Restaurants going away faster these days – a few leave strong memories behind – David Brussat

by David Brussat, Architecture Here and There, contributing writer

Photo: Andrea’s Facebook page

Andreas Restaurant has reigned for decades as the favorite dining establishment on the East Side of Providence, R.I. Maybe not the best restaurant east of the Providence River, but surely the best on Thayer Street, often considered the Main Street of Brown University, and the first place most people turn to for a fine meal they needn’t cook for themselves.

We all have our favorite Andreas stories. I met my first wife, Tracey, there in 1990 (she was reading The Sheltering Sky [1949] by Paul Bowles.) I dined there often with my second (and last) wife, Victoria, whom I met at the IGA in 2003. I got behind her in the checkout line and asked her if I could help her eat the pile of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream she was buying. With an ex-boyfriend nearby, she politely declined, but I met her again and over the next year or so wooed her and won her. That’s the very short version of a fine origin story, which I’ve probably told more than three dozen times over meals at Andreas with or without Victoria, whose family ate there whenever they wanted to eat out.

Andreas was famous for its comely waitresses. Now we’re not allowed to say that, but it was okay for many years until the owner, or one of the managers, or so I heard, got in trouble for favoring attractive waitresses. For shame! Lookism is, I believe, the name that the woke have given to my crime.

In the 1980s, I once dined outdoors at Andreas with the famous Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky along with several student conservatives from the Brown Conservative Union, or some such title. For that matter, I think it was Bukovsky. Time fogs all rear view mirrors. Mine has been foggy for, I believe, seven decades.

Long ago, also in the 1980s, I began an evening of drinking with Sheldon Whitehouse, then Rhode Island’s junior U.S. senator, at Andreas. He had been introduced to me by my colleague at the Journal, Irving (“Shel”) Sheldon (no relation). We bumped into each other on the sidewalk outside of Andreas. Whitehouse and I started there and went on to The Hot Club, or some such place, where we met a tipsy young lady, name forgotten. Every other word she uttered started with the letter f. 

She and I left Whitehouse to his own devices and went to a downtown nightclub called One Step Down, where we planned to play a game of pool (this was, thank God, long before I had my own pool table overlooking the Plunder Dome at Loft 501 in the Smith Building, or who knows where we would have ended up and what the f I might have contracted). On our way into One Step Down, she met a gang of motorcyclists of her acquaintance parked outside. She began a-smooching them one after another to beat the band. I never saw her again, or at least not knowingly. I never saw Whitehouse again, either, I don’t think. No big loss.

Andreas closed down for seven months to remodel back in 2021, and reopened that November. Andreas first opened up in 1966 and has served authentic Greek fare ever since, along with tasty cuisine from elsewhere. It has long featured outdoor seating along Thayer and Meeting streets. In the warmer months the parade of pulchritude is no less than astonishing. All night long. Thayer is narrow so the parade redoubles on the other side, beyond an always annoying twin string of parked SUVs – always SUVs, it seemed – which always blocked the view.

Were I king of Providence, I would enact legislation to ban SUVs from parking parallel to an outdoor scene on Thayer, or any other street with a sidewalk dining scene. That goes against my political instincts. In a foul mood, I would extend this ban to parking spots outside of window seating indoors. Go ahead, try me!

Well, Andreas’s phone is disconnected, and you can find a smattering of stories online that attest to its closure. I hope it’s not shut for good – though why remodel twice in four years? If it reopens, I’ll be back!

Editor’s Note: From Andreas’ Facebook page – yet the building sits in wait:

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To read other articles by David Brussat: https://rinewstoday.com/david-brussat-contributing-writer/

My freelance writing and editing on architecture and others addresses issues of design and culture locally and globally. I am a member of the board of the New England chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, which bestowed an Arthur Ross Award on me in 2002. I work from Providence, R.I., where I live with my wife Victoria, my son Billy and our cat, Gato. If you would like to employ my writing and editing to improve your work, please email me at my consultancy, [email protected], or call (401) 351-0451.