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Giusto Chicken Parm Sandwich
chefs & restaurantsnewswine & drinks

News Bites: Giusto “Secret” Winter Menu Items and Lunch / Track 15 Dining Igloos and Curling / Anna’s Taqueria Opens

by David Dadekian February 13, 2026
written by David Dadekian

Current news releases—Eat Drink RI is not the source for these items—please follow any links for more information.


Giusto “Secret” Winter Menu Items and Lunch

Giusto Chicken Parm Sandwich
Giusto Chicken Parm Sandwich

At Giusto in Newport there are two off-menu ‘secret’ items now available for the winter months only. Both are in limited quantity, so they are available until they sell out each night.

On Sunday evenings, it’s the Chicken Parm ($28), Giusto’s take on a Sunday Supper. The pan-fried crispy chicken breast is topped with tomato sauce and melted mozzarella and served with housemade bucatini pasta. Image attached.

On Monday nights, it’s the Giusto Smashburger ($19), a double stack burger with fontina cheese, sweet and tangy housemade bread & butter pickles and n’duja aioli on Martin’s potato roll.

Additionally, lunch is back at Giusto, on Saturdays and Sundays from 12pm – 2:30pm. Giusto’s sandwiches are back on the lunch menu. New this year is the Chicken Parm Sandwich, alongside the Giusto Smashburger, Local Fish Sandwich with pickled jalapeno and Porchetta Sandwich with giardiniera and white bean and harissa spread. All sandwiches come with a choice of salt & vinegar potatoes or green salad with baby gem, pear and dill.

View the full lunch menu here.

Giusto Porchetta Sandwich
Giusto Porchetta Sandwich

Curling Now Available at Track 15 

Food Hall Leans into Winter with Dining Igloos and Curling

Track 15 Igloo
Track 15 Igloo

The Track 15 food hall, located at 1 Union Station in downtown Providence, is embracing the winter season with outdoor dining igloos, a menu of cozy cocktails and mocktails, and the addition of “street curling” rinks.

The sport of curling has exploded in popularity in recent years, and Track 15 is proud to offer two street-versions of the rink, the perfect way to enjoy the brisk winter air. Lanes are available for walk-ins or reservations during regular operating hours. Each lane can accommodate two to six players; the cost is $20 per lane per hour. For more information, visit track15ri.com/events/street-curling.

“With the bustle of the holiday season behind us, we are leaning into winter!” said Christopher Marsella, Owner, Track 15. “We are proud to give guests a new way to enjoy their Track 15 favorites in this season.  These additions exemplify our ongoing commitment as a true gathering place for great food, drinks, and fun in the heart of downtown Providence – even when we’re under a blanket of snow.”

Guests can enjoy their favorite Track 15 food and drink in one of two new dining igloos on the outdoor plaza. Each igloo accommodates up to eight guests, and contains a dining table and chairs, mini electric fireplaces for heat, rugs, blankets, and soft lighting. The “Hearthside” igloo boasts a warm winter lodge feel while the “Encore” igloo is glamorous and dramatic. Igloos are available for booking during regular opening hours in two-hour increments. A $50 reservation fee is required and there is a $150 food and beverage minimum. To more information and to reserve an igloo, visit www.track15ri.com. https://track15ri.com/events/dining-igloos/.

Indoors or out, guests can enjoy a variety of winter libations at the food hall, including the Winter Sangria: Courvoisier VS Cognac, PAMA liqueur, housemade grenadine, orange, red wine, and ginger beer; the Blood Orange Spritz: sparkling rosé, Campari, triple sec, blood orange; and Slings & Arils: Track 15 ISCO gin, Genepy alpine herbal liqueur, housemade grenadine, and lime. The beverage team has also launched an Old Fashioned of the Month program. January featuresOld Grandad Bonded Bourbon with sugar, Angostura and Regan’s Orange Bitters, and orange peel.

