Rhode Island Billiard Bar & Bistro

My Girlfriend and I went here last night for apps and drinks after work. They had a clever list of David Bowie based cocktails, and a generous list of beers. Our Waitress signed us up for the beer drinking club, where if you drink 108 different beers you get your name on the wall, and get a special mug to drink out of and a shirt.
The food was very tasty, with generous portions and overall was very inexpensive. We finished off with a Nutella Calzone and my only complaint was that they did not include a complimentary insulin shot.
Great bar, great service, good food. I will definitely be back to shoot a few rounds of pool and knock a few beers off of that list.

Stopped in with the Food Fights for wings coupon. HUGE billiards place that I never knew existed before so kudos to them for participating in the Food Fights to draw in more customers! Now if I went there just for beer and billiards I would say this place is great. The beer selection is extensive so anyone who enjoys a good craft beer will be thoroughly impressed. The food was just ok. We got three different kinds of wings (that is all they offer for flavors): Buffaque, Buffalo, and BBQ. They weren’t cooked really well so they tended to be fatty vs if they had fried a little longer they would have been decent. The flavor was fine, nothing exciting. We also ordered nachos, they were your basic nachos, nothing to write home about.
So if you are looking to play pool, have some good beer and maybe an app then I would suggest checking this place out!

Manager talked to me first thing, looks great didn’t try food but don’t understand the bad reviews

Place is bigger than it look and always enough space to beat a couple of friends in pool and have a drink and some food while you do it

I’ve stopped in once in a while over the past few years — more frequently recently as I moved much closer. Every time has been consistently good. It’s a spacious place — even on a full night, you still feel like you have room to roam around and look at all the neat pool/​beer memorabilia hugging the walls.
Probably the best way to experience this place is to actually walk around, grab a game of pool, a beer and some grub. The service I’ve gotten is very attentive, even when it’s busy — that’s important if you’re moving around the place with your friends. I’m used to PVD drink prices — you can find some very reasonably priced drinks here, it’s not a famously exhaustive selection of brews a la Mews or the Doherty’s franchises, but still an impressive bottle selection combined with about 20 taps breaks the hundred mark. Domestic standbys and crafts living in harmony.
Even if pool’s not your style, the main bar is pretty roomy — there’s also a moderately-​sized seating area up front, where you can ogle the pool players or take in the quaint small business strip on Smith Street from the full wall windows, which are usually propped open in the summer.
Live music on occasion, usually classic-​rock bands, pairs well with the pool and not too intrusive. You’ll get a mixture of older blue collar townies and college kids — on the whole a pretty relaxed crowd. If your entourage is not looking to be confined to a booth at a restaurant, or in a crowded city bar, this is a nice alternative.

Starting to Like This Place
I used to not like this spot, but now after recent frequent visits, it’s growing on me. They have live music a couple nights a week, obviously like 20 professional pool tables, good drink prices, and the staff is always very hospitable.
Tip:
Free pool for RIC students on Sunday nights, I think.
If you want to play some pool and grab a drink, this spot is pretty cool.
Thanks

My fiancé and i went there with my son and had a great night. The workers are very friendly. We love going there with family to out hang together. Great food too!

nice place for pool and snooker，and have much more beers！！welcome come back！！Should go to

What an awesome night. Friends playing pool, great music, fab pub fare and amazing service!

The hubby and I went to RI Billiards to see a friend’s band last night. The Stumbling Murphys sounded great and played a little something for everyone. The staff was friendly and attentive. Lots of people playing pool but easy enough to get a table. Diverse crowd. Although we didn’t eat, the pub style food looked and smelled delicious. I loved the décor of this place and the bathrooms were clean. This is a great place for family and friends to enjoy an inexpensive fun night (or day) out. We’ll be back!

Had Tisha as my server .she was very sweet and always made sure my glass was full and my beer was cold. $ 3 a hour for pool, what a deal! I will be coming back

Love the beer specials and 108 beer card. The waitress was great. Drinks were great as well. Very affordable pool.

