The Red Fez: Providence’s 92nd Best Restaurant?

I spent many terrible Friday nights as a child in a white basement with a dropped ceiling on a side street off Pocasset Avenue, writhing in agony at the smell of the calimari being eaten with terrible fervor by my mother and my Auntie Lala.

It was St. Bart’s Club, one of a number of restaurants I was always dragged to as a kid, kicking and screaming and hemming and hawing and stomping my feet and gnashing my picky seafood-hating teeth the whole way. Along with Marchetti’s and La Rosa and Twin Oaks and Chelo’s and that Tabor Franchi place off Atwood Avenue that everybody was really into for a while, St Bart’s was a place that my Italian-Cranstonian soul loathed with such passion that I swore I would never set foot in it again. Eventually, my complaining grew to the point that my family stopped going, and I haven’t heard it spoken of in at least ten years.

That is until today, when I saw that it made the list of Providence‘s 91 Best Restaurants. It’s right there alongside almost every other restaurant you can think of, from Chilango’s to Al Forno. The just-published guide, which was compiled by food writers Deborah Moxham and John Schenck some time between when Chinese Laundry opened and when L’Epicureo closed, has enough restaurant suggestions to keep you out every night from now until the end of July.

The focus is on sit-down places in the city proper, which means they don’t extend any farther than the LJ’s/Rasoi/Garden Grille plaza on the Pawtucket line. It also means that they’re not going to mention fast-food places like East Side Pockets or the Taqueria Pacifica which, to my apparently unrefined vegetarian palate, are two of the best places to eat in the whole damn city. And don’t even think for a moment that you’ll learn about the great nachos and salads and stuff at casual bar-type places like Jake’s and the Abbey and the Ivy Tavern, because they’re not on the list, either. And they didn’t include The Red Fez, because apparently they hate things that are affordable and delicious and writing a book about Providence’s 92 Best Restaurants was just not possible.

I can’t say I approve of all of their recommendations–don’t get me started on the uppity service at Paragon or the nine dollar mashed potatoes at Bacaro or the hideous bathroom fixtures at DownCity and for Christ’s sake how are any of them better than The Red Fez anyway?!–but throwing a book like this in the car would conveniently remind me about places that I tend to forget when I’m hungry, like Angkor (delicious!) and Temple (sorta douchey but also delicious!) and Oak, which has really charming servers and possibly the best grilled cheese I’ve ever had in my entire life ever.

I’ve eaten at just under half the places on the list, and their reviews would make me try out some more.  They more or less have the right idea about things, despite occasionally getting a little flowery with the descriptions; I won’t get into their Julian’s review. (Okay, so they also complain about overly large portions in Providence just four pages after they praise the huge portions at Twin Oaks, and make geographic errors like claiming that Chilango’s is in the middle of Olneyville. But, you know, nobody’s perfect.)

Eighteen of the resturants are marked with $$$$’s, which means they’re basically out of my league, and unless I’m with somebody who’s really craving Thai or Japanese or Guatemalan food, I generally don’t go to those places because they’re usually not much fun for a seafood-hating vegetarian with peanut allergies. So except for reminding me of a few places I haven’t tried yet (like Kurrents and 242) I think the book is way more useful for remembering the places I don’t always think of right away.