Dining Review: Pickerel in Providence

The intimate ramen shop that took over the former north and Big King spot measures up to its culinary kingpin predecessors.

September 29, 2023

Karen Deutsch,

Flying Fish tsukemen ramen with pork chashu. Photography by Angel Tucker

The small space at 3 Luongo Square has long been an incubator of culinary ideas, and occasionally a hot spot of creative madness. For more than ten years, it had been under the direction of James Mark, who opened north in the twenty-seater and then Big King. Both restaurants were notoriously tough to categorize, which was — if such a thing exists — Mark’s signature.

In that vein, Pickerel has some resemblance to its predecessors. Owners Spencer Smith and Scott LaChapelle have an almost myopic fixation with liquids, though the former works with cocktails while the latter runs a ramen apothecary in their unassuming kitchen. Beyond that central theme, however, Pickerel maintains some of the offbeat, upended unpredictability that this minute restaurant has always manifested.

Cabbage Caesar salad. Photography by Angel Tucker

There’s a single booth and a couple of two-tops at Pickerel, all of which flank the wooden bar. The aesthetic falls between Japanese and Scandinavian: minimalist and clean, with the occasional plant breathing oxygen into a space that has as many people queuing up at the door as it does eating. On paper, the menu looks equally restrained: two cocktails, a quartet of wines, three apps and a trio of ramen offerings. So very simple. Except that none of it is.

Drinks are flamboyantly peculiar, an amalgam of unlikely ingredients that form a strikingly cohesive whole. The barley daiquiri is anything but fruity: Mellowed by roasted barley Demerara sugar, the rum fades to the background, replaced by malted, savory notes that redefine the drink. On the flip side, the mirin spritz — alarmingly described as a mixture of rice vodka, mirin, beer and lemon — is so delicate and light as to defy the properties of alcohol altogether. It turns out that this is the thin space where Smith and LaChapelle meet: in a balancing act that creates whole harmonies out of the most disparate parts.

Gluten-free carrot blondie with corn ice cream. Photography by Angel Tucker

Pickerel isn’t interested in shock value per se; it’s a kitchen that falls hard for random ingredients and can’t rest until each one finds a partnership that will hit perfect pitch. Example: In spring, stalks of soy-glazed asparagus are charred to near-oblivion and served with whipped tofu and mackerel salt. It’s the manifestation of fire, an interplay of aggressiveness and grace that makes diners think Pickerel would do wonders as a vegetarian restaurant. The same holds true for LaChapelle’s house salad, which arrives like a snow-capped mountain, completely monochromatic and dynamic. It’s a cabbage-based Caesar salad, tart with yuzu instead of lemon, and fully covered in fluffy Parmesan. Does cheese belong in a ramen bar? Apparently.

But if it seems like a divergence from Pickerel’s homage to the Far East, there’s always the menma rice. It’s arguably the most poetic of the small plates: unabashed in its articulation of tradition and humble in its execution. It’s a pickled dish that’s sharp but fragrant with sesame, a perfect foil for the sweet Koshihikari rice. Bamboo shoots make an appearance more than once on the menu but giving them the spotlight is a tell as far as the kitchen’s philosophy. There’s a modesty in these dishes that makes the end product more impressive, a combination of ingredients that is so singularly unassuming that the composed dish is all the more miraculous.

Carpenter Street Ramen with pork and dashi broth. Photography by Angel Tucker

Nowhere is this more evident than in the ramen, which is as interpretative as it is traditional. Noodles are thin at Pickerel, which puts more attention on the broth, each version of which is markedly defined. The spicy sesame is bright orange with chili oil, ground pork and a tangle of chrysanthemum greens. The heat comes up front but there’s so much flavor that settles into the background that it’s hard to think of any way to improve the balance. It’s the most integrated of the bowls and, despite its opposing textures, each spoonful is a compilation of building blocks.

The negi shoyu and “Carpenter Street” versions, though, are ambitious in their own right. Both are chicken-based, though the negi shoyu is richer and almost beef-like in its flavor, offset by raw scallions and slices of pork. Carpenter Street, however, is a bowl that would bring anyone home. The broth is dotted with little pools of fat drawn from pork belly, the marriage of which creates a soup that sits in some borderland between umami and sweet. Ramen, of course, has countless groupies who live for the adventure of exploring its elements and Pickerel’s bowls are an epic culinary odyssey. The only way they’d be better is if the kitchen offered a flight of broth to save diners the torture of choosing from a nightly trio.

The bar at Pickerel. Photography by Angel Tucker

But, if the exercise of eating here is intense, pastry chef Millie Joslyn — who hails from Big King — ends the meal with flourishes of whimsy. There are warm cookies and clafoutis, though her work is usually centered on ice cream, combining everything from matcha and strawberry to cocoa and shiitake. She’ll test the limits of almost any pairing, but never strays too far from a kid’s imagination. Malted miso ice cream, wedged between bananas with maraschino cherries, is a sweet and savory circus, festooned with bitter coffee caramel — a fitting end to any meal that thrives on the unexpected.

One has to think this small space has some sort of spirit, a persistent quirkiness that will only allow kismet souls to exist in its walls. The footprint is diminutive but those who manage it continue to insist that personality is a product of idiosyncratic choices. Like the original north, wine at Pickerel still shows up in plastic cafeteria cups — this time because Smith’s priority is not in formality but in telling you to watch out for “baby bubbles” in the Portuguese white or that the South African red is “chewy with a little bit of wood.”

And even if you order everything on the menu twice, the laid-back servers will simply nod and tell you it’s “cool.” No doubt the neighborhood has come to expect great things from the West End’s smallest restaurant and Pickerel is all about making it happen, once again.