Never a dull meal on this Blackstone Valley tour

If you find going to the same places to eat all the time dull, the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council has a solution.
A program run by the council that began last June and runs through the end of March includes 34 weekly trips to various restaurants in the Blackstone Valley. The restaurants get new customers and the visitors find new places to try.
Attendance averages 25 people per trip, although more than 50 visited a Glocester tavern, according to Donna Houle, special projects manager for the council. The eateries run the gamut of ethnicity, from Vietnamese, Japanese, Portuguese and African to, of course, Italian and Chinese.
The cost won’t break many budgets – just $19.95 per person, gratuity excluded – and the venture brings in no more than $3 or $4 per head for the tourism council to help cover staffing and credit card processing, according to Natalie Carter, director of operations for the council.
But that is OK because the goal is not to make money for the council, but to promote through sustained tourism the nine cities and towns in the Blackstone Valley. “We hear so much about the food in Providence or people who go to the waterfront for seafood,” Carter said, “but people do not realize the diversity in the Blackstone Valley.”
Bob Billington, president of Blackstone Valley Tourism Council, who first proposed the idea, notes that the formal name of the venture is Blackstone Culinaria – Secret Ingredient Food Tour. “Culinaria is where culture and food meet,” Billington said. “The rich cultures of the Blackstone Valley are what we are focusing on, building upon existing resources and improving their viability. This is how sustainable tourism works.”
The food tours began last June, with a visit to Diamond Hill Vineyards in Cumberland, and the original concept was to try the idea for a few months and end in December. “But it was so successful,” Houle said, with most selling out, that food tours now are scheduled through the end of March and advanced booking of restaurants is already done for another round from April through June. The restaurant proprietors go out of their way to make the event special. “Each puts their own twist on it,” Houle explained, and most offer an inside look at how meals are prepared.
Marcia Zisman, of Barrington, has been on eight of the weekly food tours. She loves to cook and she loves ethnic food, so she is delighted by the experience of walking into a restaurant where “the owner sets up a place where he or the chef can do some cooking for you.”
Repeat visits are not unusual.
Rhonda Berchuck, who lives on the East Side of Providence, and her friends have been to five of the food tours and she said they’ve returned to at least three of the sites. “It is a great way to explore new restaurants,” she said.
When it comes to attendance, no one has yet to beat the record of 51 attendees set by Tavern on Main on Route 44 in the Chepachet section of Glocester, the former Stagecoach Tavern, now owned and operated by David Lumnah. The tavern, built circa 1800 and said to be haunted, hosted the council’s food tour a few days before Halloween. A special presentation on ghosts was given and attendees could do a bit of actual ghost-hunting in the tavern basement.
But the star of the show was when the chef demonstrated how to cook parmesan-encrusted chicken served over rigatoni and pink vodka sauce. “I got a real good response,” Lumnah reported, “and I think I got some repeat customers. The more exposure you can get, the better.” •