Potenza Ristorante-Bar

My husband and I have frequented chef Walters restaurants for many years. We have always been very satisfied with service and food. However this latest visit for our anniversary celebration we left very displeased with the food and the attitude of server. I ordered pork loin with an apricot demiglace and goat cheese. I received two center cut pork chops with two dried apricots and a dab of cheese in the center. When I questioned this I was told it was loin. I Have ordered this dish many times in the past and it has always done with the pork loin and always exceptional. (I even tried to recreate it at home myself) .not pork chops… well it was dry, chewy and stringy and the sauce was not walters usual… when asked if I wanted to take it home I told the owner it was dry and I did not want it. never asked if I would like some thing else. Questioning why I would say it was dry.
My husband always orders the veal pocket and he is Always very satisfied. this time he was not. He asked if chef Walter was in the kitchen and was told Walter hasn’t cooked the last 20 times we had been here. That was not relevant to what he asked but anyway. .he told her the veal was bad tasting and nervy and not what we were used to buy chef Walter. Her response was we don’t raise the cow, and you should have told me earlier Besides being an unprofessional answer it was insulting. We are regular guests at this establishment or should I say we WERE… Sorry to say we will no longer be following chef Walter. Chef Walter you need to check what is being served while you are away from the restaurant. Obviously the kitchen staff cannot follow your recipes. As for how we were treated this was totally not called for?

Had a delicious dinner with my family, there were 7 of us and everyone loved what they had. The appetizers were great and my main course of chicken parm was excellent. I also stole some chicken marsala from my step daughter which was also very good. We booked my rehearsal dinner there for next month before my wedding and I know it will be a exceptional meal now that I have been there.

Recently my friends took me to Potenza for a birthday celebration. The food was incredibly prepared and presented. We lingered through our meal for almost 4 hours! Superb! Chef Walter is gracious and makes you feel at home! Most importantly also an incredible chef!
thank you Chef Walter for this experience!

Always enjoyable. Great food made to order. Comfortable ambiance. New favorite restaurant. Can’t wait to go back.

Potenza is fabulous! Most of their clientele seemed familiar with the place, as well as the chef and servers. The restaurant itself is very welcoming, and is in a renovated home. It’s moved around from East Greenwich to Federal Hill, and now Cranston, but the food never changes. Very unique menu, homemade desserts, and so many gluten free options :)
My only complaint was with the ‘bread’ delivered to the table before the meal — they use pizza dough in place of real Italian bread, but it’s not particularly good. This seemed to be an anomaly though, since everything else, from the appetizers to the pastas to the salad, is fantastic!
I will definitely be returning, and I love that the chef’s family vineyard actually supplies some of the oils and seasonings available at the door for purchase. Everything is made with love here.
P. S. — Try the gelato.

Great people, food, learning about food, trying new food, exceptional I over all experience!

I am thinking of my review as a new one, and not an update, because the restaurant is no longer on Federal Hill in Providence, but is now located on Mayfield Avenue in Cranston (which is the location of Chef Walter’s former second restaurant, The Sunshine Café). In any event, the food on this past Saturday night was as good as ever and the service was magnificent.
My husband had a duck dish which was excellent and I ordered baked pasta in red sauce — gluten free! — and it was excellent as well. My husband had a lovely gelato dessert and I passed on dessert on that occasion because I was totally stuffed from my delicious pasta dish.
I would have had a cookie IF they had some gluten free cookies lying around :-) — they did have four or five covered glass jars on a table with delicious looking cookies in them, but alas, none were gluten free. :-(I was told to call in advance next time and Walter would be sure to have some gluten free cookies in one of those adorable old fashioned glass jars. Walter, I would recommend you make some lovely meringue cookies — they are not only gluten free, but they hold up for a long time, in addition to being delicious.
So this is my update, or new review — since the restaurant is in a totally different location — whichever. I am still as happy as ever with Potenza’s and we are going back again soon.

Food and service was excellent. What a pleasant surprise and a wonderful way for us to end our New England vacation. I still marvel how the crusted pears sautéed in butter covered with gelato and sauce made for such a fabulous desert. While I’m a bit picky, You won my soul. And the background music and décor set the perfect tone for this wonderful dinning experience,

Wonderful dinner ! The chief is superb! Dinner was extrodinary ‘.

POTENZAS is an adventure worth the trip to far away Mayfield Avenue.
Franchise restaurants are popular because the public wants to be fed the familiar. POTENZAS is a niche restaurants which offers a place to dine on excellent well prepared food that varies to suit the mood of the artist.
The chef suffers for his art. He expects excellence, and he delivers.

Dear Walter — So you’ve moved your wonderful cooking to a small house on an out-​of-​the-​way street near Marshall’s on Route 5. That’s great, as parking is just a tiny bit easier than it was on Atwells Ave., although there aren’t a lot of spaces.
But you’re now in a small, not to say crowded space, with low ceilings and lots of hard surfaces and not much elbow room between tables. For the sake of getting to eat your wonderful cooking, I could live with this, although when you get a boisterous bunch of folks drinking hard and laughing uproariously at the next table, your own conversation may become a struggle.
Here is what I can’t live with: a boombox playing bad thumpy music that echoes unpleasantly off the hard surfaces. If you must play music in that tiny space, get a decent sound system and stick to Andrea Bocelli, or Sinatra, something pleasing and percussion-​free– or even better, just turn it off. It’s not creating atmosphere, it’s giving customers a headache!
We did ask to have it lowered, but someone kept cranking it back up. It made for a most unpleasant evening.
I’m a long-​time fan and I hate to give up eating your food but the radio, or whatever it is, needs to go bye-​bye.
Thanks for listening!

Wonderful surprise. After all, it is Chef Potenza, don’t know what I expected other than greatness! The menu was so creative, so artful. Chef made dishes that were seasonally on point clearly based on what was fresh that day — roasted beets with Gorgonzola and balsamic reduction.
We tried polenta with seasonal woodshead mushrooms. Fabulous. Calamari, equally fab. Dinner was a delight and so was the service. Attentive, but not bothersome. This may be our new «our place».
An added bonus is that the Chef is certified in Gluten Free and Diabetic cooking so you can be confident that you will be safe trying anything they offer in those categories. He’s so good he doesn’t even have to have separate menus for those specialty items. Just let them know your allergy issues and they prepare delicacies to die for.