Tavern in The Square — Restaurant in East Greenwich

About a month ago my husband and I were visiting Newport, Rhode Island for a weekend getaway from Connecticut, and for our first dinner in RI, we decided to go with a familiar and comforting choice—Tavern in the Square. We’ve been to the Connecticut location and always loved the food, so we were excited to try the East Greenwich spot.

To start, we ordered the guacamole and chips—delicious as always. For dinner, my husband went with the steak tips, and I ordered my favorite: the Bayou Chicken Pasta. I had requested no bacon in my dish due to religious dietary restrictions, and our server (whose name I didn’t catch, but he had dark curly hair and was incredibly kind and professional) made sure to note it.

While waiting for our food, I admired how many appetizing dishes were coming out of the kitchen—everything looked great! Our server checked on us a few times, and during the meal, the manager, Kayla, stopped by to introduce herself. She was warm, attentive, and clearly keeping a close eye on the dining room to ensure everything was running smoothly.

Unfortunately, when my dish arrived, I noticed it had bacon in it. I immediately stopped eating. We let our server know, and he was very apologetic, explaining that it must’ve been a kitchen mistake. He offered to have the dish remade, but by then, I had lost my appetite. Kayla came over shortly after to apologize personally and offered both a new entrée and a dessert, which I politely declined since I was already full. I appreciated their efforts to make things right.

The restaurant took my dish off the bill, which was generous and appreciated. But what really stood out was Kayla returning one last time before we left—with a $25 gift card as a sincere apology. That gesture meant a lot. It showed they genuinely cared about the guest experience and wanted to go above and beyond.

This Tavern in the Square location is clean, welcoming, and staffed with genuinely wonderful people. While mistakes happen, it’s how a team handles those moments that sets them apart—and this team did just that.

To the owner: Kayla and our server deserve recognition (and honestly, a raise!). You should be proud to have such dedicated and customer-focused staff. We’ve been to many restaurants, but this visit is one we’ll remember for all the...

It's ok. I find it to be supremely overpriced for what you get. I may be in the minority on this one. Lots of people like it. I think they think they like it. The atmosphere is cool and people tell them it's good so you have to think it's good. I feel it's overrated at best. The service is okay. Food is overpriced for what you get. It's not bad food. It's ok to good but for the price the value is terrible. They reuse the bang bang sauce on everything. It's a good sauce but when 4 gallons is put on everything it waters it down heavily. The chicken sandwich with that sauce on it is great, but the 42 LB of bang bang sauce and 21 lb of that mayonnaise sauce is a tad much. Therefore, 63 lbs of sauce is absolutely ruining the very good bun they use. It needs to be balanced. Good planning. Bad implementation. My wife's sangria drink was 15 bucks, but was filled with Sprite. Who wants a sangria in a small 10 oz wine glass with 7 ozs of ice witj sprite. Where was the sangria? Yes I want to know too. $12 for kids meals with fries and cheese inside of a tortilla, extremely pathetic. The Generals Chicken was very good but the broccoli was tremendously sized and the chicken bites were smaller then some MandMs. Odd. And lastly and most pathetic to me is the nachos. AT $20 with no meat!!! WHATTTT. We are legitimately talking about cheese, tomatoes, and onions and the smallest scoop of guacamole that you have ever seen in your life. Smaller than the most overpriced single scoop ice cream shop guacamole scoop nachos for 20 bucks. Wow. So as explained over 100 for this is just not good value. The value is not here. I think this places hype is behind it. Sadly so. So...

Got 2 meals and 2 apps. Bland food for too much money.

No presentation to speak of on the steak tips. Just plain tips, plain mashed potatoes, and plain rice slapped on a plate. It looked like an oversized tv dinner. The crab rangoons were overcooked. Dark brown, almost burned. Couldn't eat them, luckily my son liked them. He did not like the lemonade, which was watery and pale. He returned it after two sips. It was not removed from the bill, so they probably wouldn't have removed the rangoons either.

The bang bang broccoli was overcooked as well, and over sauced.

The bayou chicken and pasta was the best dish we had. It was okay. Nothing to write home about.

Waitress was good, friendly and attentive. Did not stiff her on her tip for the failures of the kitchen.

Hopefully they train their kitchen a bit better on presentation and frying technique.

2 stars are for the waitress. The rest would...