EXPERIENCE CAV
Monday - Wednesday
Bistro Menu
Tuesday
Half Priced Bottles of Wine
Wednesday
Live Jazz & Martini Specials
Saturday and Sunday
Brunch
14 Imperial Place • Providence, RI
401.751.9164
cavrestaurant.com
Plan now ...
...for your special occasion
or family gathering!
• Dine in or Take-out
• Open daily at 11:00 AM
• Party platters and
buffet menu available
• Karaoke Thursdays
401-334-3200
Lincoln Mall Plaza
asiagrille.com
86 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l
APRIL 2020
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Homemade gnocchi with duck confit, cabbage and parmesan; “Here’s
Looking At You” cocktail; sweet potato cornbread with duck fat butter; mussels with braised beans and
house nduja; “Kinship” cocktail; market ceviche with citrus and pickled fresco chilis.
manifesto to life: chips served with beet
dip, grits loaded with gouda, brussels
sprouts mixed with peanuts ($8) and
hefty slabs of sweet potato cornbread ($9)
drizzled with hot honey and duck fat
butter. If the amalgam sounds heavy, that
too is misleading. There’s a brightness
to the collection, evident in the whole
roasted fish ($36), which is so heavily
seasoned that you’ll eat the crispy skin as
if it belonged to a roast chicken. Better
though are its partners in crime: a crispy
umami-rich fried rice on the bottom and
a cool tomatillo-persimmon salsa on top.
It seems like a lot. But, as Huck’s
proves, there is harmony is variety. In
fact, eating Camp’s food is a joyful
endeavor, in part because he proves you
wrong each time. Familiar dishes are
surprising and novel combinations that
burst forth with nostalgic familiarity, not
unlike the dynamic that draws us back
to our hometowns and the family that
remains.
Sweets are much the same but the
kitchen tweaks standards just enough
to make them interesting. Chocolate is
served in a plethora of ways, from a rich
torte to a retro swiss roll. Custards come
out as panna cottas or creme brulee. But
fruit is always the star, wrapped in tart
dough or nestled between biscuits with
a thick dome of whipped cream.
It’s easy to say that Huck’s has achieved
its goal: a place that’s comforting and
fulfilling in all corners. That’s never more
evident than when you see the outdoor
couches full of diners wrapped in
blankets, shoveling cast iron chicken with
radicchio into their mouths. Yet Huck’s
has one more surprise up its sleeve and
it’s the most upending one of all. This
really isn’t a restaurant at all. It’s a
straight-up bar. True, only ten of its seats
hover around the liquor. True, the menu
only features half a dozen cocktails at a
time. But it’s also true that Ryan Draine,
who’s in charge of the bar, is a fiend
when it comes to mixing drinks.
Milk Money started out with a
complex approach to cocktails, so there
is some precedence here, but Draine
comes out guns blazing, each drink often
a concoction of at least two types
of booze and eight ingredients. It’s a
veritable flea market of bitters, herbs and
eggs and, frankly, everything appears
totally discordant on paper. Gin, sake,
vermouth and prosecco in a glass mixed
with lemon, lilac and passionfruit?
Vanilla rum, sherry and gin swirled with
cranberry, clove, orange and honey?
Whose alcoholic freakshow is this and
why are any of us here? Watching any
of them being built is a science experiment
— so much so that even a seasoned diner
sipping pinot at the bar blurts out, “This is
some seriously cool sh#t.” And it is.
If Twain set out to do anything with
his half-hearted rebel, it was to overturn
the American perspective. And though
we sometimes barely register the role of
drinks in the nightly dining ritual,
Huck’s proves just how much we’re
missing out. That’s not to say the bar fully
eclipses the dining room but, under an
audio cloud of Otis Redding and Van
Morrison, it articulates the happy haze
of enjoying what you didn’t think you
wanted. Leave it to an outpost in a
corner garage to prove the expanse of
the American Dream.