The 73 Best Places in Providence

Shuckers at the horseshoe bar crack open oysters from a dozen Rhode Island spots, and you dress them yourself with kimchi mignonette or fermented green-chile hot sauce. Gift Horse is a Korean-inflected New England seafood restaurant, the kind of place that slides littlenecks under crisp kimchi and broils butterfish in sweet-potato miso. The chef won a James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northeast in 2025, and the New York Times named two dishes among the best they ate all year.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. James Beard Awards 2025 · Winner · Best Chef: Northeast · Sky Haneul Kim
3. USA Today Restaurants of the Year

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
2. AAA Five Diamonds
3. Wine Enthusiast Forward 50 Restaurants

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
2. AAA Five Diamonds
3. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · William Rietzel

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star

1. AAA Five Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star

Oberlin is a downtown Providence restaurant where locals take their New York friends to prove the city can be chic and still feed you well. The seafood plates rotate, the staff will talk you through the vermouth list without making you feel like a tourist, and the salt cod brandade arrives with grilled country bread. It's a James Beard Outstanding Restaurant nominee, and the raw bar next door handles the wait.

1. James Beard Awards 2025 · Nominee · Outstanding Restaurant
2. AAA Three Diamonds
3. The New York Times 2017 · 2 stars · Restaurant Review

1. James Beard Awards 2023 · Winner · Best Chef: Northeast · Sherry Pocknett
2. USA Today Restaurants of the Year

1. USA Today Restaurants of the Year
2. James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Best Chef: Northeast · Derek Wagner
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Nominee · Best Chef: Northeast · Derek Wagner

One of the Gilded Age mansions lining Newport's Cliff Walk, this small luxury hotel holds a Forbes Five Star and a Michelin two-key distinction. No two rooms share a period: Tudor, Georgian, and Renaissance suites each come with a fireplace, most with a Jacuzzi, and some with ocean views dramatic enough to justify the whole trip. Two restaurants, one fine-dining and one slightly looser, pull in locals alongside guests.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
2. Michelin Guide 2 Keys

1. New England Best New Chef · Yankee Food Awards · Nikhil Naiker
2. James Beard Awards 2025 · Nominee · Emerging Chef · Nikhil Naiker

Persimmon is an intimate American restaurant on Hope Street where the menu changes daily, so the website's answer to "what's for dinner?" is a shrug. The room is bright but cozy, and it fills with a cross-section of Providence, parents included, none of them there for the photos. It holds AAA Four Diamonds and was a James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Hospitality. Dress like you're trying to impress someone.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In Providence
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Hospitality

Shingled walls, porches aimed at the water, bocce on the lawn, and a private beach on Quonochontaug Pond: Weekapaug Inn has been a summer retreat on Rhode Island's southern coast for as long as anyone's grandparents can remember. Antiques and coastal touches fill the rooms, sailing and bird-watching fill the days, and the whole thing holds a Forbes Five Star without feeling the need to remind you of it. Old New England ease, genuinely unforced.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A 19th-century mansion on its own private peninsula in Newport, Castle Hill Inn sits where Narragansett Bay opens up and the light does something unreasonable at sunset. The 33 rooms spread across the main house and shingled cottages along the water. Breakfast, afternoon tea, a lighthouse trail, and sunset sails are all part of it. Forbes Four Star and a Michelin two-key property.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Keys
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

The grilled pizza here goes directly onto the flame, which does something to the crust that an oven simply cannot: a char-edged, smoke-threaded base that's thin enough to feel light but sturdy enough to carry its toppings. This is a full-menu Italian restaurant, not a slice shop, so come ready for pasta and roasted vegetables too. The room is bright, the pace is brisk, and the drinks list is short but chosen with care.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza USA Excellent Pizzerias
3. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In Providence

Dolores is a bright blue Mexican restaurant on Hope Street, cooking dishes from Puebla and Oaxaca, which is a lot of sunshine to commit to in a New England February. The bar goes well past tequila and mezcal into sotol and Oaxacan rum, and the sangria arrives by the pitcher, so bring people. The chef was a James Beard Best Chef: Northeast nominee, and you can also just sit down for tostadas and a drink.

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Nominee · Best Chef: Northeast · Maria Meza
2. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In Providence

Marvin is a pizzeria on Wickenden Street that dresses like the slice joint of your childhood, checkered paper and bar stools included, then quietly gets weird with the menu. There's a pepperoni negroni, a house pizza wine, and frozen custard waiting by the door for anyone with room left. The chef was a James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: Northeast, which the high tops do a good job of hiding.

