The Ten Most-Superlative Restaurants in Rhode Island

My picks for the most-exciting food establishments in and around Providence

Last week marked three years since my wife and I moved to Providence. By my rough math, I have now spent more time in Rhode Island as a real adult than I did as an undergraduate many years prior. More to the point, a majority of my time in the Ocean State has now come since I started fancying myself a food blogger. And so it occurred to me that it was well past time for me to write about my favorite foods in our current home state.

The Rhode Island food scene has earned some long-overdue recognition in recent years. Providence especially is a diverse melting pot, combining the high gastronomic standards of the Northeast megalopolis with the scrappy creativity that comes from being overshadowed by a bigger city nearby. Rhode Island cuisine is best known for the old-school trattorias of Federal Hill and fresh seafood from Point Judith, but it’s so much more than that. As a friend put it to me when we were first looking at moving to Providence: There may not be many places here that serve any given type of food, but there’s at least one of everything.

With that in mind, what follows is my accounting of the greatest restaurants in the state, based on both deliciousness and distinctiveness.

These are not necessarily the ten best restaurants in Rhode Island. For example, the second-to-last cut from this list was Nick’s on Broadway, a farm-to-table restaurant whose chef is currently up for a James Beard award for the fifth time. The last cut from this list was Terra Nossa, a local chain that does fast-casual build-your-own rodízio platters. Yes, the food is better at Nick’s, though there are other fancy-ish chef-driven restaurants in the state that I think are more exciting, whereas Terra Nossa completely changed my perspective about what mall-food-court fare could be. So Nick’s was eliminated first. (But, you know, is still excellent.)

Another key caveat is that I am allergic to shellfish. As in Barcelona, this means quite a few classic Rhode Island dishes are literally off the table for me. You can add a mental asterisk to the Top 10 framing to denote not counting seafood.

Finally, I am not a professional food photographer and the lighting in these restaurants is often not designed with a first principle of Instagram-ability in mind. If any of the pictures herein do not appear appetizing, please trust that the issue is on my end and that they taste better than they look.

Without further ado: if an out-of-town visitor asked me to show them what’s special about the Rhode Island food scene, here are the ten places I’d recommend, in alphabetical order.

Aguardente

Aguardente is one of the toughest reservations in Providence, which makes it all the more exciting when we get in. But it would feel like a special occasion regardless. The menu of Açorean-Guatemalan-fusion cuisine and inventive cocktails is the the most-fun to read and hardest to pick from in the state, each dish or drink featuring an extra twist that commands your attention. We try to mix up what we order each time, but I can’t bring myself not to get the lamb chops and something that comes with the heavenly chocolate espresso dipping sauce.

Al Forno

You can’t throw a stone in Rhode Island without hitting an old-school red-sauce joint, or at least one of their slightly trendier spiritual successors. The capo dei capi of this club is Al Forno. You start with a perfectly mixed cocktail and some antipasti, maybe a crispy wood-fired pizza. On any given night the pasta menu features exquisite elevated twists on familiar classics, like pappardelle with chicken meatballs in a carrot-infused sauce or fettuccine carbonara jazzed up with radicchio and mascarpone. And then dessert: ordered in advance alongside your entrées, because the elaborate concoctions are baked to order and served fresh out of the oven. Nothing I’ve ever tasted at Al Forno has disappointed.

Brown Bee

I’ve never been to France, which is a significant caveat to the following claim, but I think it is meaningful nonetheless: Brown Bee makes the best croissants I have ever tasted. Offerings range from simple to inventive, like French onion and everything bagel. As delicious as the gourmet stuffings are, I usually opt for a plain pain au chocolat to go with my sweet Spanish latte. I want to enjoy the flaky, fluffy, crispy, buttery richness of the pastry itself to the fullest extent possible.

Geoff’s Superlative Sandwiches

It didn’t occur to me until after I started writing this blog that it may look like the title was a reference to Geoff’s. It wasn’t, at least not intentionally. But maybe, after nearly half a lifetime of affection for this College Hill mainstay, it’s subconsciously affected my vocabulary. I first fell in love with Geoff’s through their old Two-for-Tuesday promotion, offering hungry undergrads a full day’s worth of food for a student-friendly price. That weekly special is gone — as is the self-service bucket for their famous free pickles — but the expansive menu remains. When we moved to Rhode Island, a renewed proximity to Geoff’s was the consolation prize for leaving South Philly’s impeccable sandwich scene behind. It’s still every bit as good as I had remembered.

