Inside Hangry Kitchen in Pawtucket

Courtesy of Hangry Kitchen

Stacy Deetz and her husband Rob recently opened Hangry Kitchen in Pawtucket, with a creative menu that changes often. Courtesy of Hangry Kitchen

The first thing you notice when walking into Hangry Kitchen, one of Pawtucket’s newest eateries, is the decor: Jewel-toned vintage glasses peek out from the bar, purple and orange seats frame the dining room, and vivid dried blooms serve as centerpieces on the cozy tables. The second thing you notice is the hospitality, with servers happily recommending dishes, and owner Stacy Deetz’s husband, Rob, nonchalantly mentioning how he dreamt up the chicken pot pie johnnycakes. Lording over it all are two life-size collages of Julia Child and Anthony Bourdain, Deetz’s culinary heroes. “I had just started cooking professionally when [Bourdain’s] Kitchen Confidential came out,” she says. “As a five-foot-nothing, ninety-pound woman in a kitchen when there weren’t many women in the kitchen, the book really spoke to me and let me know I wasn’t alone.” The Johnson & Wales graduate, a contestant on season twelve of Bravo’s “Top Chef,” has been working in kitchens for more than twenty years, most recently in the Boston area, where she met her executive chef, David Squires, and sous chef, Chelsey Rodriguez. They’ve been a team for nearly a decade, and their playfulness and creativity shine through the menu. “We very much play with our food,” Deetz says. That much is evident in imaginative small and larger dishes like the aforementioned johnnycakes, loaded baked potato beignets and squash-and-bacon dumplings with miso butterscotch and a burnt orange drizzle. There’s no walk-in fridge, so everything is made fresh daily and the menu changes often. It’s been quite a ride for the couple, who moved from Virginia to Providence in April 2023 and opened the restaurant a scant seven months later. They want their eatery to become a neighborhood destination, much like the space’s long-ago tenant, the formidable Korb’s Bakery. “We want this to be a place for community,” Deetz says. “We want people to feel like they just had a really fun dinner at a friend’s house.” 542 Pawtucket Ave., Pawtucket, 424-5812, hangry-kitchen.com