Dining Review: Oberlin in Providence

VT Haiga Mai rice risotto with shellfish. Photography by Angel Tucker

For longtime fans of Oberlin, dinner at 266 Westminster is still a little disorienting. The restaurant came into its reputation in a quirky space on Union Street that thrived on contrast: plates of refined food rooted in Italian culture, showcased in what felt like a makeshift dining room decorated with an attic aesthetic. Everything was unexpected: pairings of raw fish with hand-formed pasta, crackling bread fresh from the fire preceding whole roasted fish lying dramatically on top of rough-cut vegetables. Owner and chef Ben Sukle’s dining experience was all about highbrow food in a cultivated low-key setting and was quickly embraced by diners who cared deeply about food and less about appearances. 

Sourdough bagel with piri piri cream cheese. Photography by Angel Tucker

His new space, however, is decidedly polished, which makes for a wildly different experience. The restaurant is painted in a panoply of lilac, salmon and blue with undulating arcs of wood that frame banquettes, bars and sections of ceiling complete with an elaborate, hand-painted mural. Marble and tile stretch far into your peripheral vision, and all of this adds up to expectations that simply didn’t exist in Oberlin’s first incarnation — at least not as you walked in the door.

Sukle, however, seems to thrive in the face of a challenge — so much so that he’s known to create one if it doesn’t exist. Remember birch? Remember COVID? It was at that restaurant in that time that Sukle decided to charge patrons for bread and, more noteworthy, to make bread that’s worth charging for. It’s a decision that has had rippling effects for both Oberlin and Gift Horse (Sukle’s seafood restaurant), changing the trajectory and scope of what it means to cook from scratch. 

Because, unless you’re gluten-free, the full spectrum of housemade dough will shape an entire menu, as it most certainly does here. Though, if bread and pasta serve as the cornerstone of the kitchen, they’re not the totality of the restaurant’s identity. 

Pistachio bostock with plum jam. Photography by Angel Tucker

As it turns out, the Oberlin paradox has little to do with where the restaurant is housed and everything to do with the tension on which Sukle’s cooking thrives. No longer is design and delivery the locus of his creative friction; rather, it’s the dishes themselves that provoke a perfectly tenuous balance. 

The menu begins with a variety of fish crudo ($12) — exceedingly minimalist as the fish is served with nothing more than good olive oil and coarse sea salt. Raw scallops ($12) are just slightly more dressed with sesame and cherry leaf mayonnaise. There’s always a whole roasted fish, as well — usually served with crispy slow-roasted potatoes from Wishing Stone Farm or roasted vegetables. And while these aquatic bookends may embody coastal Italy, everything in between is as bucolic as food gets — earthy, dense and layered with texture and herbs. So herein lies the dichotomy: The menu tethers between the extremes of hyperbolic clarity and determined complexity.

Take, for instance, the kitchen’s affection for mortadella. Not a simple meat to make — and yet it eats like innocence. One of the restaurant’s best iterations is a stew in which cubes of mortadella, made from organic pork sourced from Wild Harmony Farm, are warmed with cranberry beans, spigarello, dried tomatoes and bread ($16). It’s reminiscent of a ribollita — extraordinarily simple except for everything that goes into it, and a dish that grows more rewarding with each bite. 

Lasagna al forno. Photography by Angel Tucker

Pasta ($20-$38), which is at the center of the menu, operates in much the same way. Each plate tastes like improvisation though its components say otherwise. (The carbonara might be quick if the kitchen weren’t curing its own guanciale.) Sauces are often loaded with vegetables in supporting roles — sweet corn, leeks cooked to liquid, caramelized cabbage — as this is a culinary vision acutely drawn to ingredients overlooked by others. 

It’s worth noting that the menu is linguistically dense at times and it’s not unusual to hear diners directly asking for help or working through their etymological roots at the table. (“Colatura? Salmoriglio? Appena cotta? I seriously picked up nothing in junior year abroad,” moaned a woman barely past twenty.) But, if the ingredients remain cryptic, the plated dishes act as their own translators. Like a good satire, there’s plenty to examine if you’re willing to break out the spyglass and yet everything is also easy to eat if you’re willfully unobservant. 

As if dinner didn’t provide quite enough surface area for the artists working out of the new wood-burning oven, brunch was added last fall, offering an even more playful approach. “Masquerade hash browns” are a plate of fried spiral-cut potatoes with spicy tofu sauce, pickled beets, and — get this — two slices of plastic-wrapped American cheese ($12). The dish is either a kid dressed up in grown-up clothes or, more likely, a well-educated adult who thrives on the glee of childhood. Omit the cheese, and it’s vegan. Either way, it delivers, with both technique and humor. 

The interior of Oberlin. Photography by Angel Tucker

Same goes for the mortadella sandwich with grilled radicchio, local mozzarella, honey and colatura on Ligurian-style focaccia with sesame seeds ($14) that’s been baked to almost crouton consistency. It starts off hot and rife with fat, and then eventually Benjamin Buttons into the best bologna memories imaginable. The menu pivots like this often, sometimes leaning toward irreverent, and sometimes elevating eggs into the ozone. (Try them cooked in bean broth, which marries egg drop soup and the Italian countryside, $14.)

Maritozzo with sour cherry, vanilla whipped cream and candied lemon. Photography by Angel Tucker

No matter the meal, Oberlin will still indulge the community sweet tooth, not only with its well-known Basque cheesecake (which leans into savory these days with a drizzle of olive oil) but the occasional maritozzo cream-bomb, which moves between this kitchen and the adjacent Gift Horse. 

But as intricate as the cooking can get, Sukle seems intent on grounding himself and his regulars as the accolades pour in. He pushes praise away from his ownership and onto executive chef Chris Pfail and Bethany Caliaro, who holds the dual title of both co-owner and sommelier. Like the Oberlin of old, movies are still shown on the corner wall, and hoodies are welcomed as readily as heels. Seventies and eighties music is on the playlist and, as Devo’s “Whip It” played one weeknight, a regular pointed at his beer in a squat glass and laughed, “It’s not a big pour but it reminds me of a Hoodsie Cup from way back when — so I’m all in.”

Not an uncommon refrain at Oberlin where its owner’s primary goal is not in elevating the ordinary, but in making the elevated seem ordinary and accessible to all.

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OBERLIN

266 Westminster St., Providence, 588-8755, oberlinrestaurant.com

Open for dinner Thursday–Monday; brunch on Saturday and Sunday. 

Wheelchair accessible. Lot parking. 

CUISINE: Modern Italian. 

CAPACITY: Fifty-plus with ample additional seating on the patio. 

VIBE: A rebellious attitude toward its own greatness.

PRICES: Small plates: $12–$20; entrees: $20–$75; dessert: $8–$16. 

KAREN’S PICKS: Raw fish, pasta, anything with mortadella. All the bread.