Julian’s Celebrates Three Decades of Decadence

Since 1994, Julian’s has served as a bastion of quirky independence and great food on Providence’s West End.

It’s a gritty, funky spot where you can sit down to a glorious Benny at 2 in the afternoon while gazing at local art and making small talk with the servers and cooks, many of whom live in the neighborhood. And, of course, spy some of your old playthings — think Wonder Woman dolls, “Simpsons” Pez dispensers and Luke Skywalker action figures — in strategically placed collection cases in the restroom.

It’s open during snowstorms, feeding neighbors; it’s been bashed in by countless cars; it survived the pandemic. It’s watched as the forgotten neighborhood has grown into a full-blown arts and dining mecca, with lovingly preserved Victorian homes dotted throughout like candy-colored confections.

Julian’s, and its sister business, Pizza J, is thriving. The space is expanding, a new chef, Matt Martin, is on board, and it’s been celebrating its landmark anniversary all year with specials, a party, cool merch and a new beer — Pils To Meet You — from Moniker Brewery and Tributary Brewing Company.

We sat down with Brian Oakley, who co-owns the restaurant along with Randy Kass, to see if he could share some behind-the-scenes tales from the neighborhood icon. (Oakley has been there for twenty-two years and has. Seen. Some. Things.)

<Raises imaginary bloody mary glass> To our friends at Julian’s: Here’s to thirty more years of irreverence, community, awesome vegetarian fare and pop-culture geekdom. And hopefully, one day, an actual visit from the members of KISS.

I’m curious — where did the name come from?

My friend Julian Forgue founded the restaurant in ’94. He had been a professional paintball player. Charles Schulz — who created Peanuts — his son had a professional paintball team that traveled the world that Julian was on. He had opened a warehouse space where people could practice and play but decided to leave that and found a small space on Broadway that he opened up as a restaurant. It was just half of the [current] room at that time. Over time, he built up the other room. One day he just cut a hole in the wall and the staff had no idea what was happening.

I started in what I call the “Third Age” of the restaurant. I was hired to be a manager and they didn’t have any formal manager structure or anything like that — it was a little bit like the Wild West. Aside from the gas station, we were one of the only businesses with lights on Broadway after five o’clock at night. It was still a little rough back then — a lot of houses boarded up, stuff like that.

So the name’s based on Julian himself, who is now retired and residing in the Barrington area, I believe.

Please settle an issue for us grammar dorks: Does Julian’s take an apostrophe or no?

That is a great question. Because for a number of years, we ran all our advertising without an apostrophe and the running joke was, it’s a plural. We were like a little gang back then — it was a really tight unit of us working there. I also think Julian was proud of the spot but didn’t want to seem like that egotistical. He seemed to be shy and humble about that component.

So it doesn’t have an apostrophe?

Oh no, it has one.

Ah, that’s good to know. Thank you!

We have people who come in and think the name is J Star, or just J. [Editor’s note: The restaurant’s logo is a “J” inside a star.] We used to have a sign — probably about twenty-five years ago — but it fell on somebody’s car and we haven’t had one since.

So you were saying that Julian’s started off in one room. Is that where the entrance is now?

No. Oddly enough, it started in the room to the left of that. Back then, Julian was in a relationship with a woman named Jennifer. There was a sign that said “Jennifer’s” over one door and a sign that said “Julian’s” over another door. When they broke up, Fletcher, a cook at the time, walked up to work and saw Julian hanging on Jennifer’s sign trying to pull it out of the wall with his own weight.

Then the Station fire happened, and we had all sorts of things that had been grandfathered in that needed to be repaired. One of the things that made it extra confusing was that at some point in the ’40s, the owner had taken the first and second floor and stilted it, making it a three-story building, and the city had no record of that, or that there were four apartments inside. So no one was really sure how to direct us. We were closed for ten months trying to figure that out. It forced the kitchen to move about ten feet forward, which forced the bar to move about ten feet forward. So it’s a totally different layout now than it was in 2002–2003.

And that took ten months?

Yeah, it was pretty rough.

I also remember when someone plowed into the restaurant and you painted the Kool-Aid Man sign outside. When was that?

That was about seven or eight years ago. A woman who lived behind the building drove a pickup truck into that spot at two o’clock in the afternoon. And then about four or five years ago a police officer drove a cruiser into the same exact spot. And then we were in full COVID-world and we ordered all new windows and it took over two years for them to come in. We’re still waiting on the front panels, actually.

Holy cow.

So that’s why the Kool-Aid Man sign said, “Drive-through coming soon.” I thought it was funny — neighborhood people would get it but everybody thought we were really putting a drive-through inside.

I love all of the pop-culture references in the restaurant — the Pez dispensers and action figures in the bathroom, and all the cool tables and art hanging on the walls. There’s always something to look at. Has it always been that way?

Way back when I started, it was pretty much if you had an idea for something to do in the space we would talk about it and usually you could do what you wanted. We used to have a bar that was covered in record covers and CD covers. When we closed for the rebuilding, Julian built the big table in the front window and laid out all those covers. They’re all the CDs we were listening to during the demo and the rebuild. And the table in the corner with all the matchbook sets is actually Julian’s grandfather’s collection, I believe.

Basically, we and our friends did everything. The Star Wars collection in the bathroom was Julian’s and then one day at lunch, somebody stole it. We left it empty for a week and people were so upset that I replaced it with my childhood collection.

