Saje Kitchen — Restaurant in Providence

If Guy Fieri and Drake decided to build out a new kind of entertainment venue, they might choose to put a second floor nightclub atop a first floor restaurant, and then market both as the place to come get bottle service and bottomless mimosas. And even if they did, they still couldn't make a restaurant as unique as Saje.

Look, this is nominally a Southern Food restaurant. But what it really is, as far as I can tell, is an intimate Black entertainment space, that just so happens to have tables, purple neon lighting, a menu with nominally Southern food (But it must be said, "Southern Street Corn" is the LEAST "Southern" of these foods, as it is really Mexican Elote Corn, a street snack one can find in Mexico, but that one will never, ever find in the U.S. South, particularly on the street), great music selection (I will never again feel complete in a restaurant if Frank Ocean's "Novacane" is not accompanying my appetizer), speakers that are so loud the dining room shakes, deliberately kitschy mixed drinks (like the Gatorade-Ice-Blue Papa Smurf, or the bloodroot-red "Love Potion"), and lighting that is not designed to help you see your food or even the people you are eating your food with, but is instead designed to make you believe that you are having a dining experience inside of the VIP lounge of a dance club.

If you can accept that all of this together can create a worthwhile experience, and you can get past the fact that the above-described vision doesn't come with an instruction manual to help the hostess or the managers or the waitpersons execute on that vision, but that instead everyone at Saje is, through improvisation, trying to make sure that their customers are having a vibe....then you are ready to come to Saje.

I am an almost-forty year old white guy. My friend's credit card company rep recommended that our group of six 30- and 40-something parents of young children, who came out to Providence to get away from said children for two days, go to this restaurant during our visit to Providence. Neither I nor anyone I was with was ready for the vibe Saje presented when we walked in and were shown to our reserved table. But, Saje nailed that vibe, whatever it is, in a way that I will not soon forget.

I felt welcomed into a set of novel and sometimes jarring (in a good way, in the end) assumptions about what a dining space could be that was far from the assumptions I had dined within for the past 40 years, in the mostly Western-world themed restaurants I have visited most of my life, even when those restaurants were, say, black-owned Soul Food restaurants in the South (that don't, it must be said, ever serve "Southern Street Corn", which, again, is NOT a thing!) that still mostly function within a traditional Western (read: European, read: yt) restaurant model. As a result, the experience was exciting, fun, and, dare I say, enlightening.

The food is fine. Much of it is not, it must be said "Southern", and there's a range of items on the menu that fit somewhere between bar food and side dish, but feature prominently instead as main dishes. And as others have said here, some of it came out reheated (I see you reheated asparagus and reheated cauliflower). But the food within the context of everything here is, as far as I can tell, a filler for the rest of the very real vibe of the exciting experiment that is Saje.

Go...

I came to Saje tonight for my best friend’s birthday with high expectations after seeing the several glowing reviews. Unfortunately, this was not my experience.

Cons: The music was very slow (and mostly sensual) R&B which was not the vibe I expected. I love my R&B but this music did not match the atmosphere and immediately turned me off. But we stayed because we had high expectations for the food. We ordered 3 appetizers and one entree to share. Our entree was brought out less than 5 minutes after our appetizers were served. I was shocked! We felt like we had to rush to eat our appetizers so our entree didn’t get cold. This was poor timing on the staff’s part. It was a very slow night as there were only 3 other tables (with small parties) so I’m not sure why this happened. The biggest disappointment was that the food was under seasoned. We ordered the fried catfish, lobster wontons, and jerk chicken sliders as appetizers. And for the main course: lobster shrimp and grits. The appetizers were all under seasoned and the lobster shrimp and grits had a very pungent fishy aroma (and not in a good way). I love seafood so this was very disappointing. Needless to say, I sent the lobster, fish and grits back because I didn’t feel safe eating it. The toilet could use a good cleaning.

We were so disappointed in the food and the entire experience that we left after 30 minutes of being there and barely touched our food, and didn’t finish our drinks. We declined to take the leftovers home which was 75% of the food we ordered. I left hungry! When we received our bill, the waitress informed us that gratuity was automatically added to the bill at 20%. It is NOT standard restaurant practice to add gratuity to a bill for a party of 2 with a small bill. The service from our waitress was fine so I didn’t argue with them about this; I paid the bill and we left.

We did let our waitress know that we didn’t enjoy the food, which she apologized for. There was a gentleman sitting at the bar who I believe was the manager or leadership of some sort. He sat nearby at the bar the entire night, but never came over to apologize for the food or to ask how he could make our experience better. That was disappointing. The only good part of the experience was that complimentary birthday cake with sparklers they provided.

Overall, I am very disappointed in my experience and my best friend did not get the birthday experience...

Last night we came to RI to celebrate my husband's 48th birthday. My cousin suggested that we go to Saje for dinner after leaving Freeplay and before going to the Cadillac Lounge. There was a large group of 11 with us and they serviced all of us with no prior reservation. Which I appreciated!!! The restaurant atmosphere is very relaxed and chill. The bathroom was clean and I loved that they have real candles. Very romantic. . Music was exactly our vibe. We had the rum punch for 4. Delicious!!!!

With a large party it is expected that there may be bumps in the road. My husband is a cook so it can be challenging to go out to eat with him and often times we eat at home. With that being said husband ordered the saje ragoon, it was significantly overcooked. He also ordered creole jambalaya, while the shrimp and fish was really good and the rice was seasoned well but was also overcooked and hard, as if it was scrapped from the bottom of the pan.

The waitress had challenges. She didn't introduce herself so I never knew her name. In her defense she was distracted by two of the single men in our party who kept talking to her while she was trying to take and serve our order. She became flustered and overwhelmed and I think she should have asked or received help from her team. The result was, by the time I received my southern fried chicken with parmesan penne our entire party had finished eating and we were ready for the bill.

I ended up warming my food in the microwave and eating when I returned to my Airbnb to change between the next venu. However, my food was very very tasty.

Would I try Sage again? YES!!!! Would I bring a...