Dining Review: Olneyville New York System and Wally’s Wieners

Heritage Restaurant Group took over two of Providence's most iconic restaurant locations. Now that the changeovers have taken place, what's our food critic's verdict?

5 hours ago

Karen Deutsch,

General Manager Nicholas Barros serves fries at the Olneyville New York System counter. Photography by Angel Tucker

Olneyville New York System

It’s curious that one of rhode island’s oldest food joints — wedged between an Olneyville gas station and a McDonald’s — goes by New York System. At nearly seventy-three years old, the hot wiener depot may have been named for the first stop in the Stavrianakos — shortened to Stevens — family’s immigration from Greece to Brooklyn, but a little meat sauce, onions and celery salt has made it a Rhode Island staple.

A wiener sandwich served with coffee milk and fries. Photography by Angel Tucker

Heritage Restaurant Group took over the Providence original and its secondary Cranston location last year, but it appears that even they know that there are certain cultural landmarks you try not to alter. Accordingly, the space remains exactly the same: a black-and-white photo mural of Brooklyn on the back wall, Day-Glo orange and yellow Formica booths floating like islands on the floor, and a largely male crowd that sits on counter stools like they’re at their favorite bar, coffee milks in hand in Providence (and beers in Cranston).

The difference, of course, is that this is an operation that runs on familiarity and wieners rather than the gauzy memories shaped by daytime drinking. These days, you can ship a dozen Olneyville New York System wieners — a combination of beef, pork and veal complete with proprietary meat sauce, a container of crisp, diced onions, a bottle of mustard and celery salt with buns — across the country, but it doesn’t fully capture the throwback, luncheonette feel of a more than seventy-year-old building. Once open twenty-four hours a day until 1968, the Providence location still hums well past midnight, though the crowd often shifts from locals to college students and night workers once the clock moves toward 2 and 3 a.m. on weekends.

Barros prepares an armful of classic wieners served all the way. Photography by Angel Tucker

Signs on the wall still sport a mid-century sense of humor (“prices vary according to the attitude of the customer” and “buy one wiener for the price of two and receive the second free!”) and the staff keeps the pitch at a Jimmy Stewart level of optimism and care. The daytime manager will tell you he’s been here twenty-six years (since he was nineteen) and that he still speaks to Greg Stevens almost every day. (“He deserves the vacation.”) It’s the combination of conviviality and low prices that keep people coming back, a living testament to the kinder, gentler America that, nowadays, we know only by reputation.

Hot wieners still sit at assembly-line

attention up someone’s arm (only now with wax paper “protection”), but they still cost less than four bucks a piece, and a grilled cheese — aka a “mouse trap” with two slices of cheese! — is less than five. You can even play time warp by ordering lettuce and tomato on white bread for a dollar twenty. Sure, there are sandwiches that creep up toward ten dollars, but that’s a splurge not always worth taking.

Hot wiener fries. Photography by Angel Tucker

Heritage can always consider elevating the aesthetic, but putting money in means you have to make it back — and in a place that’s defined by its ability to manifest a bygone era (with some modern grittiness), that plan comes with consequences. The question is whether you can bring a $4 lunch into the twenty-first century without endangering its core identity. And who would want that anyway?

18 Plainfield St., Providence, 621-9500; 1012 Reservoir Ave., Cranston, 437-8248, olneyvillenewyorksystem.com

Open for lunch and dinner seven days a week; Providence location open at 8 a.m. for breakfast and for late night.

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Wally’s Wieners

The neon sign from the Old Canteen restaurant is displayed on the bar’s wall.
Photography by Angel Tucker

Much of the controversy surrounding Heritage’s numerous restaurant acquisitions can be distilled into the purchase of 120 Atwells Ave., or what used to be Joe Marzilli’s Old Canteen. It’s long been the gateway to Providence’s iconic Italian food district. Stately and colonial in style, it marked the entrance into old world cuisine. Old Canteen lasted nearly seventy years and was, in some sense, a throwback to itself — or at least to an era when people dressed for dinner and had their own familial immigration stories at the ready as they sifted through a menu of Parms and Scarpariellos.

The building is laid out like a house with a steep-staired doorway and several dimly lit rooms that embody the experience of home cooking. So the shift to Wally’s Wieners — culturally, aesthetically and gastronomically — is unnerving. One could have expected the populus uproar given that the first restaurant on Federal Hill is now fully American, replete with fast food and copious amounts of candy-colored liquor.

And while the back bar and vintage dining room remain untouched — full of heavy wood and generations-old secrets — it’s the turquoise and flamingo pink entry that manifests the current mood. There are framed dog pictures on the walls, a photo of Betty White scarfing down a hot dog and some puppy wallpaper to make the point overt. This is where Wally’s lives: in the space between retro family food and furtive innuendo (evidenced by the company sweatshirts which occasionally need editing to hit a PG rating).

the Sloppy Giuseppe served with a Guava Lava cocktail. Photography by Angel Tucker

The menu follows the same path, with food friendly enough for kids, and cocktails that will put a veteran drinker in traction. Cocktails and espresso martinis are a big highlight, including drinks served in novelty vessels, like a 112-ounce martini glass or a dog bowl. They contain everything from peanut butter whiskey and Smirnoff salted caramel to cake batter syrup and sprinkles. There’s beer on tap, too, if you plan on getting up the next day.

The food, however, is straight down the line. The holy trinity of quick meals — hamburgers, hot dogs, fried chicken — is the centerpiece of the menu although there are almost limitless variations on the originals. But whatever you add (kimchi, bacon jam, corn relish, grilled pineapple), no one will come back if the basic isn’t good.

And love or hate the idea of wieners as the Atwells Welcome Wagon, they do taste good. Good enough that you’ll spend time considering whether you could contend with a $40 to $45 tower of five hot dogs or four smash burgers. If you’re forever old-school, then be aware that there are a handful of Atwells-only dishes, including a modern-day Sloppy Joe called the Sloppy Giuseppe made with Bolognese and Parmesan and Pecorino fondue.

In the end, there’s not a lot of upside to carrying the mental anguish of what was: It’s easier to accept the changing of the guard rather than think you’ll replace what used to be. Part of the reason Heritage has been able to take on so many of the culinary stalwarts around the state is because family-run restaurants often exhaust the family. To meet and greet every neighbor is a labor of love that doesn’t always come with a reasonable standard of living. Throw in rising real estate prices and ever-increasing taxes, and the choice to sell becomes somewhat understandable. But the building still stands at the crossroads of Providence’s own Little Italy and, if your Italian soul occasionally longs for an IPA and some special sauce on an all-beef patty (or three), you can make it your first stop.