1. AAA Approved
2. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In Providence
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Robert Andreozzi

Perched on a bluff above Watch Hill with the Atlantic laid out below, Ocean House is a Victorian resort that feels like someone's very grand great-aunt never quite let go of the Gilded Age, and you're glad she didn't. Croquet lawns, a private beach, and rooms done in a quietly luxurious register that earns its Forbes Five Star without announcing it at every turn. Open year-round, which the old summer-colony crowd never managed.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star

1. USA Today Restaurants of the Year

Claudine is a tasting-menu-adjacent American restaurant from a couple who came up through Per Se, and they've brought the habits along. Drawn curtains, cozy booths, and a bathroom where the toilet paper gets refolded between visits make it feel like New York in a Providence-sized package. The menu shifts often, foam appears in more than one course, and it was a James Beard Best New Restaurant semifinalist.

1. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In Providence
2. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Best New Restaurant

Hemenway's is a seafood grill on South Main Street that recently shook off its stuffy streak and went back to the flash of its 1985 roots. The menu runs from raw bar towers and local crudo to caviar-topped waffles and stuffed lobster. It's a dress-nicely, bring-a-card sort of dinner, though the bar works fine for oysters and a glass of albariño. AAA gives it three diamonds, if you need to tell the parents.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In Providence

Fried chicken in five flavors, ranging from OG to Nashville hot, is the organizing principle at this Southern comfort spot tucked into East Providence. The menu reads like a greatest-hits of the genre: pimento mac and cheese, sweet potato tater tots, cornbread with honey butter. The chef earned a James Beard semifinalist nod in 2025, which is not a bad argument for crossing a state line for a thigh, a drumstick, and Texas toast.

1. AAA Approved
2. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Nick Rabar

1. AAA Four Diamonds

Sit on the shaded deck overlooking Newport Harbor and you start to understand what this restaurant is doing. It's a waterfront dining room that leans into New England seafood without leaning on cliché. The tonnarelli with green garlic and Narragansett clams landed on the New York Times' best dishes of 2024 list, and the pasta itself is made in-house daily. A James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Hospitality, which tracks: the place has that rare ease.

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Hospitality
2. The New York Times 2024 · Tonnarelli With Green Garlic and Narragansett Clams · The 26 Best Dishes We Ate Across the U.S. in 2024
3. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Kevin O'Donnell

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The red-brick facade on Westminster Street is old Providence; the 47 rooms inside are decidedly not. This luxury boutique hotel keeps things intimate by local standards, with enough style to make that feel intentional rather than accidental. Rooms come with curated book bags on request, which tells you something about the clientele. The rooftop bar and a modern Italian restaurant mean leaving is genuinely optional.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

A former private hall tucked quietly off Newport's main drag, The Vanderbilt is a boutique hotel that wears its age lightly. The original building and grand public spaces are intact, while rooms run from classic to contemporary, all brought up to a modern luxury standard without losing the feel of the thing. It holds a Michelin Key, which tracks: this is Newport doing itself without the theme-park version of Newport.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

Industrial bones warmed up with wood and bright Latin American art set the tone at this Fox Point restaurant, where the menu roams from Guatemalan to Portuguese without much apology for the mileage. The bar runs lively, the small plates change with the seasons, and the paella arrives with enough shrimp, mussels, clams, squid, and chouriço to make ordering anything else feel like a mistake you'd regret quietly.

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

Vines and trees cover nearly every inch of the interior, so dining here feels less like a restaurant and more like a very well-catered greenhouse. The menu leans into New England's coast, with a sustainable raw bar as the natural starting point before moving to shared plates built around seasonal vegetables and regional proteins. Weekend brunch draws a crowd that suggests the neighborhood has figured something out.

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

Steak Diane finished tableside, crepes flambé lit to order, and a cognac list long enough to require its own evening: Capriccio has been doing Providence fine dining the old-fashioned way for a long time. The room is tucked into a building's basement, all exposed brick, candlelight, and white linen, which sounds like a cliche until you're actually in it. Continental and Northern Italian, semi-formal, and absolutely not the place to rush.

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

Pasquale Illiano left Naples and landed in one of Rhode Island's smaller towns, which is saying something in the smallest state in the union. The pizzeria runs the full range, Neapolitan, New York style, Grandma, and each style is treated as its own discipline rather than a casual option. The pasta dishes quietly hold their own alongside the pizza, which is not a given. Ranked fifteenth on 50 Top Pizza USA.