Hot drinks include Mulled Hot Apple Cider with Minard Farms cider, winter spices, Planteray Original Dark Rum; Cinnamon Hot Cocoa featuring Track 15’s hot cocoa blend, Grainger’s Organic Vodka, and  whipped cream; and the Hot Toddy: Slane Irish Whiskey, English breakfast tea, honey, and lemon.

Seasonal zero proof libations include the Blood Orange “Rita” with Clean Co. non-alcoholic “tequila,” blood orange, and lime; the Hee Haw: Clean Co. “whiskey” with apple cider, lemon, and ginger beer; Dry Cane Swizzle with Lyre’s Dark Cane “rum”, housemade winter spiced pineapple shrub, lime, soda water, and fresh mint; the Italian Spritz with DelConte NA Aperitif, soda water, and rosemary; and the Bramble On!: Lyre’s London Dry “Gin”, housemade blackberry-sage shrub, lemon, and soda. Non-alcoholic beers include Notch IPA or Pilsner, Collective Arts Guava Gose, and Best Day Electro Lime Cerveza.


Anna’s Taqueria Makes its Ocean State Debut with $3.50 Burritos on February 24

Boston’s beloved homegrown brand opens first location in Rhode Island, features 1995 throwback burrito pricing on opening day  

Anna’s Taqueria – the homegrown Boston brand that has been delivering warm bundles of burritos, tacos and quesadillas as well as heaping Mexican bowls and salads since 1995 – will open its first location in Rhode Island on February 24 at the Garden City Center in Cranston. 

Inspired by San Francisco’s Mission District, Anna’s Taqueria was first conceived with the goal of bringing the homestyle flavor of Mexican street food to the people while celebrating community. With its entry into the Ocean State, Anna’s is continuing its exciting expansion in southern New England having opened four new locations in the past year. 

Debuting within the area’s premier open-air lifestyle plaza that features the best local flavors, Anna’s Taqueria’s newest outpost features a bright and welcoming nearly-3,000 square foot dining space complete with high-top communal tables, booths and traditional table seating options for 42 guests. Anna’s Taqueria carefully prepares every order using the finest and freshest ingredients including a lineup of signature proteins like birria, carnitas, al pastor, and more. Additionally, Anna’s Taqueria at Garden City Center will serve Anna’s new protein bowls that pack up to 98 grams of protein per order.  

On its opening day, in honor of rolling burritos since 1995, Anna Taqueria will dial back the hands of time and offer its legendary super burritos – 12″ fresh hot flour tortillas customized to your taste and packed with a main filling, cheese, rice, beans, lettuce, pico, hot sauce and jalapeños – at its original 1995 pricing, $3.50* per oversized bundle of love. Rounding out the festivities will be a prize wheel, swag, and availability of limited-edition Anna’s Cranston t-shirts. 

“The Anna’s brand has so much love to share, and we couldn’t be happier to be bringing that to Rhode Island,” said Rob Favuzza, President of Anna’s Taqueria. “With Garden City Center’s mission of bringing community together, it is the perfect home for us.” 

Anna’s Taqueria is located at 185 Sockanosset Cross Road in Cranston. For more information, please call (401) 593-3223 or visit www.annas.com. For access to exclusive insider perks, download the Anna’s Taqueria app.

*Redeemable in-store only, one burrito per person. Premium add-ons priced à la carte.

February 13, 2026 0 comments
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chefs & restaurantscookingnewswine & drinks

Gracie’s Chosen Again to Showcase Rainier Cherries for Northwest Cherries’ Tree-to-Table

by David Dadekian July 20, 2012
written by David Dadekian

Gracie's Rainier Cherry dessert: Almond Nougat Semifreddo, Dark Chocolate Mousse, Balsamic Rainier Cherries, Flourless Chocolate Cake, Chocolate Cherry Ganache and a Chocolate Balsamic Drizzle

Gracie’s Rainier Cherry dessert: Almond Nougat Semifreddo, Dark Chocolate Mousse, Balsamic Rainier Cherries, Flourless Chocolate Cake, Chocolate Cherry Ganache and a Chocolate Balsamic Drizzle

For the second year in a row, Northwest Cherries has commissioned Gracie’s restaurant in Providence to represent Rhode Island while celebrating the Rainier cherry. As part of the annual Northwest Cherries’ Tree-to-Table event one restaurant in each state is asked to create a unique menu offering featuring Rainier cherries. The cherry is regarded for its “crisp bite and pale yellow flesh bursting with exceptional sweetness.” Gracie’s is incorporating Rainier cherries into a specialty cocktail as well as two dinner selections, all of which will be available for the month of July and through August, as long as this year’s Rainier cherry crop lasts.

