left still hungry after my 3 vegetarian one's.

+6

Food was incredible. Best food I've had in the area hands down. The service was great, they know and understand the menu really well as well as being really polite. If I could put 4.5 I would but there is no option to. The only issue is the music. It's SO loud. My dad's deaf in one ear, my partner is partially deaf and between us it was genuinely really difficult to have a conversation. I could hardly hear the people serving us so I know my family will have struggled, which just made the interactions with staff awkward. With the beautiful food and the venue with an open kitchen the only music needed would just be something light in the background to accompany the sizzling pans to really set the ambience.

There is no doubt that Chef Dan Jolley and his team shine through with the standard and quality of food. We shared 6 small plates tapas all with equal success. The service team were friendly and just need a bit more attention to detail of service. The biggest factors that pulled the whole experience down was the atmosphere : Walking into a wall of music akin to a disco at decibel levels that made your ears bleed was disconcerting. Thank you for turning the music down to a decent level. The main problem was the off street walk ins on a Darwen pub crawl getting leathered accompanied with Harry Potter showing on a big screen TV next to the bar. It’s early days - week 3 of opening so I really hope you find your fit, as the food was truly brilliant.

This was our first visit to this restaurant. We went for Sunday lunch. We opted for the 2 course roast beef dinner. There was no option of how we liked our beef cooked - it’s pink or nothing which we found strange as we have always had an option of how we prefer our meat cooked. This was accompanied by an overly large well done Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes which were very hard and dry and a selection of vegetables. One of the plates our food was served on was damaged and had enough of a chip in it that the gravy spilt over and onto the table. We did complain but the waitress just smiled. We complained again and was told that was the style of the plate! Our puddings to be fair were ok but again one of the plates was damaged. Total spend for a very average Sunday roast plus 2 drinks and water £84.43. When we came to pay the bill we were confronted by another member of staff who asked “what’s your problem”. like we shouldn’t have complained about the damaged plates. Maybe it’s us but damaged plates in our house go straight in the bin. Oh well never again.

First of all, it's a bummer to find, we put the post code into our sat nav and it took us to a housing estate the opposite side of the motorway, next we put the road name in and it took us to the other side of Darwen, eventually I found it using Google maps. Our friends were also sent to the housing estate first. Don't trust it. Secondly, the parking!!! It would be helpful if there was a sign outside the restaurant directing you to the car park. We managed to find it by accident. You drive through some metal gates just down from the restaurant, its sn industrial area with a nursery and other businesses. You can only park in the obvious spaces nr the other businesses after 6pm, before that you keep driving down the lane until you see a small car park on your left, thats where you park before 6pm. You don't need to pay or put anything in your window to say where you are visiting. So to the restaurant, the entrance in on the far side, the one's in the middle are other businesses. Once you've got in, the place is very modern and beautifully decorated in gray, green and bronze art work. There's lots of seating with the main restaurant towards rear. There's also outdoor seating which would have been lovely on the sunny day we visited but there was no parasols for shade, so it was too hot to sit out and eat at 30 degrees. The food was excellent, really tasty, well cooked and presented, however, the service let it down. The staff were standoffish and slow. We had to ask more than once for the drinks and water, when I asked for the WiFi code, the chap said it so quickly I couldn't get it all and walked off. We definitely felt like they didn't want to serve us, they had no patience. Also when we first entered and sat down I couldn't hear anything that the waitress said as the music was so loud, plus its a very echoy. Thankfully she turned it down after we asked. The menu was very limited for vegetarians with just 3 main course options; cheese pie, goats cheeseburger or vegetarian/vegan fish and chips. You could order small plates if you preferred, see menu, but was told these would arrive as and when ready. In summary to improve it they need to; signage outside re entrance and car park, parasols outside for shade, friendly helpful staff, better vegetarian/vegan options on main courses & quicker service. Oh and lastly, the sticky toffee pudding was a let down, the only part of the food that was.

+6

Very disappointing, road side pub with a back restaurant. Doesnt have the feel of a good quality restaurant which the prices suggest. The vibe is all off. Sat down, informed we could order from the tapas menu or the pub menu. Tried to order from the pub menu to then be told its too late and it's the tapas menu only, this being after we already ordered drinks. Tapas menu wasn't appealing at all, spent 10 minutes deciding on menu, granted a little long but we was hounded to order. We decided to just have the drinks and politely leave. The pina colada my partner ordered was awful. Ice slush with no cocunut flavour but a strong taste of lime ... yes strong lime, in a pina colada, lime is traditional and subtle, not the main ingredient ..... drank my Guinness, left the cocktail and went to pay, 24 quid! For a crap cocktail and a pint of guinness ... oh, and a table water. 1st and only time I'll attempt this restaurant. General opinion, needs to be decided what kind of place it wants to be, location let's it down, match the service and what's on offer to the price. Food might be good, i couldn't comment as we didn't stick around, but everything else is off.

Attended here with my partner for a drink and requested a table for 2. We were advised there was nothing all evening. The restaurant was essentially empty and so this didn’t make sense to us. We purchased a drink and when seated looked online and a table for 2 was available to reserve online shortly after our arrival. Understandably we were confused by this and the only viable explanation was that the staff simply did not like the look of us and so decided to turn away our custom. I approached the bar and explained that a table was clearly bookable online and asked if they simply did not like the look of us as the restaurant was empty and tables were available to reserve online. The response was nonchalant; which solidified our interpretation of the situation. We are two intelligent people, a solicitor and an account; to attend a restaurant and essentially be turned away because the staff have made an assumption of who we are as people based on our appearance is ludicrous. I am thankful I did not spend my hard earned money for that reason.

Service was 10/10, however food was very disappointing. Soup was luke-warm and lacked flavour, Ragu was tasteless, steak burger was very average, sticky toffee pudding was maybe the worst I’ve ever had. Great service, great venue, disappointing food.