People in Providence will tell you, with a certain flat confidence, that The Avery is just a bar. That’s true. It’s also the kind of bar you end up staying at for three hours when you planned to stay for one, so maybe it deserves a little more than that.
The Avery sits on Chestnut Street in the West Side, a neighborhood that has accumulated a critical mass of interesting places without quite tipping into the self-congratulatory phase. The bar opened in 2018 and has the bones of an old building — exposed brick, high ceilings, the smell of wood and not-unpleasant mustiness — which Providence has in abundance. What it doesn’t have is the studied rustic affectation that usually accompanies those bones. The Avery looks like a room that simply is what it is.
Reason one to go: the drinks list is genuinely considered. The cocktail menu rotates and leans toward things that taste like someone thought about them — amaro-forward builds, thoughtful uses of bitter and herbal, nothing that arrives in a jar with a mason-lid or a glitter rim. The beer selection skews local and rotating, with a few well-chosen imports for people who have strong opinions about Belgian saisons. Wine is short and honest. You will not feel talked down to ordering a beer, and you will not feel like a rube ordering a Negroni. This is rarer than it should be.
Reason two: the layout. There’s a main bar, some booth seating, and a back patio that becomes genuinely pleasant from May through October. The patio is strung with lights and doesn’t try too hard — no fake grass, no branded umbrellas — and on a Thursday evening it fills up with the kind of mixed crowd that Providence at its best produces: RISD faculty next to nurses from Lifespan next to grad students arguing about something that doesn’t matter. The noise level stays manageable, which is not something you can say about half the bars in this city.
Reason three: the food. The Avery keeps a focused kitchen that runs until late, which alone earns it permanent residency in my mental Rolodex. The menu changes but typically offers a few shareable plates, some sandwiches, maybe a rotating grain bowl situation. It’s bar food that takes itself seriously without becoming a whole thing. The smash burger, when it’s on, is very good. Fries are properly salted. This matters.
It gets crowded on weekends. If you go on a Friday night after ten, you will be standing, and you will be fine with it, mostly. Weeknights are better for actually sitting and talking. Happy hour runs early enough to be useful — check their Instagram for current hours since they update it more reliably than their website. Expect to spend $12–16 on a cocktail, $7–10 on beer, $14–18 on food. Parking on the West Side requires a brief negotiation with the streets around it; a ten-minute walk from the bus lines on Broadway is realistic.
The Avery is not trying to be your favorite bar. It has somehow, for a lot of people, become exactly that.
