2005-08-04 - 11:38 p.m.
This is my last week in Providence, probably forever, and I�ve been trying to do all the stuff I want to do before I go. This town has indeed really grown on me. There�s a lot of charm here, certainly more than in other small former industrial New England cities (like New Haven, say).
I could picture myself settling in here and having a life. I�d encourage others (like new Brown or RISD grads) to not dismiss this as an option. It�s only I realized that a lot of what�s keeping me here personally is just inertia. Like I know the place, so I might as well stay. But I have to move on.
Alithea once asked if Providence really qualified as a city. I said it was a small city, but yes. When she came to visit and saw our downtown, she agreed that it was a city, but we had only one of everything. Solid-looking Art Deco structure? Check, we have one (the old headquarters of Fleet Bank). Beautiful Beaux Art municipal building? We have one (city hall). Blank Modernist office tower? One (the left-most of the three downtown skyscrapers). We even have one Frederic Law Olmstead-designed park (Blackstone Boulevard).
But this is it for me in Providence, in New England, in the Northeast. Sunday I�m flying to Denver to spend the rest of the month with N. Then I�m getting my stuff out of storage here and U-Hauling it to Chicago. �They do things that they don�t do on Broadway�� Goddamn. Okay, I�m a little scared. Wish me luck (no really, sign my guestbook, leave a note, send an email; this is supposed to be interactive here).
A few days ago, I went to dinner with Josh at a Dominican place. Cause I figured they don�t really have Dominicans in the Midwest and I�ve never had their food. I�d encourage all readers in Providence to patronize the Carolina Market Restaurant on Broad Street.
It�s really good and really cheap. We drove, but the 11 bus goes there from Kennedy Plaza. Get the fuck off College Hill, really. It�s much easier for you than me now, with my chair and all. I used to take the bus around a lot and I wish I�d done it more. Thayer St. ain�t everything, trust me.
It�s sort of buffet style. The food is laid out in a glass case and several vat-type containers. I asked what was in one weird-looking container. She said it was pigs� ears and let me try one. Nothing to write home about; it just tasted like cartilage, a bit rubbery.
I got a blood pudding sausage and mofungo (a mashed plantain and pork rind cake with gravy) that they cooked up on the spot. Josh got baccalao, a salt-cod stew also made by Portuguese, Cape Verdeans, and Italians. It was a truly vast quantity of food and the whole meal, with salad and soda and lemonade, cost $18.50. God bless immigrant cultures.
We later went to Chez Pascal for the midweek prix fixe menu. I guess this is a good bet for Brown students on a date � $28 for 3 courses or $33 with house wine. But I think if you�ve seen one French restaurant, you�ve seen them all. Frogs� legs taste like chicken.
About the most exciting thing was I got a glass of Amontillado port with dessert. Edgar Allen Poe, author of �The Cask of Amontillado�, lived in Providence for a while. A lady who sat at the Providence Atheneum was taken by his writing and wrote to him in Baltimore.
I guess he didn�t get much (or maybe she was just a really good letter writer � I�ve recently learned that he was quite the ladies� man), because he went up here to see her. That�s a virtual nineteenth-century �American Splendor�. Proto-Goths in love or just creepy? Anyway, the port wasn�t even that good.
I think these two places exemplify the bottom line. Providence�s ritzy East Side is all well and good for frou-frou places, like to impress dates. But if you want a lot of good food cheap (indeed if you want good anything cheap), get out there.
� 2005 Geoff Gladstone
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