Night out last night with Charlie, sipping an espresso martini (he a Manhattan) at the bar at Temple, the excellent restaurant downstairs in the new Renaissance Hotel across from the State House. Providence was looking good, and so was Charlie, tanned from a vacation in Puerta Vallarta and singing the praises of a great restaurant he found there. Boca Bento, he told me, was so good he ate there three times solo and was introduced to the chef, who seemed to think Charlie might be a restaurant scout of some kind. (He does sometimes review Rhode Island restaurants with me.)Charlie has owned a restaurant in the South End in Boston, knows a lot about food, and he said the food in general in PV was superb. "When you find a place that can give you french fries that are so hot and so good you want to eat them even if they'll burn your mouth, that's a great restaurant!"
Temple was pretty hot, too. We shared a pair of "Snacks" from the menu: mini lobster rolls, which were loaded with chunked fresh lobster meat, and a fat crab cake coated with crumbed pretzel. The place looked incredibly chic and was busy but not so busy that you couldn't have a great conversation at the bar, something it's hard not to do with Charlie anyway.
