The newest edition to Providence’s eclectic Wayland Square is The Olive Tap, an artisanal olive oil and balsamic vinegar tasting emporium. I think we can all agree that a solid bread-olive oil-vinegar combination can elevate any meal. Looking to impress your next dinner companions? Searching for a way to enhance your favorite salad dressing recipe? The Olive Tap is your next stop for perfecting your future culinary creations.

The Olive Tap, located at 485 Angell St., offers you the opportunity to sample and purchase the finest Extra Virgin and flavored olive oils and balsamic vinegars of Modena. Choose from the rows of oil and vinegar dispensed directly from their sealed “Fusti” (serving tanks). The basic premise is as follows: you walk in, greeted by rows of shining silver containers of oil and vinegar, terrines of French bread, and as many tasting cups as you can hold. You’re welcome to try one or all of their delicious offerings, mixed and matched, with bread or straight out of the serving cup, shot style. With flavors ranging from White Truffle Olive Oil to Espresso Vinegar, the  permutations are endless. If that isn’t enough, The Olive Tap has an enormous collection of culinary sauces, marinades, gourmet pastas and international specialty foods for purchase. [Read more →]

Slow down there, cowboy: They’ll cut you off after four burgers.

Yet another incentive for you to rock the vote. All day tomorrow, Harry’s, home of the 68-ounce beer boot, spiked root beer float, and Mother of All Burgers, will be offering its legendarily cheap and delicious sliders for one buck a pop. (Note: This doesn’t combine with other promotions, which means no 50-cent sliders during half-off happy hour.) All you have to do is show ‘em your “I Voted!” sticker. [Ed.-We get stickers for voting?!?! Why don't they advertise that more?] No word on how us stickerless absentee voters will prove our participation, but we’ll take our chances. Burgers and democracy: Does it get any more American than that?

Nutella cupcake!!!!!!!!!

Those of us who were old lucky enough to know The Edge, that beloved Wayland Square coffee shop, mourned all the more heavily when, totally out of nowhere, it closed last year. Its amazing coffee, full wall of windows, and tucked-away-ness all made it a fantastic hidden study spot—and don’t even get me started on its granola. So when I heard that a new coffee shop, Teas and Javas, had opened in the same space, I was equal parts amped and skeptical. Could it ever fill the empty place The Edge had left in our hearts?

First impressions didn’t have me convinced. Compared to The Edge’s cozy, college-y feel, T&J’s is more sleek and grown-up. It’s decorated in mostly blacks and silvers, with big glass dome lights and simple black chairs that make it feel very modern, clean, and hard. In a different way, though, it’s also very conducive to work: There are plugs everywhere, and a tall 10-seat table is especially accommodating to everyone who shows up to study. And they’re open ’til 11—hurrah. Another holdover from before is the huge wall of windows that looks out onto Wayland Avenue, which can be opened when the weather’s nice to make everything feel all breezy. While that won’t be happening for another few months, the windows will let in plenty of natural light in cold, dark winter.

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The Dorrance

Family Weekend is great for a lot of reasons—we get to have chauffeurs while we run errands, play tour guide, rant to someone new about the eyesore that is the SciLi (and, oh yeah, hug our darlingest parents). But perhaps what’s most exciting is the fact that we get a whole weekend of subsidized non-Ratty meals and adventures off the Hill. That can also be scary: When you’re eating Ratty brunch and spicy withs, it can be hard to know where to begin when it’s time to play host. (Shameless self-promotion: The Family Weekend issue of Post-, our sister publication under BDH, has a full spread of restaurant coverage.) Here, though, we’ll focus on some of the fancy-schmancy restaurants that this reviewer likes to frequent for dinner with her own magnanimous parents. Treat yo’self… Or, let your parents treat you. We love ya, Mom and Dad!

The Dorrance: Full disclosure: I’m sad that my parents aren’t coming to Family Weekend, not because I miss them (pish-posh) but because I wish I could drag them here. Bon Appétit is also a fan: It named The Dorrance one of the 50 best new restaurants in America. Chef Ben Sukle previously worked under Chef Jennings at La Laiterie and then did a casual stage at the #1 restaurant in the world. Now he’s set up shop in the first floor of the downtown Union Trust Building, whose 20-foot (rough estimate… it might be 50) floor-to-ceiling windows, ornate ceiling detail, and mezzanine (THEY HAVE A MEZZANINE, just like the SciLi!!!!!!) set the tone for the food. The food! It’s avant-garde and sometimes downright strange (see also, roasted tri-tip with chanterelle mushrooms and strawberries), but it works. So while the restaurant is prohibitively expensive and swanky for us denizens of the Hill, I have a hunch it’d be perfect for an outing with our doting parents.

New Rivers: This self-proclaimed American bistro takes its ingredients seriously: farmers regularly drop by the kitchen with their wares, and Chef Beau Vestal moonlights as a forager to scout out mushrooms. As a result, the food is constantly changing—like, from week to week, perhaps even day to day—to reflect whatever winds up in the kitchen. Still, there’s a reliable sensibility in the menu that means the food can be counted on to strike a balance between comforting/un-frilly and inspired/novel/very-very-special. Lately the menu is featuring a lot of marvelously autumnal hen of the woods mushrooms, so much squash (pumpkin! acorn! delicata! butternut!), and the last of summer’s tomatoes and corn. Go when you’re hungry; you’ll want to order everything. And they also serve lunch!

More restaurants after the jump… [Read more →]

People always say they’re going to dinner on Federal Hill. They forget that Federal Hill is a neighborhood, not a specific destination that can be plugged into a GPS or reviewed on Yelp. I can’t help but imagine starry-eyed Brown freshmen rolling onto Atwells Avenue for the first time with their befuddled parents and having no clue how to proceed amongst the mobsters, valet parkers, and couples on date night.

