Dining Review: Gift Horse

Warm buttered and smoked scallop roll; crispy oysters alla place; raw scallops. Photography by Angel Tucker

Ben Sukle’s Oberlin has long been considered unique — its menu focuses on raw fish and handmade pasta — but it was born into a space that was largely constructed by someone else. Its house on Union Street was, at one point, Flan, and while the space has represented Sukle’s unconventional approach pretty well, there has always been some distance between the vision and its surroundings. 

That changed in June when Sukle and Bethany Caliaro opened Gift Horse across the street. It’s Sukle’s first fully designed venture, and while Oberlin is making the half-block move next to Gift Horse this fall, the new restaurant has already proven itself to be the most eccentric and proud member of this creative family.  

Caviar and doughboys. Photography by Angel Tucker

Gift Horse is anchored by its bar because that’s where the oysters are, and if there’s a beauty queen in this colorful space, it’s in these craggy shells. There are seven to nine locally harvested varieties and working your way through them is like riding different waves, each of them holding a unique piece of the ocean in their carriage. But even the oysters, which you can elect to soak in a kimchi mignonette, bend to the will of chef Sky Haneul Kim, who brings her Korean background to the kitchen and regularly and nonchalantly asserts that gochujang and lobster intrinsically belong together. In this, she and Sukle are clearly connected, as both can turn not only culinary expectations but aspirations on a dime. After all, plenty of countries have coastline. In this case, using seafood as a cultural manifestation isn’t manufactured creativity to celebrate the chef; it’s the artful representation of a people. 

Sukle’s desire for diverse expression is certainly present in the decor of Gift Horse. It seats about forty-five people, but there’s an expansiveness in the soaring ceilings and fluid shapes of the design. The bar is topped with dramatically swirled Italian Orobico Rosso marble, thick bands of maroon coursing like rivers. Color abounds — in the artwork, in shelves filled with pinch-pots and plants, Brimfield finds, Italian pottery and antique British porcelain dishes, which look like bounty from a European flea market. The most precious plates are painted with rosebuds and vines, but the extensive assortment of seashell and fish plates points to an ecstatic equipment odyssey. And high above the sightline rests a pair of oversized custom speakers designed by Jackson Morley, because no journey to excellence is worth its while without music. 

The raw bar. Photography by Angel Tucker

All of this, however, is preamble to the meal, which inevitably starts with a cocktail. Rachel Stone runs the bar program and it holds up fiercely against a modern food menu. In print, drink descriptions seem to conjure up an apothecary — unlikely ingredients swirled together in a madcap experiment — but the outcome is unexpectedly organic. Would anyone expect Industrious Spirit Company Ornamental Gin, seaweed and lime to taste like agua fresca? It does in the Reef Keeper cocktail. 

It also lays the groundwork for cold dishes, which arrive in various levels of intensity. Crudo ($18) will be familiar to Oberlin fans: sublime in its simplicity and dressed in little more than olive oil, capers made in house from the buds of local herbs and a dose of crunchy salt. Crab is equally pristine, served ice cold with burnt onion dijonnaise in its own ceramic sidecar. But the most irreverent and indulgent dish is a plate of herb-dusted doughboys served with California caviar seasoned with kombu ($80). It entirely upends classic dining — fried dough? — but I’d eat it every damn night. Half the fun of eating caviar is in the ritual, and cracking open the dough to nestle the California sturgeon eggs combines Russian tradition with the joy of street food. 

ME Jonah crab cocktail. Photography by Angel Tucker

The smoked fish dip ($14), on the other hand, is unabashedly lowbrow and delicious. It’s dressed with a shower of chives and edible flowers, but it’s also the remnants of fish that didn’t have a starring role. Some strange hybrid of onion dip and whitefish salad, and served with fried nori chips, it embodies Kim’s philosophy that food elevates by valuing wholeness, not prioritizing what is already treasured. And all of these perspectives are realized in Kim’s signature dish: a seafood ssam in which fried fish — from skate wing to scup — can be loaded into lettuce leaves with rice, an array of pickled vegetables and spicy peanut sauce. It’s a $55–$85 extravaganza (depending on the size and variety of seasonal fish) that allows New Englanders into a Korean ceremony as participants and not just bystanders.  

There are certainly other incarnations of cross-culturalism on the menu: a monkfish and liver pate with piri piri served on toast (a take on Japanese shrimp toast with a Portuguese twist on housemade Pullman sourdough) and a smoked scallop roll ($24) which is almost entirely Cape Cod summer until you get to the spread of Japanese fish liver doused with sake. It parades through the dining room with well-earned haughtiness, its bun glistening under the restaurant’s suspended stained glass, touting the endless appeal of butter. 

The Red, Right, Return cocktail. Photography by Angel Tucker

Sukle’s culinary kingdom may be confined to one square block, but in this family, Gift Horse is the kid who’s adamantly proud of its quirkiness. It does nothing in a straightforward manner — dessert included — and is better for it. There are two or three options on any given night, including a seasonal sundae that straddles Norwegian Christmas and a drunken kitchen snack. Chocolate ice cream might be mixed with potato chips and marshmallow and spread between fried rosette cookies ($12). Hard to argue with any of that. But the marisu ($14) — a maritozzi that could be filled with tiramisu cream or blueberry verbena jam, whipped mascarpone and citrus curd — is a most unassuming revelation. Like Oberlin, this is a crew that does wonders with bread, and the brioche could only be better if it were stuffed with espresso and milk fat (Check!). How a kitchen that staunchly worships raw fish can hold as much affection for what’s ostensibly bread and butter is a mystery that endures to this day.  

Even days after a meal, there’s a lot to take from Gift Horse. It’s a kitchen that can change a diner almost as readily as it changes seafood in Rhode Island. But perhaps the most surprising element is that there’s a truly marked sense of egalitarianism in this restaurant, in which the simple and the complex are equally revered and each member of the staff plays a role that’s not just appreciated but critical. And though Gift Horse and its food are hyper-stylized, neither carry an affect: Everything is exuberantly unorthodox and in pursuit of new norms. So while Oberlin continues to hold its own, its little sister has set new rules for the game.

The Slack Tide raw bar platter. Photography by Angel Tucker

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GIFT HORSE

272 Westminster St., Providence, 383–3813, gifthorsepvd.com 

Watermelon. Photography by Angel Tucker

Open for dinner Thursday–Monday. Oyster happy hour is from 4–5 p.m., featuring two buck shucks.

Wheelchair accessible. Street parking. 

CUISINE: Local seafood comfort food.

CAPACITY: Forty-five. 

VIBE: Couldn’t decide between a bar and restaurant; ended up getting both. 

PRICES: Plates fall between $14–$85. The ssam, $55–$85, is twice the size of anything else; dessert: $6-$14. 

KAREN’S PICKS: Oysters, caviar, crudo, ssam, marisu. But eating everything is a good idea. Don’t forget the cocktails. 

The interior of Gift Horse. Photography by Angel Tucker