Rhode Island Steakhouses | SteakMap

The Best Steakhouses in Rhode Island

Rhode Island has six steakhouses across four towns — Providence holds three, with one each in Cranston, Lincoln and Westerly. It is the smallest state in the country, so you could eat at all of them in a week without ever driving more than forty minutes.

One of them began as a basement still that federal agents smashed.

All six

1. Twin Oaks (Cranston) — open since 1933 and the largest independent restaurant in Rhode Island: six dining rooms, three bars, seating for 650, still run by the founding family. The story is below.
2. Ten Prime Steak & Sushi (Providence) — downtown, dark and modern, and the city big-night-out room for two decades.
3. Mills Tavern (Providence) — wood-fired and rotisserie cooking on North Main, and the most polished kitchen on this list.
4. Fred & Steve’s Steakhouse (Lincoln) — at Bally’s Twin River, and the state casino steak dinner.
5. Chillingham’s (Westerly) — down on the Connecticut line near Watch Hill, and the obvious stop to or from the beaches.
6. Fleming’s (Providence) — the only national chain steakhouse in Rhode Island. Dependable, and not remotely specific to the state.

The still in the basement

During Prohibition, William DeAngelus started distilling whiskey in the basement of his Cranston house and selling it to friends. The basement became a speakeasy. It worked until federal agents found the still and destroyed it.

Later that same year — 1933, the year Prohibition ended — Bill and Eva DeAngelus opened a legitimate restaurant across the street from the house. It had two private rooms seating sixteen, and a main room seating forty.

It now has six dining rooms, three bars and seats 650, which makes Twin Oaks the largest independent restaurant in the state. Their son took it over, and it passed to five grandchildren — Billy, Jimmy, Kathy, Patty and Susan. Billy and Susan run it today. Ninety-odd years, one family, and a menu of more than 130 items that still leans Italian-American because that is what the neighborhood was.

It is the same pattern as Wisconsin and Minnesota: a bar first, food second, family labor throughout, and a dining room nobody ever had a reason to redecorate.

Browse by city: Providence and Cranston.