Like Lucky’s Last Chance in Philadelphia or Happy Dog in Cleveland, the sheer whimsy of the offerings may read as stunt food, but the selections are not just zany but delicious. I try to alternate my orders, cycling in the Embryonic Journey (egg salad with bacon and melted cheese) and the Albuquerque Turkey (with chili and scallion cream cheese), but my favorite remains the Keough’s Kaos: a hot pile of corned beef, turkey, bacon, spinach, and Swiss. Always on a Superlative roll with Shedd’s sauce.

Jahunger

There may not be a single bite of food in the Ocean State that’s more craveable than the Original Meefen at Jahunger. The slurpable hand-pulled noodles, the crispy crunch of beans, the saucy chicken containing the most-concentrated sensation of umami you could imagine. Jahunger’s homestyle Uyghur cuisine is full of flavors and spices I’ve never tasted anywhere else. The only real question once you sit down in the cozy dining room is how many orders of dumplings you can house without spoiling your appetite for your noodles.

Knead Doughnuts

The best doughnut I ever had in my life was in a casino food court when I was 21. I was exhausted and hungover and it took a hot Krispy Kreme fresh off the assembly line to restore me to life. I am under no illusions that it was the timing that made it so magical, not the doughnut itself. The rest of my Top 10 doughnuts list all came from Knead, and I’m much more confident in that admiration not being merely situational.

In a state as small as Rhode Island, there sure are a lot of renowned doughnut shops. For my money, Knead takes the cake. Everything they make is great, from the basic glazed to their deluxe specials to their dietary-restriction-friendly options. (The vegan chocolate doughnut is so good that I often get it despite not needing to.) Even their savory offerings are delicious: the spontaneous breakfast sandwich they devised after being invited to a local competition was my favorite of the event, and it’s hard to pass up throwing in one of their dynamite jalapeño cheddar scones. And their occasional Night Cruller offerings, when they reopen the shop after dark and sling special doughnut-ish concoctions straight out of the fryer, are absolute can’t-miss events.

Los Andes

When I was in college, my friends and I would get dressed up and go to Los Andes for a once-a-semester nice dinner. A decade-plus later, the Peruvian-with-a-twist menu still shines. As fun as the fusion fare is, it’s the elegant execution of the simple things that keeps me coming back. Bisteca a lo pobre, a cheese empanada dusted with powdered sugar, chicken salad. Classic comfort food, elevated to gourmet heights, in a place that always feels like a celebration — it’s what makes Los Andes the quintessential Rhode Island restaurant.

Oberlin

This is the free space on your bingo card. Oberlin is the avatar of Providence’s growing gourmet renown, and this chic modern Italian spot fully meets the multiple-time-James-Beard-recognized hype. The cacio e pepe alone — the best version I’ve eaten in the Western Hemisphere — makes it a destination restaurant. (I felt better about my habit of getting a personal order as a gluttonous appetizer when a friend told me he does the same thing for dessert.) But everything else I’ve sampled from the ever-changing menu of creative seasonal pastas has been great too. The cocktail list is always fun and somehow I inevitably find room for the coffee granita.

When we decide to have a spontaneous night out, the first thing I do is check whether Oberlin has any last-minute reservations. Enough said.

Water Dog

On one hand, I feel bad about making a list where nine of my ten recommendations are in the same city. (There was greater geographical diversity among the final cuts.) On the other, the fact that it shook out this way means I can say without equivocation that Water Dog is my favorite restaurant in Rhode Island outside of Providence.

The quick way to describe Water Dog is modern Portuguese fusion, but that undersells the breadth and creativity of a menu that features barbacoa-tossed bucatini and elote fondue with wonton dippers. It’s our go-to spot for celebratory dinners, washed down with fun cocktails and culminating with a deconstructed s’more that for my money is the best dessert in the state. And I like their brunch even better, even if it feels impossible to choose among the dirty poutine, the steak and eggs with spicy risotto, or the gargantuan francesinha.

Zesty Bites

If Zesty Bites were either my favorite Middle Eastern restaurant in the state or a great neighborhood pizza joint, it would be a local staple. Somehow it’s both, and also run by the kindest shopkeepers you could ever hope to meet. If I had to choose, I find myself craving the Lebanese side of the menu more often — I like to pair the best chicken kabob I’ve ever tasted with the flaky, tangy rakakat — but the lovingly crafted New York-style pies always hit the spot too. And no one’s stopping you from making your own fusion bite by dipping the crust in some garlicky toum.

You can follow my gastronomic adventures in shorter format via my foodstagram, @LewieTheFewdie!