Me and my friend Sean built the display case for the Pez dispensers. We’ve added to it over time as we’ve found things, and sometimes customers donate things. The Megos in the bathroom were first — those are the Barbie doll-style Marvel/DC figures. A friend of ours donated a couple of those and I’ve added to the case over time. So it’s like the whole original set of those figures. We have plans to continue that trend: We’ve been dreaming about having a second bathroom for thirty years and we will finally have a second bathroom. The display cases are all planned out for that room.

Oooh, can I have a hint?

I don’t want to ruin it but there will more Megos, mostly ’70s- and ’80s-base characters, including Cher. I’ll say that. And including all members of KISS.

Are you a big KISS fan? If not, who’s the big KISS fan there?

I would say that Julian probably likes KISS. For many years I worked with a good friend, Josh Kemp, who was our dedicated graphic-design and various-tasks person. We’re both big KISS fans and we’d go see them in concert.

The people who used to own Monster Mini Golf and moved to Vegas to open up the KISS Mini Golf still visit periodically and are really friendly with the guys in KISS. One day, the KISS tour bus pulled up out front and we thought it was going to be Gene Simmons giving us a cease and desist because we had KISS dessert menus at the time. Then the Monster Mini Golf people walked out and said, “They’re playing in Boston tonight, so they let us take the bus down to see you guys.”

That’s amazing.

They let us go in the bus and check it out. It was really KISS everything — KISS pillows, everything. It was amazing how branded everything on the bus was.

I remember the KISS dessert menu! You know, I also wanted to ask about the food at Julian’s. I’m a vegetarian, and back in the ’90s — besides ethnic restaurants — Julian’s and the Garden Grille were some of the only places you could get really good vegetarian items. Was that Julian’s idea? And why have you kept the vegetarian-friendly menu throughout the years?

I think when you’re a chef, your customers and your service team are your best barometers of what people are excited about. I don’t think it was an intentional decision to make vegetarian food. It was more that we had a lot of team members — myself included — at that time that either ate vegetarian or vegan and so our cooks would try to make stuff that we were excited about.

I think for some of the cooks, it might have been a little challenging, but then we had other cooks like Jamez Day. He was so quiet and stoic; he just wanted to feed people. I learned so much from him and he really excelled in that style of cooking. It kind of became, “All right, this is just part of what we do now.” And in this day and age, you have to accept that’s part of the cuisine you have to have in any restaurant, you know? No one wants to go to a restaurant and get just roasted vegetables as their entree.

You mentioned earlier that when you first started, the West End was a little grittier back then. How have you seen the neighborhood change over the past twenty years?

When I moved here in ’97 I lived on Dexter Street, right across from the armory. My friends were all kind of nervous to come to my house. But I was twenty-two — nothing fazed me.

When I started at the restaurant, it already gotten a little nicer. But there was a parking lot across the street that was really overgrown with hedges, so one day me and this fella Michael Iannotti, who was a chef at the time with us, and Julian all went over and cut all the hedges back. People were holding dog fights in the lot, so we cut all the hedges back so you could see inside it.

At the time, the whole neighborhood was a little bit forgotten. We even ran a commercial on BRU that was like, “Don’t be afraid to travel — go through the valley of downtown!”

Anyway, we all got really bad poison sumac from doing that. And we got our prescriptions at the pharmacy nearby. A bunch of older gentlemen ran it, and they were always really nice, but they actually gave us all of our prescriptions for free and thanked us for what we had done next door.

It’s funny. I was thinking about this the other day. Like twenty-something years ago, I knew the two dogs that lived in the neighborhood. Now there’s like 200 dogs. It’s more densely populated than even ten years ago. I think that’s a good thing. It used to be people were afraid to walk down the street after dark. We had a handful of people that were jumped on Broadway that would see that I was open and would come in and wait for the cops with me.

We had a fistfight about four times a year in the evening at the restaurant back then. We had one fistfight during Mother’s Day brunch — that’s the only time we had one in the daytime.

But you know, it’s really nice to see the city grow and change and bloom and to be a part of that. I live just a few blocks from Westminster and I can walk to work if I want. Sometimes I just walk the dogs over there and say hi and get a coffee. I love this neighborhood.

So the city has changed and the neighborhood has changed. Do you think Julian’s has changed as well?

When Nicks [on Broadway] opened, we were like, what’s this other breakfast restaurant that’s opening up? But we have a great relationship with that team. Derek and I talk periodically and he definitely helped bring more people into this neighborhood. He was part of a surge of businesses that brought life to the street. We were a little lonely, so that was good.

I would say that we’ve been forced to change a little bit to meet the needs of what is coming through the door. I mean, we used to shuck shrimp to order — that was insane. What were we thinking? Summer used to be the deadest time of the year for us. I used to play basketball in the backyard behind us and if someone was sitting at the bar, I would look in and ask, “Do you want another beer?”

Now summer’s our busiest time of the year. And we’re located in such a great spot. You have the Superman building right on the horizon, you’ve got the sunset in the other direction, and it’s the perfect spot to see a rainbow. It’s kind of at the center of the universe, really.

I was really fortunate to meet Julian when I did, and for him to allow me to participate in what was happening in that building, and to meet all the people that I spent so much time with and worked with so closely in the past twenty-two-and-a-half years. The people are really what make that place, and it’s a very special place to me.

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

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