Destination Guide

The Hill is a true dining mecca, traveled to more often for its meatballs and parm than any other diversion. Lucky us, our office is only a few blocks away. Here’s where we go for…

Breakfast/Brunch
Caffe Dolce Vita
59 De Pasquale Plaza
401-331-8240, caffedolcevita.com
The beauty of a hotel is that it operates at all hours, leaving Caffe Dolce Vita one of the only area establishments to offer breakfast every day of the week (until noon, sleepyheads) and brunch on weekends. And do they offer it! Pancakes with chunks of brownies, crepes with Nutella and banana sauteed in Fran-gelico, sweet potato-pancetta hash, and even bagels with lox. You’ve gotta walk the Hill just to burn off breakfast. 

Vodka Sauce
Siena
238 Atwells Avenue
401-521-3311, sienaprovidence.com
Beloved though it may be, penne can get old no matter how great the gravy. In response, Siena serves up its creamy vodka sauce on the back of grilled pizza dough topped with chicken, slices of eggplant, mozzarella and chunks of gorgonzola. Decadent? Absolutely. But pair it with a light red and you’ll barely notice the faint cry from your arteries. Bonus: you don’t even need a fork
for this alcohol-tinged dish.

Parmigiana
Cassarino’s
177 Atwells Avenue
401-751-3333, cassarinosri.com
Can vegetarians have any fun on Federal Hill without ordering eggplant? At long last, it appears so. Cassarino’s offers a new riff on the famed pairing of aubergine and cheese. This version combines a roasted San Marzano tomato sauce with warm, oozing goat cheese and several slabs of garlic-laden Italian bread. 

Beans
Casa Christine
145 Spruce Street
401-453-6255
Ah, Casa Christine: the rare restaurant where the owner actually seems to take pleasure in refusing to serve you. But if the mood can be faulted, the food continues to tip the scale in the opposite direction. Our favorite appetizer? Delicate great northern beans mixed with sauteed onions and garlic, fresh native tomatoes, slivers of prosciutto, basil and a dash of red pepper seeds. Christine can yell at us all she wants; we’re still coming back.

Tasting Menu
Joe Marzilli’s Old Canteen
120 Atwells Avenue, 751-5544
The recent passing of Joe Marzilli has Atwells acknowledging its own mortality, but his restaurant keeps yesteryear alive and well. Case in point: the seven-course tasting menu that begins with bread and butter (yep, that’s a starter), follows with fruit cocktail, ends with jello and features a choice of more than fifty classic dishes in between. You could order swordfish, but a huge dish of ravioli with meatballs will give you a real taste of the old school.

Dinner for Thirty
Camille’s
71 Bradford Street
401-751-4812 camillesonthehill.com
Camille’s feeds corporate big-wigs and other large parties in a variety of settings, including a climate-controlled wine cellar. These feasts include everything from classic dishes (veal marsala) to modern hors d’oeuvres (duck potstickers). Family strife and corporate hardballing usually resolve themselves by the time the warm chocolate cake and banana gelato is served.

Dining on a Dime
Angelo’s Civita Farnese
141 Atwells Avenue
401-621-8171, angelosonthehill.com
Angelo’s is the closest thing on Atwells to an old-fashioned diner. A recent renovation has yielded burgundy leather booths with dark woodwork, evoking a ’50s soda shop that serves pasta instead of milkshakes. Almost everything’s under $10, including meatballs, pork chops and ravioli. Organ lovers order the tripe every time.

Poached Fish
Pane e Vino
365 Atwells Avenue
223-2230, panevino.net
For those in need of  Italy’s lighter side, Pane e Vino offers a nightly special of “crazy water” fish, a revolving selection of seafood (such as snapper and sea bass) cooked in a variety of flavored liquids that often combine white wine, broth, garlic, shallots, tomatoes, lemon and herbs. Italian isn’t always synonymous with pasta, you know.

Scampi
Blue Grotto
210 Atwells Avenue
401-272-9030, bluegrottorestaurant.com
What’s better than a handful of jumbo shrimp tossed with scampi sauce? Try introducing your group of crustaceans to a friendly lobster and bathing all of them in a week’s worth of butter and a healthy dose of heady garlic. Blue Grotto’s gamberi e aragosta scampi does just that. Oh—and they add some grilled asparagus so you can trick your body into thinking you’re looking out for its best interests.

Birthday Cake
Pastiche
92 Spruce Street
401-861-5190
pastichefinedesserts.com
Vibrant gumpaste roses are but a distraction from an unimpressive cake. Pastiche’s buttercream-coated cakes may not be traditional birthday fare, but grown-ups (and discerning kids) clamor for their candles to be perched on the All-American with dark chocolate stars, Passion Coconut with dramatic daisies, or Classic Vanilla with its tribe of buttercream bees. Even sparklers can’t upstage cakes this good.

Pepper Biscuits
Palmieri’s
147 Ridge Street
401-831-9145
Sure, you can lounge with a paper and a cup of coffee at Palmieri’s updated location. Heck, these days you can even have a bagel. But if you want a bite of the old world, take a bag of pepper biscuits home. The original (circa 1901) recipe is still being used, honoring Italian history in each fiery bite.


Edited by O’rya Hyde-Keller