3 Chefs

Forest work at the open pass

Grey peas meet mushroom foam and bacon at the pass before Erik Dreibants, executive chef at 3 Chefs in Riga, lets the dish leave the kitchen. The gesture is Latvian in its bones and current in its method: a field staple lifted by foam, fat, and the patience of a cook who treats forest ingredients as a working vocabulary rather than a theme. Dreibants holds the executive-chef frame here, where the restaurant’s identity depends on daily production, menu discipline, and the ability to keep seasonal cooking coherent through service.

The house is also known as 3 Pavaru Restorans, and its motto, “Tam labam būs augt” (the good must grow), suits the way the kitchen has developed since its founding in September 2011. The restaurant began in Jacob’s Barracks on Torņa iela, in premises tied to old Swedish barracks and the former US ambassador’s residence. That history matters less as decoration than as pressure: the cooking has to make Latvian produce feel present without becoming a museum of it. Dreibants’s named signature, Price of Freedom, gives the kitchen one fixed house statement inside a menu that otherwise moves with the market, the forest, and the season.

Foams, smoke, broth, and rye

The program at 3 Chefs is built around tasting menus and à la carte work, with counter dining close enough to read the method. The kitchen reaches for grey peas, mushrooms, wild garlic, morels, venison, cod, goat cheese, sea buckthorn, hemp, and rye, then uses modern technique without letting technique become the point. Mushroom pie can arrive with duck; slow-cooked cod takes horseradish, red onion, and pearl onion; spring lamb comes with wild garlic and morel mushrooms. Goat cheese is paired with watermelon and peppermint, a cooler register in the same seasonal grammar.

The bread service has become part of the house’s hand. Dips are painted across the placemat in swirls: dark beer reduction with onion, sea buckthorn, cranberry or lingonberry, basil pesto, and Latvian hemp. Guests tear rye or garlic bread through the colors before the first course settles. Elsewhere, the kitchen uses table-side broth pours, smoke, foams, sous-vide work, crisps, and fermented or pickled accents. Those moves keep the plates bright, but the base notes remain local: peas, mushrooms, dairy, herbs, fish, game, and the forest floor after rain.

The room around the bench

The open kitchen is not a backdrop here. It is the room’s working center, with cooks assembling sauces, vegetables, smoked elements, and garnishes in view of the counter and tables. The space is warm and unforced, with simple furnishings, vintage pop music, and the kind of conversational volume that lets the pass stay audible. Plates leave the station with color and theatre, but the better theatre is practical: a broth poured at the table, smoke caught under a cover, a line cook finishing a dish while a guest watches the sequence rather than the spectacle.

Jacob’s Barracks gives the restaurant a hard edge before the meal begins, then the kitchen softens it with rye, mushroom foam, and the careful acidity of sea buckthorn. The setting looks toward Riga’s Old Town, near the Powder Tower and Swedish Gate, yet the work inside keeps returning to fields, markets, and woods. Recognition has followed, including Michelin Plate recognition for 3 Chefs in 2024, and the pass sends grey peas, mushroom foam, and bacon from the open kitchen on Torņa iela.