Gracie’s Executive Chef Matthew Varga loves using the Rainier cherries, calling them, “little pieces of sun-kissed perfection.” Varga added, “The Rainier cherries are excellent. We’re really honored to be selected again for this year. We were thinking about how were we going to use them again. Last year we used them on one of the entrees, the duck. I really wanted to work them into a first course. Typically we do a tomato salad first course this time of year. I thought I could play around with the same flavors with the cherries as with the tomatoes. So I went backwards. I started with what would I do with tomatoes and then I switched it.

“So we have arugula, which Jeffrey grows just for us, the stracciatella cheese is from Fiore Di Nonno in Somerville, Massachusetts, Marcona almonds and balsamic vinegar add that acidity and nuttiness. I like the play of the Rainier cherries and the Bing cherries. You get the sweetness and crunch from the Rainier cherries and you get that really nice soft texture, sweet and almost tart from the Bing. They really play well with each other and as you can see the colors are just amazing. The almond butter is Marcona almonds and milk, cooked in a pressure cooker and pureed. The balsamic pearls and balsamic gel are set with agar, a seaweed gelatin, and they act as the vinaigrette. There are whole Marcona almonds toasted in olive oil, and also on the plate as a nougatine, cooked in a little bit of sugar and corn syrup. It sets like a brittle and then it’s blended.

“You’ve got creaminess, sweetness, acidity, nuttiness and nice pepperiness from that arugula. You don’t need a lot of it because it is really spicy, but when you pick it up with the sweetness of the cherries and the creaminess of the cheese it really works well. I use a single estate extra-virgin olive oil from Tuscany, not too spicy, a little grassy.”

Gracie’s owner Ellen Gracyalny also offered this about the Rainier cherry event, “It’s such a great time of year to promote Rainier cherries in Rhode Island because it’s Providence Restaurant Week. We have had so many people coming through the doors who love Rainier cherries. One table the other night ordered the cocktail and both dishes as part of their three-course dinner.”

Gracie’s Pastry Chef Melissa Denmark created the Rainier cherry dessert pictured here (above and below). It’s a beautiful plate composed of Almond Nougat Semifreddo, Dark Chocolate Mousse, Balsamic Rainier Cherries, Flourless Chocolate Cake, Chocolate Cherry Ganache and a Chocolate Balsamic Drizzle.

Jason Wessel, Gracie’s Wine & Spirits Director, has used the Rainier cherries to create the Mt. Rainier Cocktail. “Classic flavors of caramelized apricot in the Cognac complemented by the subtle sweetness of a dash of Herring cherry liqueur and cherry bitters. Stone fruit flavors fortified and softened by a slightly sweet portion of apricot liqueur. All fruit spirits invigorated by fine bubbles generously added with Cava, a dry sparkler from Spain.”

Wessel’s cocktail recipe follows at the end, after these photos of the Gracie’s dishes. You can find photos of last year’s Rainier cherry dishes from Gracie’s here.