Had a Living Social coupon for 2 hours of pool, a large 1 topping pizza, loaded skins and a pitcher of beer all for $ 26… We went recently on a Friday early evening. The staff was extremely friendly. We were able to play 7 games of pool. The pizza and app were delicious and the service was very attentive. We had a great time and will definitely come back The place was very interesting, loved the decorations and memorabilia and the waitress shared that there are bands on some weekend nights. We will definitely return.

Lived in North Providence for a few years and never tried this place, partially because of the scary reviews. The husband and I gave it a whirl this evening and had a good inexpensive night out. Stopped in on a Saturday night, the place was not very crowded but it was comfortable. Our server was attentive and we ordered a few rounds of gansetts and some nachos. The food was standard bar food, not bad but not fantastic either, although the guys at the table next to us seemed to enjoy their pizza which smelled pretty good. The crowd was pretty diverse, ranged from some young couples and small groups of friends in their 20’s to a few middle aged couples and everyone was very nice.
I also want to applaud them for serving Narragansett at a reasonable price, just over $ 2 for draft! Not charging $ 6-​$ 8 for a gansett earned them an extra star in my book!
Happy we found a local, laid back, and inexpensive place for a night out, we will be back.

This is a beer joint, but I got. a Martini anyhow. Yeah, a sucky martini. It’s also very bright and the billiards crowd was alive. The bartender took the time to chat, which I thought was cool since he served me a martini in a plastic glass. He admitted that. this is not. the place for a martini, which got cool points for honesty. Will come back for a beer and possibly a game of pool.

RI Billiards is a pool hall with a small bar/​restaurant area. I’ve been here a handful of times over the years and I’ve never had a hard time getting a pool table. They generally charge by the hour rather than by the game, and the prices are affordable.
The crowd — what there is of it — is definitely a North Providence/​Smithfield townie crowd. It’s always been low-​key when I’ve been there and I’ve never felt like people were hovering over me waiting for my table or being all judgy about my suckiness at billiards. I’ve also never seen any static between players or any over-​the-​top fratboy nonsense. It’s just a nice place to go shoot some pool.
They do have food and drinks here, and waitstaff who will bring the drinks to you. The food is pretty much what you’d expect: you want nachos or wings when you’re shooting pool, not a gourmet meal. I usually stick to ‘Gansett when I’m out, but I think they have a handful of different beers as well as a big list of girly drinks.
Even though they have food in drinks, this really isn’t a place to hang out — at least not for me. There’s a huge difference between hanging out at a bar that has a pool table — like Lili Marlene’s or The Wild Colonial, and hanging out at a pool hall that has a bar in it. If you’re super into pool, or are friends with folks who work/​play here, I could see hanging out. but for me once my game is done, there’s not much left to do.

Great place to play. Plenty of tables. They have the only snooker table I’ve seen in RI. They hold tournaments but i wish more people joined.
Im here most of the time so I’m not saying anything that might get me kicked out.

They charge $ 7.50 for a bottle of Newcastle here! They are out of their freaking minds!!!
That’s the thing that really ultimately stuck with me about this place. My friends and I had quite a few problems, from being overcharged to not getting the correct food modifications.
The server’s reaction to my friend’s sandwich not being made correctly? «So, do you want us to make another one?» That must be the reason they have to put up a sign that says «Please tip your pretty waitress.»
There are no prices on the beer list, which is fine, but it’s got inadequate information about the beer. For example, they tell you the brand but not the style. «Smutty». Well, which one? They make a lot of different brews, people.
Also, they couldn’t serve a Coke because it was «funny» and they were out of Sprite. This is a nice establishment and a very classic looking pool hall, but they fail horribly at basic food and drink service.

