Wielding his iPhone, Matt Jennings, owner of Providence bistro La Laiterie, furiously fired off e-mails to a New York Times reporter inquiring about Providence’s food culture. His wife, Kate, was not happy. She was in the same room delivering their first child as Jennings played quarterback for the city’s food-culture pitch.
“There’s a real sense of trying to unify the food movement here,” he said recently between preparing beef at his restaurant. “I kind of have taken it upon myself to do that as much as possible.”
Jennings has become one of an expanding number of chefs working with tourism officials to shift the focus of food from a necessity while visiting the city, to a reason to visit. The Providence Warwick Convention & Visitors Bureau launched an initiative along those lines about five years ago, and it appears to be paying dividends.
Last month, Esquire magazine named Cook & Brown Public House in Providence one of its Best New Restaurants of 2010 after the bureau helped facilitate a visit. This past summer Matt Genusso, owner of Providence’s Chez Pascal, appeared on NBC’s “Today” show and last December Joe Hafner, then of Gracie’s in Providence, made an appearance. Both times the bureau paved the way.
And last month, tourism officials announced a Restaurant Week scheduled for January, to complement an identical program held over two weeks each July. The program lets diners taste a preselected, three-course meal at a variety of the city’s restaurants for a universal fixed price.
Kristen Adamo, the visitor bureau’s vice president of marketing and communications, said the city holds all the ingredients to attract hungry visitors. A diverse collection of ethnicities provides a selection for all pallets. Johnson & Wales University culinary students and graduates often land in local restaurants and a passion for creativity permeates the city.
“When you put all that together you’ve got the perfect storm for a great restaurant town,” Adamo said. “So we … really are just using what’s already there.”
Copps said that to the envy of cities such as Boston and Portland, Maine, Providence boasts a year-round farmers market. Jennings, she noted, grows some of his vegetables in his garden. And mom-and-pop eateries serving up creative menus dot the city’s neighborhoods.
The effort to attract more food enthusiasts seems well under way, Copps said.
“It’s burgeoning right now,” she said.
The push has received some help from cable television. With whole networks and shows dedicated to food, cooking has risen from a chore to an attraction. Just ask Stephen Spencer, manager of museum operations at the Johnson & Wales Culinary Arts Museum, where busloads of food-happy tourists arrive.
“They see how easy the chefs make it on the food channel and they say, ‘We can do that too,’ ” Spencer said.
The Providence museum hosts about 10,000 visitors a year and attendance has been rising steadily for the last five years. Tour buses that once arrived at the museum on a tour of Rhode Island attractions have now become food-themed tours that ferry tourists from one eatery to another and with a dash of history on the side.
Groups arriving at the museum hail from Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and even as far away as Pennsylvania. Once here they discover the wonders of Del’s, Woonsocket “dynamite” sandwiches, Olneyville wieners, clam cakes and coffee milk, the state’s official drink. The smattering of offerings in the state can surprise even locals, said Spencer, who curates an exhibit about Rhode Island food.
“When I did that exhibit I basically rediscovered my state,” he said.
For a dozen years, Cynthia Salvato has offered food-centric tours of Federal Hill and other Rhode Island communities through Savoring Rhode Island. About 80 percent of her guests are on a day trip to the city; many are Rhode Islanders themselves unfamiliar with the city’s food.
For $50 per person, they follow her on a three-hour walking tour of bakeries, specialty food shops and wine stores on Federal Hill. They go into kitchens and talk with chefs.
Salvato said her business has shown steady growth over the years. Some of her visitors stumble upon the tour while in the capital city for other reasons. But some call months ahead seeking reservations, curious – or perhaps obsessed – with a peek into Italian food culture.
“I put it in five simple words: It’s all about the food,” Salvato said. “It’s never about anything else.”
For businesses she visits, it’s also about new customers. The businesses do not pay to become a stop, but they agree to offer free samples, special deals or a behind-the-scenes tour. Salvato said for many shop owners, it pays off as customers make a purchase on the spot or return after the tour.
“It’s kind of like a win-win and that was my approach,” she said.
And she has no trouble finding ambassadors from the culinary scene. When one of her tour groups invited former Providence Mayor Vincent “Buddy” Cianci Jr. – who has his own line of pasta sauce – to lunch on the Hill after the tour, he readily obliged.
La Laiterie’s Jennings said such stops would never become the backbone for most city restaurants but they play an important role in raising the city’s food profile.
“We have so much going for us,” he said. “Having people realize that will help continue to put Providence in the right direction.” •
