Things are bustling in the Rhode Island restaurant community. New restaurants are opening statewide and renovations are refreshing some established spots. Chefs are receiving national recognition and new chefs are debuting. Here is a look into a few of those kitchens in Newport.
Chef Simone Ferrara has taken the helm at the Hotel Viking. It is a homecoming for him, having left Newport to cook in some renowned restaurants on the other coast. He has noticed a change in us who are on the other side of the table, as he discussed on my radio show recently.
Ferrara came back to Newport last July after five and a half years in the San Francisco Bay area. He opened a farm-to-table Italian restaurant for chef-proprietor Donato Scotti, who owns four restaurants up and down the Bay. He then moved to Acquerello, a two-Michelin-starred Italian eatery in San Francisco. Was there an adjustment the chef needed to make coming east? Ferrara says he was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the beef raised here in Rhode Island. He says as he is working on his new menu, he is working to bring some of what he calls “Italian-ity” – house-made pastas, as well as vegetarian and vegan selections. The chef is an advocate of the farm-to-table movement. He has established relationships with local growers Simmons Farm and Sunset Farm, which he praises as raising top-quality produce not only compared to California, but back home in Italy. He is looking forward to spring so he can, as he puts it, “play with some of those amazing products!”
The changes Ferrara is noticing in the years since he left Newport are in the knowledge level of who he is cooking for: “Being a hotel chef is an adventure, with guests who are traveling. They have refined palates. They dine all over the world.”
The Viking is one of those Newport places that will undergo a facelift this spring. The Top of Newport will have a new look when it reopens this May and there are new menus to be unveiled in the Viking’s first-floor restaurant.
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UNIQUE PAIR: Chefs Mike Robinson, left, from London’s Harwood Arm’s restaurant, and Simone Ferrara of the Hotel Viking in Newport team up to prepare a unique game dinner held in February at the Viking. / COURTESY NICOLE BELAIR[/caption]
Recently the Viking hosted a unique game dinner, with Ferrara teaming up with another Michelin-starred chef, Mike Robinson, from London’s Harwood Arms restaurant. Robinson is an active player on the sustainable stage, engaging in management of a supply of game meats for his restaurant, particularly venison harvested from land he oversees in the English countryside. Ferrara and Robinson alternated courses for the game dinner featuring quail, venison and wild boar. Each course was paired with a unique beverage creation with locally distilled Keel Vodka LLC and ales by Devil’s Purse Brewing from Cape Cod. Another local feature was carving-knife artisan Flint & Flame, which provided the tools for Ferrara and Robinson to prepare the meats and what they referred to as “Newport catch” – seafood, particularly oysters used in the various courses.
Elsewhere in Newport, a new chef has taken over the kitchen at the Spiced Pear at the Chanler hotel. Chef Matt Voskuil worked with another notable San Francisco chef and restaurateur, Michael Mina. There are always connections in the restaurant world. And Sardella’s Ristorante Italiano has begun the first phase of renovations with construction of a new function room on the first floor of the Memorial Boulevard restaurant. The new space is in the style of a Tuscan farmhouse and is expected to open this spring.
Bruce Newbury’s Dining Out radio talk show is heard Saturdays at 11 a.m. on 1540 AM WADK and through the TuneIn mobile app. Email Bruce at Bruce@brucenewbury.com.