Dining Review: Pescadou in Newport

The century-old Hotel Viking gets a creative culinary update inspired by fine dining on the French Riviera.

2 hours ago

Karen Deutsch,

Summer beans with Banyuls vinaigrette, comte and pine nuts. Photography by Angel Tucker

The Hotel Viking has long been Newport’s stately matron — not on the water, but sitting like a compass at the center of town in East Egg fashion. Now in its centennial year, the brick Colonial Revival building still pays homage to the age of Vanderbilt and Morgan, with plush fabrics, cool marble and an air of opulence that settles into every corner.

Housemade fazoletti with crab and pesto stracciatella. Photography by Angel Tucker

So it might have struck some as a surprise that the hotel enlisted Littleneck Hospitality Group to redo its main dining room, Pescadou, and the hotel’s other food and beverage concepts, including the rooftop bar Cap Club, the coffee and snack bar Tuck Shop, and the lobby bar, Skoal Room.

Littleneck is headed up by Robert Andreozzi and Jesse Hedberg, whose restaurants in Providence — Pizza Marvin, Club Frills, Rollers — ooze retro kitsch, thriving on informality. Food and drinks evoke elevated versions of all sorts of things — your teenage years, 1980s and ’90s vibes, summer street fairs, fraternity parties — but they’d not yet tackled country club culture. Until now.

The Hotel Viking’s new restaurant, Pescadou, is rooted in French coastal culture, rife with seafood and a dose of North African influence extending from Marseille all the way to Italy. The space itself is decidedly
feminine and nature bound. Pink and grassy-greens dominate, framed by romantic, tree-lined murals, smoky mirrors and a wooden floor in a kaleidoscope pattern.

At the culinary helm of this vision is chef Will Rietzel, who spent time at both Giusto and Ocean House’s Coast, both restaurants, like Pescadou, that split their time between locals and a hefty tourist crowd.

It is hard to separate the restaurant itself from the buzz of hotel life, particularly in the evenings. The host stand is in the lobby proper and you enter the dining room by walking through a sleek and lively bar packed with patrons. Beyond the Palm Beach-hued Pescadou sits an overflow dining room, and all of these rooms are joined by an open corridor.

Subsequently, while the decor reads gracious and intimate, the evening din is notable. The mood of the space never gets lost — as evidenced by a lanky influencer moving languidly around the room to pose in front of every dreamy backdrop — but the frenetic hotel vibe does occasionally infringe on it.

Chicken tagine with Tunisian chickpeas. Photography by Angel Tucker

It’s entirely possible that the Littleneck group knew this space was never going to be sedate and did what they do best, which is simply to craft a theme for the party. In this case, it’s “resort town,” which comes with everything you’d need to give up your day job for an evening of escapism. The drinks are aperitif-driven and sometimes tropical, often with a base of rum or brandy. They run the gamut from circus-like (a French 75 served martini-style with a frothy foam hat) to classically sedate (the deconstructed Ti Punch has drinkers mix their own rum and cane sugar syrup), but nearly every cocktail comes out with a blazing ABV. If you’re drinking more for looks than a brain purge, add a spirit to the juicy mocktails which will put you as close to a beach bar as possible.

If the bar program is a slice of the Riviera, the menu reaches wider, both in scope and form. There are several raw bar dishes, all of which are refined and often subtle. Raw scallops are served with Meyer lemon and espelette, while littlenecks get a mild punch from green strawberries.

There are quite a few appetizers that eat like elegant bar food: that is, they’re bite-size and fried. They’re also very good. Short rib croquettes with spicy pepper sauce are barely fried, somewhat similar to meatballs. Calamari is tempura-fried with vegetables and served with a saffron aioli: a version of a Rhode Island staple that’s floatingly light and refined. But the best small plate may be barbajuans, the national dish of Monaco. It’s technically a fritter, but more closely resembles a ravioli or, if you’re speaking Club Frills vernacular, a Totino’s pizza roll. Stuffed with Swiss chard and ricotta, they arrive unadorned and, as it turns out, need nothing more because they manage to hit every right note. (They come six to an order — do not share them with more than one other person.)

Entrees fall into two groups: meat and pasta. Somewhat unexpectedly, the meat dishes have more panache — though the pasta is made in house and the pappardelle with ground lamb merguez is a thoroughly lovely dish. It’s these larger plates, however, that make a definitive mark. Steak is modernized by a side of herby chickpea fries and peppercorn aioli, while chicken tagine is deeply soulful and, with its fragrant flavors, feels right at home in this picturesque room.

The interior of Pescadou. Photography by Angel Tucker

The signature dish at Pescadou is bouillabaisse, and aptly so. It’s advertised as a portion for two but the kitchen will oblige if you’re solo. You might expect a cozy bowl of seafood stew — or a collection of assorted shellfish — but that is not what’s happening here in this high-brow version. It’s a plate of sea jewels — halibut, swordfish, lobster — that arrive unadorned until a server drizzles the tomato-based broth on top of the fish and coin-sized potatoes. More a sauce than a soup, it’s intensely rich and, while its pristine presentation may look like a page out of the Vanderbilt life, it also manages to be both comforting and downright delicious.

There is a curious transition between dinner and dessert, though. Until this point, drinks and food are equally aware of image and taste. Desserts are decidedly less formal and, given that this is the final bite of what can be a sparkling meal, one wishes
that some formality might stay intact. On the page, everything is traditionally French: croustillant au citron, chocolate bunet, tarte Tropézienne.

But the dishes are very pudding and cream heavy, with shards of tuile or moistened cake. It’s almost impossible to think of a French dessert — especially one in St. Tropez — without dreaming of a proper pastry and the dining room itself, so exuberantly coiffed and manicured, deserves a proper tart or brioche that belongs to the same aesthetic. It is, after all, part of the reason that a party in Newport manages a vibe like nothing else.

Bouillabaisse. Photography by Angel Tucker
A raw bar platter featuring oysters with rose granita, littlenecks with green strawberry and fennel, raw scallops, mussels, razor clams and black bass crudo. Photography by Angel Tucker
Tomato carpaccio is served with burnt honey, sherry and bonito furikake. Photography by Angel Tucker