1. 50 Top Pizza #15 · 50 Top Pizza USA
2. 50 Top Pizza 2026 · Best Pasta Proposal · 50 Top Pizza USA Special Awards

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The name promises more opulence than the place delivers, which turns out to be the point. This Newport boutique hotel leans into Gilded Age references with enough ironic distance that the trompe l'oeil textures and Baroque nods feel playful rather than pompous, and designer Rachel Reider's colorful signature keeps it from tipping into costume drama. Lark Hotels, the Massachusetts group behind it, has a knack for that trick.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Perched on ten acres of Narragansett Bay waterfront on Goat Island, this full-scale resort has over 200 rooms, all facing the water, and enough going on that you could skip Newport proper entirely. The marina means some guests arrive by boat, which sets the tone. Scarpetta handles Italian dinner, the Regent Lounge takes over from there, and the Seawater Spa is on hand for whoever overdid it the night before.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Hammetts sits right on Newport's waterfront, a contemporary hotel built in a maritime-industrial style that somehow avoids every anchor motif and rope-coil you'd expect. Oversized windows look out over the marina, the palette runs crisp blue and white, and an outdoor lounge spills onto the harbor. The restaurant, Giusto, does seafood and housemade pasta with a lively bar outside. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Newport is a town where "summer" is a verb and the air smells of ocean breezes and someone else's money, which makes the Attwater a quietly subversive little B&B. The rooms run to bold, contemporary color in a way that reads more Brooklyn than Colonial, though the teals and navy blues threading through the decor remind you that the Atlantic is genuinely close. A tasteful antidote to the usual grand-mansion aesthetic of the neighborhood.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. New England Best New French · Yankee Food Awards

Narragansett has been a surf town forever, but The Break is its first boutique hotel, and it plays the part without reaching for rope coils and ship wheels. Rooms lean mid-century surf-shack instead, many with balconies and gas fireplaces, all with rain showers. There's a pool, a small spa, a bistro downstairs, and a rooftop lounge. The actual surf is a few blocks away, which is either a selling point or a warning, depending on your skill level.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A comfortable hotel that plays the geography smart, sitting close enough to Newport for the beaches, mansions, and vineyards, but far enough to dodge the summer chaos. Rooms run bright and spacious, some with kitchenettes and balconies. The on-site restaurant, The Helmway, leans into New England standards like lobster rolls made with local ingredients. The Norman Bird Sanctuary is a short drive if you need an excuse to skip the car museum.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Three thousand five hundred acres in Rhode Island, which sounds like a typo until you're fly fishing or clay shooting before noon. The Preserve is a wilderness resort built around outdoor pursuits, with lodging that runs from contemporary townhouses to off-grid tiny homes. Evenings go to cedar hot tubs and the spa. The country's longest indoor shooting range is here, which is either the selling point or the detail that makes you call a different hotel.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Newport's seaside inns tend toward Victorian grandeur, so the Wayfinder's 1970s aesthetic reads almost as a provocation. It's a boutique hotel done for people who want to actually talk to each other, with social spaces threaded throughout, local art on the walls, and rooms that mix maritime ease with a bit of Scandinavian restraint. Coffee comes from Providence roaster Nitro, and Nomi Park handles all-day eating when you surface.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Emerging Chef · Jasmine Watson

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. New England 20 Best New England Cideries

1. New England Best Breakfast in Rhode Island · Best Breakfast in Every New England State

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Annie Parisi

1. AAA Approved

The name nods to mother yeast, which tells you where the priorities lie. This Newport pizzeria runs two tracks: sit-down Neapolitan rounds with a proper table and a drink, or Roman-style slices by the slice for a quick waterfront lunch. The dough gets a long ferment either way, and the toppings lean classic Italian, cold cuts and cheese mostly, with occasional Mediterranean detours. Appetizers, salads, and cooked dishes round out the room-service side.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza USA Excellent Pizzerias

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

Club Frills is a cocktail bar dressed as a 70s basement, with fake wood paneling, a disco ball, and tabletops that are marble only in spirit. It wears the dive costume without the sticky floors or the low prices. The drinks run low-ABV and funky, often in colors not found in nature, and the kitchen turns out a burger built around diced olives. It was a James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service.

1. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In Providence
2. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service · Jesse Hedberg

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurant

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Best New Restaurant

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Peter Carvelli

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Subat Dilmurat

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Andy Teixeira

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Basil Yu

1. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Milena Pagán

1. Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America

1. Eater The Best New Restaurants in America

1. Bon Appétit America's Best New Restaurants