Gift Horse Opens as a Seafood Comfort Food Restaurant with South Korean Influences
The restaurant is a collaboration between restaurant partners Benjamin Sukle and Bethany Caliaro, and team members chef Sky Kim and beverage director Rachel Stone.
Gift Horse’s dining room.
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Instead, open wide and welcome its offerings.
Chef Ben Sukle’s latest restaurant venture, Gift Horse, is literally a “raw bar bar,” serving a seafood comfort food menu with South Korean influences. The intimate, soon-to-be hot spot with mostly counter seating and several tables is located across the way from sister restaurant Oberlin at 272 Westminster St. in Providence. It’s holding its grand opening tonight, with a happy hour from 4 to 5 p.m. with half-price oysters and drink specials, then the regular menu will be served from 5-11 p.m.
Oyster varieties come from the nine different growing regions of the leased aquaculture sites in Rhode Island. Gift Horse plans to represent oyster farms from each of these locations so guests can compare and contrast the merroirs of the shellfish. Some of the featured farms include East Beach Blondes from Ninigret Pond in Charlestown; Great Salt Pond Oysters from Block Island; Moonstone Oysters from Point Judith; Newport Cups from East Passage; Portsmouth Salts from the Sakonnet River; Quonnie Sirens from Quonochontaug Pond; Watch Hill Oysters from Winnapaug Pond; and West Passage Oysters from Narragansett Bay.
Even though many of the farms are relatively close in proximity, they all taste different. “Within one region, there are oysters that are grown top water, and there are ones that grow along the bottom,” Sukle says. “It’s like tasting a new spirit or sake; there are such subtleties that until you experience them side by side, only then do the nuances seem so loud. If you taste six different kinds of oysters and they are all from Rhode Island, you are going to tell the difference, even if they are all from this little area. Sizes are different, growing styles are different. What’s in the water is different.”
Start a Gift Horse experience off with the raw bar offerings and maybe splurge with doughboys and caviar. The boujee dish is Gift Horse’s Rhode Island play off of caviar and blinis, but with a potato-based doughboy flip.
It’s not all naked local seafood, however. The dishes with a South Korean influence were developed by Gift Horse’s chef, Sky Kim. “I cannot stress enough how much she is one of my most favorite chefs I have ever known,” Sukle says, adding that they first worked together at birch and stayed in touch for this project. “She’s doing foods she grew up with, whether it’s her banchun she’s making for the ssam to really simple saucework and pickles. There is an incredible pantry of flavors that I am learning about through her.”
The dining room.
Kim’s banchun dishes go with a ssam spread of lettuce wraps served with crispy skate wing, rice and spicy peanut sauce meant to be stuffed into the snugly-wrapped crisp greens and shared amongst a group. The seafood pancake with charred pole beans and housemade gochujang is a another dish of her creation, as are most of the sauces that can be ordered as sides to dip into any dish.
Crispy skate wing ssam.
Sukle brought in some of his own renditions, including the monkfish toast which is a play off of shrimp toast with a monkfish mousse swirled on top of their housemade bread and served with piri piri sauce. A favorite example of Gift Horse’s seafood comfort food is the shellfish casserole with creamed bittered greens and breadcrumbs. “It’s a gussied up version of spinach artichoke dip. It’s all local greens that we cook down and serve with a chowder base, using oysters, mussels and clams,” Sukle says. “That all gets mixed together with breadcrumbs and the sourdough bread that we make.”
For this restaurant venture, Sukle includes staff as ownership in the business. Longtime Oberlin general manager (and fellow Johnson and Wales alum) Bethany Caliaro, was made a partner in the restaurant, and as general manager, plays an active role in all decision making. Bar Manager Rachel Stone and assistant bar manager Ben Beirne are handling the liquid division by incorporating seasonality into the cocktails. Cherry blossoms were locally sourced for a housemade Cherry Blossom Genever that is mixed into the Dutch Courage cocktail with Amontillado sherry and dry Curacao, and sea lettuce was harvested for the Reef Keeper, which also includes Industrious Spirit Company’s Ornamental Gin and lime. Gift Horse even has its own beer collaboration with Proclamation Ale. The beer is called Capisce and it’s inspired by the Italian Peroni pilsner.
There’s a fun story behind the name, too. “On the day we went to meet with Proclamation Ale, all the kids were coming out of the Roger Williams nursery and the teacher was at her wits end with the group,” Sukle recounts. “She centered everybody, she is giving them directions, and she’s like ‘Okay, Capisce?’ And all the kids yelled out ‘Capisce!’ It was the cutest thing I have ever seen.”
Custom-made speakers by Jackson Morley.
As for the restaurant design, HB Design collaborated with Sukle and team to create a dining room the reflects on their favorite things spanning multiple decades. The white pine-paneled walls and bar represent Sukle’s favorite knotty pine-influenced dining rooms at Twin Oaks and the Big Cheese to many a parents’ basement. There is a beautiful stained glass display above the bar that incorporates the Gift Horse logo, which was built by HB Design from artist Aaron Demuth’s interpretation of the Gift Horse.
The inspiration for the Gift Horse itself comes from the ‘70s style of one of Sukle’s favorite spots in Rome. Before birch became birch, it was nearly called Gift Horse. It would have been an oyster bar partnership between former Red Fez owners Ed Reposa and Sara Kilguss and Sukle. “We were going to turn birch into a different restaurant and it was going to become an oyster bar,” Sukle says. “Ed was going to have his Portuguese influence weigh heavily on it. Way back when, we decided on the name Gift Horse, because it’s the tongue-in-cheek way of saying don’t question us.”
In the end, Sukle opened his own version of Gift Horse, years later. Though they are all still friends, the couple is not involved, but the nostalgia for the original idea remains.
Thrifted artwork at Gift Horse.
Local artwork is a major draw for the dining room. Four major pieces stand out; two “moments” designed by Jungil Hong, a quirky illuminated wall feature comprised of posters that are cut out and displayed like an optical illusion and another piece of fiber art in the entryway. They also thrifted a hanging piece that looks like iridescent fishbone fossils. There’s a colorful painting by Brian Chippendale, as well as another piece of hanging artwork by Aaron Demuth. Jackson Morley custom-made retrofitted speakers to play music. “We didn’t want to do anything that looked trendy but at the same time we wanted stuff we love from different generations,” Sukle says.
Artwork by Aaron Demuth.
Even the bright, geometric wallpapers in two of the bathrooms are designed, painted and printed by the artist who created the Gift Horse logo, Aaron Demuth. And Sukle’s sister, Julianna Sukle Graver, helped to tie in printed graphic design on everything from the logos and menus to business cards.
Wallpaper designed by Aaron Demuth.
While Gift Horse is now open, Sukle says the team is only halfway done. Next comes the Oberlin move. They plan to keep Oberlin open until late August then slowly move across the way for the fall. “We’re trying like hell,” he says.
272 Westminster St., Providence, 401-383-3813, gifthorsepvd.com
Open Thursday to Monday; Closed Tuesday and Wednesday; doors at 4 p.m. Seating is first-come, first served, reservations available for parties of six or more.
