The Dish
DINING DETAILS
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Club Frills co-owners Jesse Hedberg and Robert Andreozzi; the menu at Club Frills; the Dirty Martini burger; a tray of craft cocktails.
Club Frills Is All Thrills
The team behind Pizza Marvin built a cocktail lab with cheffed-up bar food. By Jamie Coelho
A
T CLUB FRILLS, FOOD AND COCKTAILS are served with its namesake— colorful, frilly toothpicks often used to garnish drinks and club sandwiches— from a dream team of local hospitality veterans. The new bar and restaurant— created by the co-owners of Pizza Marvin, chef Robert Andreozzi and renowned bartender Jesse Hedberg— channels a nostalgic atmosphere but with complex cocktails and a playful food menu from Nikhil Naiker, who was recently named as a finalist for the 2025 James Beard awards for Emerging Chef.
The co-owners came up with their own interior ideas while working with celebrated designers Jung Hong and Emily Rye to execute the vision. Dark wood paneling lines the walls, along with retro wooden railings. Floor-to-ceiling glass blocks surround the entrance, and faux fireplaces with hidden televisions are installed inside intimate seating nooks where a group of friends can gather and watch a game. The rustic laminate panels installed in the restroom feature etched illustrations of ducks, deer and nature scenes, reminiscent of a retro rod and gun club or Elks Lodge. There’ s even an arcade claw machine— nicknamed the“ Claw Daddy”— just for fun.
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Ocean House opened a new concept this summer called Dalia, serving a full Spanish tapas menu. Expect items like jamon Iberico, pan con tomate and seasonal New England ingredients turned Iberianchic paired with curated Spanish wines. Ć Carlo Carlozzi and Kyle Poland opened Circe Prime inside the former Chapel Grille in Cranston. This is the third restaurant to join the Circe Group lineup, with the first two establishments in Providence and East Greenwich. The location boasts luxurious steaks and seafood with an incredible cocktail program and upscale scene. Ć Claudine is now open in Providence and accepting reservations a month in advance. Inside you’ ll find executive chef Josh Finger and pastry chef Maggie McConnell, the married co-owners who met as trainees at three-Michelin-starred Per Se in New York. The $ 165 eight-course chef’ s tasting menu features New England’ s finest seasonal ingredients prepared using classic techniques.— Justin Theriault
They’ ve spent years doing research— aka being patrons— at some of the best bars in the world.“ Jesse and I have gone to as many bars as we possibly could in America that have been on North America’ s 50 Best Bars List,” Andreozzi says.“ We’ re inspired by some of these amazing bars that exist in the world.”
The cocktails are the highlight at Club Frills, which is in PVDonuts’ old location in Providence’ s Fox Point. There’ s a cocktail lab with state-of-the-art equipment installed in the back. The high-tech machinery includes a squasher, which is a high-pressure homogenizer for infusions, a rotovap,( a rotary evaporator for infusing flavors), and a specialized machine called a Clinebell used for making twenty-five-pound blocks of ice that are hand-cut into individual cubes.
Bar snacks are familiar but with a twist, all from renowned chef Naiker, who heads up his own Nimki popup restaurant experience at Courtland Club while also helping to manage the team at Club Frills.“ The food is inspired by tavern tropes, but made in a creative way,” Andreozzi says. He describes one hit item, a mozzarella stick meets an onion ring, which they coined the oozie doozie. There’ s also a tuna club sandwich made with raw tuna, a Dirty Martini burger, beef tartacos and Naiker’ s chicken nuggets. clubfrillspvd. com
150 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY I AUGUST 2025