Gracie's Rainier Cherry Salad featuring Stracciatella cheese, wild arugula, aged balsamic, and Marcona almonds

Gracie’s Rainier Cherry Salad featuring Stracciatella cheese, wild arugula, aged balsamic, and Marcona almonds

Gracie's Rainier Cherry dessert: Almond Nougat Semifreddo, Dark Chocolate Mousse, Balsamic Rainier Cherries, Flourless Chocolate Cake, Chocolate Cherry Ganache and a Chocolate Balsamic Drizzle

Gracie’s Rainier Cherry dessert: Almond Nougat Semifreddo, Dark Chocolate Mousse, Balsamic Rainier Cherries, Flourless Chocolate Cake, Chocolate Cherry Ganache and a Chocolate Balsamic Drizzle

Gracie's Rainier Cherry Salad featuring Stracciatella cheese, wild arugula, aged balsamic, and Marcona almonds

Gracie’s Rainier Cherry Salad featuring Stracciatella cheese, wild arugula, aged balsamic, and Marcona almonds

[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:2]

July 20, 2012 0 comments
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chefs & restaurantsnews

Gracie’s Offers Kids’ Tasting Menu for the Holidays

by David Dadekian December 1, 2011
written by David Dadekian

Local Catch Fish & Chips with triple cooked potatoes, cole slaw and green tomato tartar sauce

Local Catch Fish & Chips with triple cooked potatoes, cole slaw and green tomato tartar sauce

Gracie’s restaurant in downtown Providence is now offering a three-course kids’ tasting menu during the holiday season. Executive Chef Matthew Varga and Pastry Chef Melissa Denmark designed the kids’ menu using the same philosophy behind Gracie’s main dining menu: “offering the freshest ingredients to reflect the flavors of the season.” Varga said, “I always have a blast cooking for kids because we were all kids once. My inspiration for this menu is all the things I loved to eat when I was a kid. Broccoli Mac & Cheese—I grew up on that. Meatloaf—my father, he’d be very proud of my meatloaf. And my mother [would make] fried mozzarella. That’s a thing we always had around when I was growing up. The menu’s really reliving my childhood. It’s a great time.”

In order to check out that “great time,” my family went to dinner at Gracie’s this past weekend to sample several of the kids’ menu items. My daughters are a bit young to clean their plates, which was fine with us adults since that meant we could get a taste of all those childhood memories. From an adult perspective I offer these notes on the menu items my children had. The Mozzarella Arancini, fried mozzarella with a marinara dipping sauce, was a big hit and from the adult perspective, beautifully presented. The Chicken Noodle Soup was really hearty and the croutons added a wonderful crunch alongside the abundance of noodles.

I could’ve made a meal out of the mozzarella and a big bowl of the soup alone, but then I would’ve been very sad to have missed the Mac & Cheese that was so homey and crunchy. There was broccoli in the dish for health and color, as well as lots of big chunks of bacon for, well, bacon! The other kids’ second course we tried was the Meatloaf which my father and I could have easily polished off had it not been my daughter’s dinner. It may be a kids’ menu item, but the whole plate said Gracie’s with perfectly peeled and cooked carrots and onions, and deliciously creamy mashed potatoes.

As for the third course, desert, unsurprisingly I didn’t manage to get a bite of either the Milk & Cookies or the Brownie Sundae. My daughters enjoyed everything which would be the endorsement I’d want. Pastry Chef Melissa Denmark had the best last remark when I asked her about the menu, “It’s a good time to be a kid.”

There are three choices in each course of the kids’ menu: First Course of Baby Greens Salad, Mozzarella Arancini or Free Range Chicken Noodle Soup; Second Course of Rotini Mac & Cheese, Local Catch Fish & Chips or Blackbird Farms Meatloaf; Third Course of Milk & Cookies, Brownie Sundae or Gracieʼs Crème Brûlée. The cost per child is $25. For more information or to make a reservation, see www.graciesprov.com.

