ADDRESS: 7 Steeple St.CUISINE: New AmericanCHEF-OWNER: Bruce TillinghastPHONE: (401) 751-0350WEBSITE: www.newriversrestaurant.comOPENED: 1990PER-PERSON DINNER CHECK AVERAGE WITH BEVERAGES: $50SEATS: 54AVERAGE WEEKLY COVERS: 325BEST-SELLING DISH: grilled Rhode Island striped-bass fillet with locally foraged bolete mushrooms, fava bean-potato purée, baby carrots and basil vinaigrette
New Rivers restaurant is located next to the Providence River Relocation project, which redirected the Woonasquatucket and Mochassuck rivers as part of an urban-renewal effort. But the restaurant itself also redirected Providence, taking it in a new culinary direction when it opened in 1990.
“In 1990 you went out for Italian food or Chinese food, but you couldn’t get something Italian and something Asian-influenced on the same menu,” says chef-owner Bruce Tillinghast, who started serving his customers quinoa at a time when they were used to garlic mashed potatoes.
Part of the fun of food for Tillinghast is examining how a group’s culture is reflected in its cuisine.
But food wasn’t the first thing Tilling-hast loved about the restaurant world. He envisioned himself running the front-of-the-house.
A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Tillinghast worked in restaurants while teaching in Providence public schools.
“The more I worked in the business, the more I liked it,” he says. “I liked the social aspect of it and the gratification of making people happy by feeding them and providing them with an interesting environment. That was all very attractive to me.
“I’ve never seen the restaurant as just the food. It’s more like a big art project for me.”
But he had enough restaurant experience to know that a restaurateur needs to be ready for anything, so he and his wife Pat studied cooking under Madeleine Kamman in case they needed to do damage control and work on the fly in the event that their chef quit. Then he discovered that cooking was art, too. He found that combining flavors and textures in cooking was very much like using different colors and shapes in visual art.
“All of a sudden, food became a whole new avenue of creativity,” Tillinghast says.
By the time New Rivers opened, “it was quite obvious that the kitchen was the place that I wanted to be,” he says.
Bruce Tillinghast was chef and Pat Tillinghast was pastry chef until she became ill. She passed away in December 1999.
“Fortunately, we’ve always had really wonderful staff,” Tillinghast says, “and we’re small enough that it’s really more like a family than being an employer. They were a good support network and a lot of help.”
A small fire in 2007 closed the restaurant for six months, and Tillinghast decided to put his chef de cuisine of seven years, Beau Vestal, in charge of developing the new menu.
“I’ve just let him run with it since,” he says.
During the hiatus, “Beau became quite the authority on charcuterie,” Tillinghast adds, and he now butchers whole animals and makes items ranging from classic pork rillettes to rabbit torchon, bacon and tasso ham. “We’re smoking our own local bluefish.”
Johanne Killeen, co-owner of Al Forno, another long-standing Providence restaurant, says the New Rivers continues to contribute to the community.
“Bruce is a man of exceptional talent, passion, character and creativity,” she says. “We love the fact that he supports the local purveyors and growers, and we think he’s a man with a really good conscience.”
Menu Sampler APPETIZERS Two Little Tarts Fava bean, ricotta, mint and fennel greens; balsamic onions, guanciale and Hannahbelle cheese, both in thyme pastry $12 Spring Salad spring lettuces, herbs and flowers with roasted spring garlic vinaigrette, baby beets, fresh garden peas and crisp spring dug parsnip ribbons $13 Fingerling Potato Grilled fingerling potato and shaved fennel with smoked bacon lardoons, wild arugula, pickled onion, creamy horseradish dressing $11 Plum Point Oysters Baked Plum Point Oysters with smoked scallop, spring onions and breadcrumb stuffing, lemon tarragon aioli $4.25 each MAIN COURSES Rabbit Ravioli Pulled rabbit leg and giblet ravioli in light sassafras jus with quail egg yolk, fava beans and chervil $11 New Rivers Burger ½ pound Wolfe Neck Farm sirloin burger on Portuguese sweetbread roll with butter roasted potatoes, house pickle mix and dressed greens $19 Add two sunny-side quail eggs $22 Native Cod Pan-roasted native cod loin in garlic chive fumet with smoked scallop, grilled ramps, chiogga beets and preserved lemon $26 Vermont Quail Two Cavendish Farms boneless quails stuffed with currants, almonds and spring herbs with ramps and salsify $26 Berkshire Pork Porterhouse Brined and grilled Berkshire pork loin, roasted parsnip and bacon hash, pickled shallot/tart apple relish, smoky pork demi-glaze $27 Teres Major Steak Grilled tender shoulder steak with peppercorn and coriander crust with Green Mountain potatoes, shallot and mushroom fricassee and Great Hill Blue Cheese butter $26 DESSERTS Praline/rum ice cream With fudge sauce and New Rivers’ cookies $10 Panna Cotta Honey and Greek yogurt panna cotta in rhubarb consommé with fresh kiwi, candied kumquats and rhubarb chips $12