RAW at the Piazza

RAW, you shall be missed. High quality food coupled with excellent ambiance, friendly service, and a great sake selection. Most of all, I loved the location; RAW really filled a niche that NoLibs was missing. Guess I’ll have to travel a little further if I want better-​than-​average sushi, now.
All I want to know is why? Why, RAW? You little tease, you. Why’d you have to go? I thought I could depend on you. All those years I planned for us, eating sushi and having fun… all gone.
I’ll miss that beef negimaki.

My dining companion and I stopped in on the Monday after Christmas for dinner. I’ve been to the center city Raw so I had some expectations… and they were not let down. The restaurant is beautiful, staff attentive, service top notch, food delectable. Everything we ate was wonderful!

As a resident of Northern Liberties, I was pretty excited about a delicious sushi place coming into the area. None of the others really cut it for me.
All of my Raw experiences have been good to very good. Their skewers have always been a huge hit for me. Some of my favorites include, bacon wrapped quail eggs in their spicy BBQ, the spicy pork and the newest addition is the Bul Go Gi (spicy beef). I love the concept of these and I love that I go, grab a few skewers, a few drinks and not feel too full.
The sushi has always been fresh and their specialty rolls are innovative and delicious! It’s not the best sushi I’ve ever had, but I’m certainly a fan. The torimy roll sticks out in my brain which contains spicy tuna, eel and scorched squid. Delicious and very approachable…
The food, mixed with a great menu selection and great service make this place great.
Now I will move onto my problems with Raw which unfortunately brings down it’s rating… the prices.
I have absolutely no problem spending some money on an amazing/​special meal. That’s the problem, it’s not a special place. The food is very good but falls short of amazing. Because of this, I just feel it’s not the right fit for the piazza. With prices like what they have, they need to make people come outside Northern Liberties to this spot and if people want Raw from outside the area, they’ll go to the one on sansom or chestnut.
I’m totally in their corner and I LOVE the specials they’ve been running (½ off Tuesdays for Tower residents (thank you!) coupled with an awesome daily happy hour) but unless they find a better way of getting people to this spot, I worry it won’t make it.

Decent but over priced. They do have specials if you live in the piazza for residence which is cool.

I went to Raw with some friends on Saturday night. We were able to get a reservation same-​day for 8:45pm. It wasn’t crowded when we got there & we were seated right away. I mean no disrespect by my 3 stars, I really had an A-​Okay time and I would go back. There were some good points and some not so good points.
The good: Service — attentive without being overbearing. Food — the spicy tuna tartar was yummy and so were the specialty rolls. I had the Arina roll which is a crunchy tuna roll topped with avocado and spicy tuna tartar. It was delicious & tasted fresh. It was pricey at $ 19 but it was a HUGE roll. I tried my friend’s Darkhorse roll which was also pretty good. Beer — decent selection of Japanese and other Asian beers. Décor — clean & modern, walls that look like they’re made of asphalt with lights shining upward on them — nice effect.
The not so good: Food — my spicy scallop roll was ok… nothing special, scallops didn’t have that über-​fresh melt-​in-​your-​mouth quality. I didn’t really like the octopus meatball-​thing (forget what exactly it was called). It tasted fishy and the chunks of octopus were rubbery — and this is coming from someone who LOVES octopus. I had 2 robata skewers, 1 pork and 1 beef bul-​go-​gi. The flavor was good but the meat was tough & a bit overcooked. This was disappointing since Craig Laban spoke highly of them in his review.
Raw is a nice addition to the neighborhood and I would go back, but next time I’ll stick to the spicy tuna tartar and specialty rolls.

The sushi were pretty good. We got a variety and they were tasty. The wonton soup and ocean salad were great also. However, the skewers were a different story. The beef tasted like corn, chicken was dry, pork belly was really fatty, and the squid was rubbery. Cocktails were mediocre also. I wouldn’t rule out going back, but I’ll probably order sushi and beer or sake.

Better than Samson St location but the vibe is lacking.
Food is fantastic and menu choices, with robata items, is outstanding.
Sushi is fresh and creativity and presentation is spot on.
Noise level is a problem even with not busy. Great looking space with open kitchen is really nice. Not a dark a space as Samson but the place needs more energy.
Not sure why the piazza can’t get it going. It deserves better with great places like Raw now. I hope business picks up and that this place is successful. One of the better sushi spots in the city.

I live on this same block and happen to love Japanese so was excited to have another option in the area outside of Hikari in Liberty Walk. Arrived with a dinner party of 8 on a Friday with a reservation made on OpenTable. Promptly seated and met our waitress. Was a little surprised when the waitress made a comment about wanting to leave for the night after being seated a table of 8 for dinner and drinks! If you’ve eaten around northern liberties, it’s not a shocker to run into a pretentious early 20’s wait staff here or there — they always seem to get weeded out. I’ve eaten here twice before, once by myself and once with three others — but at the small bar inside. Drinks are great, they have a nice sake selection and have Wu-​Tang named cocktails — ie. the digital bullet. There is a lemonade cocktail our lady friends were getting tipsy on quick. :)
About the food: they have a menu set to appease a non-​sushi eating person, which is helpful when you bring a larger party. The appetizers are diverse (the tuna tartare is really good) The sushi is good and they have more options for things like toro that the other local place does not carry regularly. My experience is that the rolls simply have too much rice on them. I’m not sure why they do it, it wouldn’t take anything away from the quantity/​quality of their other ingredients. Party of 8, drinks and dinner ~$ 600 with built in tip.