The Hotel Viking Unveils Four New Food and Beverage Concepts

The team behind Littleneck Hospitality will open Skoal Room, Pescadou, Tuck Shop and Cap Club before Memorial Day weekend.

5 hours ago

Jamie Coelho,

The outside of the Hotel Viking is near completion of its renovation. Photo by Jamie Coelho.

Two local restaurateurs are opening four new food and beverage concepts all under one roof, all around the same time. The powerhouse team of Robert Andreozzi and Jesse Hedberg, co-owners of Pizza Marvin and Club Frills, have come together to form Littleneck Hospitality Group for the development of the new restaurant and bar concepts, coming soon to The Hotel Viking in Newport.

The Providence-based restaurant group is run by Andreozzi, who is a two-time James Beard Award nominee for Best Chef: Northeast in 2023 and 2025, and Jesse Hedberg, a 2026 James Beard Semifinalist for Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service.

An original letter box at the Hotel Viking.
Original photographs are displayed at The Hotel Viking.
Slim Aarons Mid-Century Modern print.
The finishing touches are put on Tuck Shop.

The color palette, patterns and textures of the hotel’s update evolve from room to room on the first floor, while keeping historical details, like an original letter box, architectural elements and photography from the hotel’s Gilded Age heyday, in tact. The historic hotel is also celebrating its one hundredth birthday this year. It closed for renovations in November of last year and plans to reopen in early May, with all concepts running by Memorial Day weekend.

Design was executed by a talented team, including Los Angeles-based Christian Schnyder of Beleco with exterior and interior painting by Golden Edge Painting. More to come on the design in a follow-up article, but for now we’re concentrating on the hospitality concepts.

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A sneak peek at the interior design of Pescadou.

The 200-room hotel plans to kick off the relaunch by opening its classic bar, Skoal Room, an homage to the hotel’s original bar, first. Featuring dark seafoam green-painted walls and masculine detailing, this is the place for pull up for a terrific martini. Coming next will be Pescadou, a Rhode Island-sourced, French Riviera-inspired seafood restaurant with chef William Rietzel in charge of the kitchen team. Rietzel’s previous experience at the Ocean House earned him a James Beard Semifinalist nomination for Best Chef: Northeast in 2022. He most recently served as executive chef at Newport’s Giusto, before temporarily venturing into private catering.

The hotel is also opening a preppy coffee bar called Tuck Shop, serving coffee drinks alongside pastries and treats from Seven Stars Bakery. Then head up to the rooftop that overlooks Newport Harbor and the Newport Bridge at Cap Club. The rooftop bar will have a ‘90s America’s Cup vibe complete with retro-style loungers, nautical nods and a Caribbean rum bar atmosphere with tropical-hued umbrellas and daiquiris and coladas on the menu .

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Skoal Room.

Andreozzi led a preview tour of the space to describe the different concepts. “This is Skoal, like the dip,” he says, while heading into the main lobby which leads to the hotel’s main bar. Skoal is derived from a Viking word for “toast.” “This is Jesse’s playground for what will be a classic hotel bar. We want to make classic cocktails, but have fun with it. It won’t have the smoke and mirrors that [Club] Frills has, it’s more grounded in technique; think beautiful martini pours, pigs in a blanket and club sandwiches.”

There are whimsical and nautical touches throughout the seafoam-inspired Shermin Williams “Rock Bottom”-painted walls and checkerboard-floored space, including a mural relief by Michael Ezzell, and octopus and fish illustrations hidden inside the wallpaper patterns.

Tuck Shop is like a Ralph Lauren/ J. Press ad campaign with preppy sporting equipment, varsity letters and a St. George’s School yearbook and other Ivy League memorabilia displayed on its Rockwood Red-painted walls.

Next door, the hotel’s main restaurant, Pescadou, features pinks and greens inspired by the Slim Aarons Mid-Century Modern colorful beachy photography prints on its walls. “My spirit animal for this space was Slim Aarons. His ‘60s–‘70s photographs in the Riviera,” Andreozzi says. “I kept on beating that drum for the design, and then I found that he did a gallery of his work in Newport.” As for the food, “Pescadou is going to be all about seafood, good olive oil and the South of France, with a lot of raw bar and pasta options.”

“Everything that we can do to highlight Rhode Island and surrounding waters will be the focus,” Rietzel adds.

Rietzel is excited to unveil his new menu soon, featuring seafood sourced from Narragansett Bay Lobsters and Portland-based purveyors. “I have a lot of respect for what Rob and Jesse have done, and really appreciate what they bring to the table,” he says. “So I just want to continue that and elevate the dining scene here in Newport, Rhode Island, and New England as a whole.”