Mozzarella Arancini with San Marzano marinara sauce, micro basil

Mozzarella Arancini with San Marzano marinara sauce, micro basil

Milk & Cookies with choice of milk, chocolate milk or hot cocoa

Milk & Cookies with choice of milk, chocolate milk or hot cocoa

A table at Gracie's with Mozzarella Arancini and Free Range Chicken Noodle Soup with aromatic vegetables, homemade focaccia croutons

A table at Gracie's with Mozzarella Arancini and Free Range Chicken Noodle Soup with aromatic vegetables, homemade focaccia croutons

Baby Greens Salad with housemade buttermilk ranch dressing, Yukon potato chips

Baby Greens Salad with housemade buttermilk ranch dressing, Yukon potato chips

Blackbird Farm Meatloaf with smashed red potatoes, roasted carrots and onions, thyme gravy

Blackbird Farm Meatloaf with smashed red potatoes, roasted carrots and onions, thyme gravy

Rotini Mac & Cheese with cheddar mornay, broccoli, house smoked bacon, herb crust

Rotini Mac & Cheese with cheddar mornay, broccoli, house smoked bacon, herb crust

December 1, 2011 0 comments
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cooking

Charcutepalooza July: Blending: mortadella

by David Dadekian July 15, 2011
written by David Dadekian

cross-section of mortadella

cross-section of mortadella

I’ve discovered an interesting ratio between my love of photography and my love of cooking, more specifically, my love of cooking all these excellent Charcutepalooza projects. The more I enjoy a project and have fun doing it, the more I think to stop and pick up my camera to make photos. When I’m as thoroughly frustrated as I was making this month’s mortadella, and last month’s sausage, making photos isn’t the first thing to come to mind—and I make photos almost every day.

To make matters just slightly more down this month, while I and my family loved the June project’s end result of duck sausage and spicy Italian sausage, none of us really liked the mortadella. It’s not that it was bad at all. It’s just that for the amount of work and mess I created, I was hoping for something that tasted a little better than just really good bologna. Especially since I don’t really enjoy bologna. I have had mortadella many times in the past and never thought much of it, but I was really hoping making it myself with good, locally raised, pastured pork would make it great. Greatness, while achieved with several other Charcutepalooza projects, was not within my grasp this time.

Instead of regaling you with more tales of my stuffing clumsiness and emulsion-making-mess woes (I’ll just say emulsified meat does wash out of children’s hair and leave it at that), I’ll move on to what I did with the final product. CharcutepaloozaAs you can see from the photo above, I chose not to use pistachios or other “mix-ins” in my mortadella. I never much cared for nuts in it in the past, and my wife Brenda doesn’t love olives. In thinking about it now, that may have been my mistake, because the only time I’ve ever really enjoyed mortadella is in a muffuletta, which of course is always loaded with an olive salad.

So I’m looking at this gigantic round of mortadella that I’ve sliced in half to take the above cross-section photo and, besides that weirdly unnatural pink color, I see a lot of fat, beautiful pork fat that I was kind of cursing myself for wasting inside this emulsion. All the while Brenda was washing and spinning greens and, after tasting the mortadella, declaring she would prefer not to have that on her salad. I thought, but what if it was a crispy lardon? Look at all that fat. It’s got to render and crisp up nicely.

Out came a frying pan and in went 1/2″ cubes of mortadella (see last photo, extremely zoomed in for effect). Fifteen minutes later and we had the below salad. Then I went the extra step of deglazing the pan with balsamic vinegar, creating a rough 3:1 ratio of rendered mortadella fat and a little olive oil to the vinegar, stirring in some Dijon and cracked black pepper, and we had a vinaigrette.

I’m going to sound like a complete downer, but I still didn’t love it. I know, perhaps there was something wrong with me. Just to be on the safe side I had a chicken skin club sandwich with homemade bacon today. It was fantastic, so thankfully my taste buds still work. I’m not about to give up of course, especially not since I already know that next month’s challenge involves terrines, which I love making, so I’ll see if my photo making ratio theory holds up.

Thank you again to Cathy Barrow and Kim Foster, and I do mean that sincerely. Maybe it wasn’t my cup of tea, or cup of emulsified meat, but it was a new experience for me to stuff a bung (did you really think I’d get through this whole month’s post without mentioning bung once?), and new experiences are always much appreciated.

salad with mortadella "lardons"

salad with mortadella "lardons"

close-up exploration of a cube of mortadella

close-up exploration of a cube of mortadella

July 15, 2011 0 comments
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