New tastes in E.G.

One of the state’s leading restaurant rows is undergoing some changes that might be called “Rhode Island style.” This is not a reference to red, white or clear chowder – the latter referred to primarily by Connecticut chowder aficionados – or hot wieners, calamari or even coffee milk.

This is no less than in keeping with the very essence of our state – we the people who live here. It is widely known, bordering on legend, that we Rhode Islanders have a unique way of conducting our everyday affairs and our business. We know each other and where we have been and we have long memories.

East Greenwich’s Main Street is the heart of a restaurant row that extends from Warwick to North Kingstown. While the village has always been a town center, in recent years it has enjoyed more than a renaissance.

The business district has undergone a transformation. A church has become a film studio and executive offices for the iconic Gregg’s restaurants. A Newport Creamery ice cream shop has been made over into a bank. And the town’s original post office is again becoming a fine-dining restaurant.

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The Post Office Café will return to Main Street in East Greenwich this month September. The new proprietor of the Post Office Café is the chef who spent time early in his career in the very kitchen he now owns.

Owner and chef John Granata and his wife are undertaking the business venture after Granata spent the last 13 years as the head chef at Camille’s on Federal Hill in Providence. While in his kitchen, he was thinking about how the Post Office could be brought back to the way it was when the café was one of the first dining landmarks of the state’s restaurant boom in the mid-’90s.

He began the makeover in the dining room, which ended up undergoing a detailed restoration to uncover its original wood-lined accents going back to when the building at 11 Main Street functioned as the town’s post office.

At the other end of Main Street, a longtime diner is beginning its second act. The former Scramblers has undergone an extensive interior and exterior makeover and is now the Hill and Harbor Cigar Bar. It has some restaurant trappings such as lockers that are available for patrons on a membership basis, similar to the wine lockers that were a longtime tradition at the Capital Grille.

Nearby spots include Red Stripe, which itself opened less than a year ago, and Tio Mateo Mexican Grille, which has plans to move to a larger space two doors down.

Greenwich Bay Oyster Bar recently completed renovations to its new Main Street location, just a couple doors down from its original location.

The restaurant row in East Greenwich will join its friendly competitors – actually colleagues, as the business owners will readily attest – in the fourth annual Restaurant Week offering, beginning Sept. 18. Nearly 30 restaurants located all over town as well as places with addresses in Warwick, North Kingstown and East Providence will take part in the popular fixed-price menu promotion that offers discounts on special versions of signature dishes.

Unlike such programs in Providence, Boston or Newport, the East Greenwich version gives participating restaurateurs the option to set prices within a range, as long as the price point ends in 77 cents to commemorate the founding year of the town – 1677. •

Bruce Newbury’s “Dining Out” talk radio show is heard on 920 WHJJ-AM, 1540 WADK-AM and on mobile applications. He can be reached by email at bruce@brucenewbury.com.

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