The once-a-week special dinner is light and boozy…
Rikasa On Main has added a new Thursday reason to head downtown: a Ladies Night menu, offered every Thursday in May from 5 to 9 p.m. for $42 per person.
It is the kind of special that sounds straightforward until you read the menu. Then it becomes clear this is not just a few drinks and a discounted plate of pasta. It is a compact, composed dinner built for a table: cocktails, ricotta, chopped salad, arancini, and a sauced pasta finish.
That format fits Rikasa. The restaurant, located at 53 South Main Street in Pittston, has grown into more than a single dining room. There is the Main Dining Room, Joint 53, Room 53, and Rooftop 53, giving the place the rare local ability to turn dinner into a fuller night out. A meal can become another drink, a rooftop view, live music, or simply a reason not to rush home.
The Ladies Night menu begins with three cocktails. The Sunset Spritzer is the most interesting: vodka, jalapeño, pineapple juice, lime juice, coconut water, and club soda. It has heat, acid, sweetness, and lift. The Main Squeeze Sangria goes softer, mixing Pinot Grigio, blueberry vodka, lemonade, berry preserves, berries, mint, and lemon-lime soda. The Strawberry Margarita stays closer to the familiar lane with tequila, fresh lime juice, Cointreau, and strawberry puree.
The food starts with “Whipped & Wanted,” whipped lemon ricotta with hot honey and toast points. It is exactly the right opener for this kind of meal: creamy, bright, sweet, and meant to be passed around. Nobody needs instructions. Spread it, eat it, keep talking.
Next is “The Upgrade,” an Italian chopped salad with salami, provolone, cucumbers, red onion, tomatoes, black olives, romaine, and vinaigrette. It is doing useful work. The salad cuts through the ricotta, sets up the fried course, and keeps the meal from becoming only cheese, starch, and cocktails.
The arancini course, “Crispy Confessions,” sounds most directly connected to Rikasa’s Italian identity. The menu lists assorted arancini: broccoli rabe, Italian beef, and Sicilian. Arancini can go wrong when they become dull fried rice balls. But as an idea, they are perfect here: small enough to share, substantial enough to matter, and flexible enough to carry different fillings without making the meal feel heavy.
The closer is “Saucy Little Thing,” a pasta choice of scampi sauce or penne vodka. Diners can add chicken for $7, shrimp for $12, or salmon for $18. That is smart. The base menu keeps the special approachable by Rikasa standards, while the add-ons let the table decide whether this is a lighter night or a full dinner.
There is an obvious local comparison to Bank+Vine’s Girl Dinner, another Friedman Hospitality Group restaurant’s composed, social special. That Wilkes-Barre version took an internet-born idea and turned it into a real Friday night meal. Rikasa’s Ladies Night feels related, though more Italian, more cocktail-driven, and more clearly built for Pittston Main Street.
This is the kind of restaurant special that makes sense right now. Diners still want to go out, but they do not always want the old appetizer-entrée-dessert rhythm. They want a table full of things. They want a drink that feels like part of the meal. They want value, but not cheapness. They want the evening to have a shape.
Rikasa’s new Ladies Night gives it one. Ricotta, chopped salad, arancini, pasta, cocktails. A little structure, a little looseness, and enough food to make Thursday feel like something worth planning around.
