The proof of the restaurant is in the tasting

“I’m a presentation guy,” says Jay, the restaurateur, “and I’m not the easiest guy to please.” Bill, the chef, declares, “I’m always sampling things.”
They seem like a great team. But these two work at different restaurants. They are competitors. Both are examples of the Rhode Island restaurant success story and both have new positions.
Bill McComiskey is the new executive chef of Rick’s Roadhouse in the Knowledge District in Providence. He was working on a 16-hour brisket that he barbecues with a dry rub and a 16-hour pork butt that is “mopped” in the Southern style with his signature BBQ sauce. “The sauce was the first thing I changed when I got into the kitchen [at Rick’s] in August,” said McComiskey.
His new signature sauce is tomato-based, sweet and smoky at the same time in the Carolina style. The chef says the sauce is especially good with baby-back ribs which he slow smokes for four hours.
A word about the term “mop.” The word refers to the sauce – a thin, watery solution that drips over meat, adding moisture to combat the drying of an open fire – as well as the tool, a small fiber mop used to apply the sauce to the meat. It’s a Southern thing.
“It looks so much better,” said McComiskey. “That’s what I like [on my BBQ specialties].”
McComiskey hails from Chelsea, Mass., near Boston. But he spent 10 years honing his craft at one of the leading BBQ restaurants in the South, Big Daddy’s in Live Oaks, Fla. While there, he developed his own sauce recipes and techniques, such as smoking eye-round roasts instead of briskets, then serving the tender beef sliced thin.
That type of cooking suits our Northern sensibilities, as opposed to barbecued alligator tail, which was also a specialty at Big Daddy’s.
McComiskey also cooked for a period of time at Disney’s Epcot in Orlando. He was not a full-fledged “cast member,” however, as he was employed by a food-service company that Disney contracted at the time. “My kids, who were little at the time, sure loved it!” he recalled. Returning to New England, the chef was most recently at The Restaurant, in Warren, before joining Rick’s last summer. He is settling into his new company, John Elkhay’s Chow Fun Food Group, and his enthusiasm for Elkhay’s corporate culture is readily apparent. “All of the chef managers [of Chow Fun’s other restaurants such as Ten and XO] are asked for their input on recipes and many other issues. It’s a great atmosphere.” Jerry “Jay” Hoff just opened The American brasserie in December in the American Locomotive Works complex off Valley Street in Providence. He owns The Abbey, a pub located near Providence College, as well as Buster Krab’s, a self-styled “beach bar and burger shack” in Narragansett. The American is an entirely different concept for Hoff’s young company. With dark-wood accents, large semi-private booths and brass-accented tables and bar, The American appears to speak to another time, one of elegant fine-dining. But Hoff lives in the present with an eye toward what today’s fine-diner expects.
“We respect all of your senses here,” he declared from one of his tables looking out through floor-to-ceiling windows at the post-industrial campus on Iron Horse Way. “We’re ready for this environment. We appreciate the way our guests look at things. They appreciate good service and well-prepared food. Going out to eat is their night out. It’s that way for my wife and me,” he declared.
He considers his location – a mile or so from downtown – as a big advantage, with free parking and low rent, overhead perks for him that he can pass along to his customers on The American’s menu. That menu is all American in keeping with the building’s heritage as a citadel of American productivity.
Steaks and chops predominate along with Waldorf and Cobb salads and clams casino. The sandwich menu is appealing with creations that include The Vanderbilt – marinated and grilled chicken over crisp arugula with Gorgonzola and Parmesan with a slice of beefsteak tomato and house-made, walnut pesto.
There is a deconstructed Yankee Pot Roast with rustic vegetables, and house-made potato chips drizzled with more Gorgonzola. Hoff puts his corporate-restaurant training and that of his chef Phil Giguere to good use. Quality-control systems with graphics on how dishes are to be prepared are in place in the kitchen. Then there is the tasting aspect.
Two restaurants, both with chefs and proprietors who are vitally interested in what is on the plate that you and I will enjoy: And they respect our taste buds as much as their own. •


Bruce Newbury’s food and wine talk-radio show is heard Saturdays and Sundays locally on WPRV-AM 790, on radio throughout New England and on the Stitcher mobile application. He can be reached at bruce@brucenewbury.com.

No posts to display