We should have called the police.
Last night we were robbed and threatened by the owner and staff.
What do you do when you go to a restaurant, the waitress lies to you, they charge you extra for food that was advertised at a certain price and then when you call the owner to complain, he says he’ll make your life «a living hell» if you contest the charges?
Here’s the story, my Unilocaler friends:
Last night was St Patricks Day. My fiancée and two friends wanted to go out to eat, but didn’t want to deal with a place overrun by drunken fratboys. We are teachers and non-​profit workers — we just wanted a calm night. I mentioned that we should go to Nick and Tony’s (now I realize it has a different name) because its not far from where we live, and I’ve been there before to play pool and had pizza there and it was nice. It was also far away from downtown Providence, which meant it was away from the riffraff.
We walk in and there is no one in the restaurant. There’s maybe a few people at the bar, and a few tables of pool going in the background.. Our waitress comes out, and the owner is not far behind her. He asks us if we’ve ever been here before and my fiancée and I say yes. He’s looming over his young waitress (maybe 17 or 18?) and telling us the specials and acting like the waitress isn’t there.
He finally leaves, and we place our order: two small pizzas, two corned beef sandwiches (no cabbage!) and some beer. 15 minutes go by and the waitress comes back from the table and asks if we have a coupon. We say no. We guess that this is her first night on the job, because the service is already terribly slow and kind of… peculiar. 30 minutes go by and she brings out our food. Our «sandwiches» are nothing more than cold, stale pieces of toast on top of a slice of corned beef, which just looks like pastrami, and a side of cole slaw that looks like it had gone bad. I didn’t even have to take a bite to know that I wasn’t going to eat that. My friend, who also ordered the same sandwich, was equally as disappointed. The waitress (finally!) comes back, and we say we are disappointed, we can’t eat this. She says we can order something else and she’d void the sandwiches. So we order a medium pizza.
Then things start to get strange… er.
A young man dressed in a green St Patricks hat comes out from the bar and over to our table with our waitress. He had been drinking some milky green thing, and he looked a little out of it. He asks what the problem is, in a rather confrontational way. We say we weren’t pleased with the food, so we ordered something else. He looked like we just personally offended him, and then said that he couldn’t void out the sandwiches. We look at each other and say, «well, the waitress said she would, and that’s why we ordered more food.» He was like, sorry that’s not going to happen. He also asked us if we have a coupon. We say NO again for the second time. We ask to speak to the manager who had come out earlier to seat us. The young man says that he had gone home already. We ask to speak with him on the phone.
The young waitress and this green St Patty’s hat guy are pacing back and forth past our table (mind you the rest of the restaurant is still empty so we feel like we’re being surrounded by tigers), talking on the cell phone to the owner. The results don’t change, the owner won’t allow his staff to void the sandwiches. My fiancée gets on the phone, who has a great way of sweetly dealing with people in a respectful way. I could tell he was being rude with her because she was quickly losing her steady calm cool that she usually maintains. He had also asked her if we had a coupon!
Finally, we are all frustrated and have lost our appetite. Our new pizza hasn’t even arrived yet — so we just ask for our check. We want to be OUTTA there.
Our check is $ 84??? They upcharged us for nearly everything, including the food we didn’t eat. Our sandwiches were charged for $ 9, when the specials sign said $ 6.99!!! I took a picture of it for the record. We say we’re not going to pay this! The staff says we’re calling the police! and they pick up the phone. We’re standing right next to them, and we realize they just picked up the phone but didn’t dial anything!!! They were just trying to scare us, but really, we WERE hoping they’d call the police so they could settle this for us. We get the owner on the phone again and my fiancée tells him what happened with the check. He says he can’t do anything, and his staff can’t do anything. My fiancée says, «well, that’s fine, I’ll just contest the charges with my card company and then you won’t get anything» and to that the owner says he’ll make her life «a living hell» because they have her name and image on camera. Now, we are forced to pay a bill for food that we didn’t eat, plus it was not charged as advertised, and we were threatened by the owner. We left, $ 90 in the hole, and feeling violated.
Unilocalers, help us — and avoid this place at all costs.

For a pool hall this place is just what your looking for. Plenty of tables, well kept, and well lighted.
There is a bar area that has a large selection of beers. They do have food as well, but I have never eaten here.
It is connected to Capital Billiards, so if you need any supplies its right next door.