Two new, independent restaurants with nothing else in common have nearly identical names. It must have come as somewhat of a surprise to the owners of the two places that their creative minds ran along the same track. Centro Lounge and Restaurant located on the second floor of the Westin Providence recently opened its doors, while not much more than 20 miles away in East Greenwich a new place called Centro Martini has hung its sign and its proprietor is renovating a former spice shop on Main Street.
This is not unprecedented. Trio in Narragansett is in no way connected with the restaurant with the same name in Dartmouth. Benjamin’s in Taunton is unrelated to Benjamin’s in Newport. The venerable Lobster Pot in Bristol shared nothing but its name with the Lobster Pot in Charlestown.
A restaurant name is seldom an afterthought. Suggested names are bandied about for months before the restaurant opens its doors. One restaurateur in the Hamptons obsessed about the name of his new place so much that his musings became the subject of an ongoing column in The New York Times.
Within the restaurant industry, a cottage industry has developed of consultants who work with owners to pinpoint just the right name and image. A recurring theme is for the eatery’s name to tell a story. The dining public always appreciates a good story to tell around the table. Locally, there are plenty to tell, from names of real people who may have influenced the chef to native-language kitchen slang. For example, Pizzico in Providence takes its name from Italian slang for a pinch of salt or pepper. Similarly, the famed Spago was named by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck after the slang word for spaghetti.
There are major financial considerations to the name game. Everything associated with the restaurant’s moniker, from its sign to its napkins, comes with a price tag. Logos are drawn to exacting specifications by skilled designers. If the business is sold, a substantial portion of the price tag is for its name and the goodwill associated with it.
In Providence in May 2009 three partners, Joe Delle Cave, Frank Recupero and Dino Passaretta signed a lease and undertook the task of making over the Agora restaurant on the second floor of the Westin. Recupero and Passaretta had collaborated on the restaurant in the Holiday Inn in South Kingstown, Liliana’s, named after Passaretta’s grandmother. In Providence, they had a striking space in which to work but without the ability to make wholesale changes. “The bones had to stay the same,” said Recupero, meaning the restaurant’s signature dark-wood paneling, ceilings or windows could not be altered drastically. So the bar was enlarged and new artwork and furniture were brought in, highlighted by a 12-foot-long, Tuscan farmhouse table constructed of reclaimed wood from a farm in Tuscany.
Meanwhile, in East Greenwich, another entrepreneur had a vision of his own. On the restaurant row that Main Street has become, Michael Petrillo saw a need for an upscale martini bar and restaurant. He enlisted famed designer Judd Brown to transform the shuttered Herbs and Spices. Brown selected a deep azure blue as the primary color in the lounge area. The centerpiece is a long, modern bar that does more than just hold drinks and elbows. It can create a mood with color and light from an LED lighting system inlaid within the imported tile surface. There is also a spacious kitchen which. according to Petrillo, will support a full restaurant menu. To reflect its central location in town, the name Centro Martini was selected and appears on the sign in front of the bar.
The East Greenwich Centro is expected to open in the fall. It and the Centro already open in Providence have ambitious plans to compete for our dining and drinking dollars. They both will also give us plenty of talk at the table when we dine out this fall. •
Bruce Newbury’s “Dining Out” food and wine talk radio show is heard Saturdays and Sundays on WPRV-AM 790 and
stations throughout New England.
He can be reached by e-mail at bruce@brucenewbury.com.
