Lifebeat
Vintage in Woonsocket: It’s a cutting-edge hot spot
10/19/2006 01:00 AM EDT
The tuna tartare appetizer at Vintage in Woonsocket.
THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL / Sandor Bodo
When I suggested recently that five old friends join me at the chic new restaurant Vintage in Woonsocket for a special dinner, all five said as one, “Woonsocket?”
It really is as if Woonsocket is a place unto itself — occupying another planet even more than its status as a working-class former mill city almost in Massachusetts would suggest. But when I scoffed at my friends’ narrow parochialism, citing numerous reports I’d had that Vintage is really a find and that Woonsocket is getting pretty nice, too, they agreed to go — though with reservations, and not just the kind you call ahead to make.
It turned out that describing Vintage as a find was more accurate than I’d intended. Finding it was a problem for some of us. Not just the restaurant, either — the whole city.
So right off, here’s the route from Providence — about a 20-minute drive: Route 146 to the 146A split to Woonsocket, bear right onto Park Street, keep on that to the end, turn left at the blinking red, over the bridge, left to Market Square where there’s a big parking lot on the right, and the beautiful new brick Vintage on the left.
It is true that at the moment, the Vintage sign is hard to detect. It’s beautiful and copper, but it’s mounted so high up on the building’s façade that you can’t see it if you’re passing by on Main Street.
Like the restaurant, the sign is very stylish. And to a large extent, the food matches the tone of sophisticated warmth.
The restaurant is the creation of Brion McGroarty and Larry Lovejoy, along with chef Brian Counihan, 28, a Johnson & Wales graduate.
Vintage’s history in brief is that the partners, who had formerly been involved in the Martha’s Vineyard restaurant The Wharf, bought a building with the idea of renovating it to introduce fine dining to a Woonsocket that is undergoing the early stages of revitalization. But the building proved unsalvageable, and so they built a new brick one, at a cost of roughly $2.5 million — one that is not only commodious with two dining floors, a lounge and bar and an outside upper-level deck, but that also fits in spectacularly well with the genuine old downtown buildings around it.
Inside, Vintage is even more chic than had been described to me: Tall-backed suede chairs, brushed stainless steel table tops, muted colors, sleek modernistic lighting, interesting art.
But there is yet some work to do to make Vintage a truly great dining destination. It has been open only six months.
First off, there’s the service. Granted, our group offered something of a challenge, with all of the men having sworn off meat or fat of any kind in an admirable effort to reverse damage done to their hearts by decades of dedicated abuse. One of the women is cheese-challenged, and another eschews meat. So I was the lone omnivore at the table.
Still, was it necessary for the waitress to snap “No substitutions” when asked about a baked potato? Or for her to say to another health-motivated query, “I’ll ask, but it’s gonna cost you”? It just didn’t go with the tone of the place, and it set my friends’ mood on edge, especially as some of them had just endured a nightmarish hour-long drive, most of it lost in the wilds of Uxbridge. So I couldn’t blame them for taking her comments amiss.
As for the food, there is much to like about Vintage, but not if you are on a low-cholesterol diet or are really hungry. Portions are small, though in general beautifully plated. For instance, an appetizer of Chatham littlenecks ($10) contained neatly arranged small clams, but only six of them, and a few with their shells broken in shards. Another appetizer, of sushi-grade tuna tartare ($10), was a more generous portion and was very good, the cubes of molded raw tuna bathed in a perfectly complementary dressing touched with cumin oil and including julienned slices of cucumber under a hat of crispy wontons.
The soup of the day was lobster bisque, but it proved to be more along the lines of a French fish soup than a traditional bisque — very concentrated and fishy, with no detectable cream — and while it might have been appreciated by a real French person, it didn’t translate well for us. (Graciously, the waitress took it off the tab.)
Salads were excellent. All of us raved about the freshness of the greens and the subtlety of the dressings on the two types we ordered: Caramelized Pear and Arugula with Manchego Cheese and Sunflower Seeds in Chardonnay vinaigrette, and Goat Cheese with Soaked Cherries, Spicy Nuts and port balsamic vinaigrette (each $9).
Some of our entrees were outstanding, particularly mine of pan-crisped chicken over butternut squash Gruyere polenta with sautéed chard ($20) — very satisfying, in a lovely reduction sauce that enveloped the flavorful polenta underneath. Several among the heart-healthy contingent went for the North Atlantic salmon ($21), described as “with roasted cauliflower, curried hash browns and Thai red curry sauce.” Both the salmon and the sauce were wonderful, but where were the vegetables? There were just a few cubes of each tucked inconspicuously under the salmon filet.
The only real miss was seared tuna over what was described as a “crispy sushi rice cake” ($25). Where we had expected to see a single piece of tuna, there were instead about six small pieces arranged like dismantled kebabs atop a rice cake more starchy and hard than crispy.
In a restaurant named Vintage, one expects a serious wine list and attention paid to the niceties of alcoholic beverages in general. While I am not a margarita drinker, some of these friends are, and they were not pleased to find their favorite cocktail served in narrow highball glasses, requiring drinking from a straw and thereby bypassing the critical element of the salted rim. And the waitstaff left old glasses sitting on the table long after fresh ones were brought, leaving our sleek stainless table-top a battlefield of dead soldiers.
The wine list is long — more than 70 bottles, about 15 by the glass — with choices from all the right places from Europe to South Africa. But the markup seemed high on many of them, and the one we settled on, a 2004 Chateau Vitallis Pouilly-Fuisse, was characterless and overpriced at $45. A bottle of Domaine Fruitiere Muscadet ($24) was more fairly priced but shouldn’t have been the table’s favorite over the Pouilly-Fuisse.
Desserts — all made in-house — were hit-or-miss.
We all were excited at the prospect of a White Peach and Maine Blueberry Cobbler (all desserts $8). Now, a good fruit cobbler is among the best inventions of mankind, and doesn’t need to do anything more than be itself to be great. Why mess with it? In this case, there was little detectable cobbler, and the mixed fruit was closer to raw than cooked.
On the other hand, a warm chocolate cake with caramelized milk sauce and homemade vanilla ice cream was very good, the moist chocolate just sweet enough to make a good complement for the ice cream.
Our other choice — cookies with the ice cream — was nothing special: three different cookies — peanut butter, chocolate chip and almond. It seemed more like an after-school treat than a dessert you’d expect to follow what was overall such a stylish meal.
With improved directional skills, all of us made it home — to North Attleboro, Providence and Barrington — in less than a half-hour of driving. Really, Woonsocket is not on another planet. It’s right up the road, and from what we saw that evening, it’s just getting better and better.
A dinner for two at Vintage might look like this:
Tuna Tartare…$10.00
Littlenecks…$10.00
Pear and Arugula salad…$9.00
Pan-roast chicken…$20.00
Salmon…$21.00
Bottle Muscadet…$24.00
Chocolate cake slice …$8.00
Ice cream and cookies…$8.00
Food total…$110.00
Tax…$8.80
Tip…$22.00
Total…$140.80
Vintage, 4 South Main St., Woonsocket. (401) 765-1234. www.vintageri.com. Upscale modern. Reservations accepted. Highchairs available. Wheelchair accessible. Parking lot. MC, V, AE. Lunch weekdays; dinner Mon.-Sat. Appetizers $10 to $14; entrees $19 to $28. Wines by glass $7 to $10.50; extensive wine list.
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