Here’s an idea to help us all make good of that next empty resolution to explore Federal Hill: Zooma. It satisfies the Italian requirement—because while Federal Hill is a synecdoche for Italian food, the neighborhood is rife with bakeries and Chinese restaurants—and is swanky enough to have in your back pocket as an option for Family Weekend or wooing potential romantic partners.

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It’s not often that dining forays off College Hill actually deepen my appreciation for the stuff available to us through good ol’ BuDS, but a recent jaunt did the near impossible. I wanted so badly for Blount Clam Shack, the quintessentially New England outpost of fried seafood and 1950s kitsch, to be great. Unfortunately, these expectations proved lofty. Blount’s not awful; it’s just not worth it.

You may recognize the name: Blount is, after all, the supplier of those soups they serve at Jo’s and The Gate. Each year the locally owned franchise goes through some 800,000 pounds of clams, harvested fresh from New England waters, which make for an abundance of hush puppy-esque clam cakes, old-school fried clam rolls and whole belly clam platters. In addition to creamy New England clam chowder and its red Manhattan counterpart, Blount makes a Rhode Island specialty called the clam bake, which tastes like a beachfront cookout poured into a giant stewpot: potatoes, corn, chorizo and clams in a clear, salty broth. Don’t be mistaken; there’s other seafood, too — haddock here and there, scallops and a guest appearance from the lobster roll. They’ve even got a burger section, which is incredibly bewildering since 1) you’re at a clam shack and 2) you’re across the street from Rick’s Roadhouse.

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I can't believe it's not dairy!

This week at Amuse-Bouche, we’re shaking things up a little. A recent jaunt up Hope Street returned not one but two great finds in the grab-lunch-and-chill-out category. Three Sisters and its neighbor Wildflour are like Tia and Tamara or Mary Kate and Ashley (only a lot less annoying than either set of twins): They share the best things in common, probably have overlapping crowds, and seem the same on the surface, but deep down they’re like yin and yang. Three Sisters, a way-casual café, is known for its home-churned ice cream; Wildflour is vegan. Three Sisters is aggressively no-frills; Wildflour is bougie. Both sell themselves with that beautiful combination of freshly made foodstuffs, coffee and smoothies, free WiFi, and plenty of space for camping out. Only one problem: HOW TO CHOOSE?! Here’s the lowdown on both to help you decide. [Read more →]

The interior designer of Rick’s Roadhouse has done his her phe’s job. Taking in the surroundings as we waited for our food, my Puerto Rican dinner companion sighed, “This is what I thought America would be like.” It’s basically a glorified dive: walls decorated with miscellaneous Americana trinkets — taxidermied deer; a painting of the Phillips 66 logo; huge f*ckin’ American flag behind the bar — and waitresses wearing shirts that say “Wanna see a nice rack?” There are no windows(!) and plenty of room (including a 16-top table). It’s self-consciously kitschy, tapping into a strange lowbrow nostalgia that might as well be written into the U.S. Constitution.

The roadhouse theme comes through in the menu, too, which boasts sections like “Start Your Engines!” for appetizers and “Hit the Highway” for catering. It’s also reflected in an aggressive disdain for health food: the veggie burger is named “Burger for Bad Hunters,” and of the five salad options, two contain bacon, one contains steak and “fizzled corn tortillas,” and another is made up of iceberg lettuce. Do not order a salad here. It doesn’t make sense and everyone will probably laugh at you. Stick to what Rick’s knows best and we’ll all be happy. [Read more →]

Ambience complete with giant metal pole.

With the proliferation of websites that bring restaurant reviews into the sphere of social networking (Yelp! Chowhound! Urban Spoon! Amuse-Bouche! food blogs everywhere!), bougies and trolls alike are mere keystrokes away becoming the next great food critic. Unadulterated praise is boring, and we at Blog will be the first to say that it’s fun to be snarky when snark is due. So a restaurant named Pakarang Exquisite Thai seems almost to be a challenge, a dare with two possible outcomes: either a truly exquisite meal or the easiest prey imaginable. (Full disclosure: it’s very easy prey.) Investigation was due.

From its post down on South Main, Pakarang attracts lots of people in suits. It’s got a similarly corporate-looking dining room: sprawling, with nondescript furniture, a vast unmanned bar, and strange aquarium-like wall decorations. In these ways, it’s the polar opposite of Sawaddee, the Thai place on the other side of College Hill, whose dining room is roughly the size of an Escalade. What they have in common is that they both fill up at lunchtime — all that space serves Pakarang well. Service is conducive to business lunches: attentive and quick but not all that personable, the waitstaff make it easy to chow down, go over the latest numbers, and GTFO (to your cubicle… or your 1:00 class). [Read more →]

OPEN SESAME

Having just come back from Paris, the land of American-loathing (and self-loathing), I’m well acquainted with negative stereotypes surrounding the land of the free and home of the brave. Unabashedly greasy foods are at the top of the list, so Ugly American‘s name, while marvelously apt, doesn’t leave much to the imagination.

The menu contains renditions of nearly everything in the canon of lowbrow American nosh. The sandwich category is duly represented by the likes of pulled pork melts, BLTs, and beer-battered fish. There’s also a handful of hot dogs — including one, The Godzilla, that combines chili, caramelized jalapeños, and pepper rings in one overwhelmed bun — that are good but not great, with too much bun and not enough dog. Prices are incredibly fair, with sandwiches cheaper than those at the Blue Room (a grilled three-cheese is $3!) and the priciest hot dog weighing in at $2.75. But let’s not joke around. If you go to Ugly American, you must get a burger. [Read more →]