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Temple Downtown
Rating Details »
- Hours:
Mon-Thu. 6:30 p.m. - 1:00 a.m.
Fri. 6:30 a.m. - 2:00 a.m.
Sat. 6:30 p.m. - 2:00 a.m.
Sun. 6:30 a.m. - 1:00 a.m.
- Good for Groups:
- Yes
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Parking:
- Street, Valet
- Attire:
- Dressy
- Price Range:
-
$$
- Good for Kids:
- No
- Takes Reservations:
- Yes
- Delivery:
- No
- Take-out:
- Yes
- Waiter Service:
- Yes
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- Yes
- Outdoor Seating:
- No
- Good for:
- Late Night
- Best Nights:
- Fri, Sat
- Happy Hour:
- No
- Alcohol:
- Full Bar
- Smoking:
- No
- Coat Check:
- Yes
14 reviews for Temple Downtown
Environment: 4
Food: 3.75
Service: 4
Drinks: 4.5
Pretty cool place..being a resurrected failed temple turned into hotel/restaurant. A bit poshy, but still classy enough to wear your designer jeans though the rest of the crowd galmours in ties and coats. Most of the peeps seem like business folks, trending the nyc business late night scene.
Love the original graffitti panels surrounding the place. the drinks list is pretty huge...a whole menu for wine, a half menu for beers, and another half one for cocktails.
Came here with a group of 10 for a bday party... Everyones dish was great, but the prices were a bit steep for what ya got...maybe if your in nyc, but we're in providence yo! I got the scalllops, which cost 23$...I was expecting 5-6 pieces, but the dish came, and it was a whopping 3 pieces..damn! I was left hungry...luckily I split an order of truffle mac+cheese with someone else.
I'd come here again...but with a group...ready to chill....perhaps I'll just come here for drinks and kick it in the backroom louge which is pretty swank...candles and all. yeah, i'll come back for drinks and maybe small bites...but not for dinner cause i know many other great bites in providence...fed hill!
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In theory this should be a great place. The space is amazing The decor is sleek and modern, but in the restaurant portion, it verges on a combination of pretentious and tacky which I think could only be found in Rhode Island. I have been here three times. Once was for dinner, and the server was pleasant, but in an effort to help one of his fellow servers pick up a dropped item, he proceeded to lose his balance, and with it went the precariously held tray full of our drinks. I might mention the food was forgettable.
Another time we were solely at the bar, and this was perfectly fine, though it's admittedly hard to mess up 2 vodka tonics, though they did manage to honor my request for both a lemon AND lime in the drink.
The third time I was here, the scantily clad waitress proceeded to spill a glass of red wine on 2 of the people in our party. She offered my friend a black paper napkin to clean the wine off of her light-colored shirt (makes a lot of sense, why not just draw on it with a Sharpie). She then brought over the check right away (2 minutes later, I'm not exaggerating) even though the place wasn't close to closing and we didnt indicate that we were done.The response when she did not comp anything was "Well, I didn't spill the ENTIRE glass." The manager then came over, in a suit which could best be described as ill-fitting, and instead of being genuinely apologetic, issued us pre-written apology lines and asked us "Is there anything else you weren't satisfied with?" We then paid $4 for our car which was essentially abandoned on the street with the valet nowhere to be found.
Pray for this former masonic temple. It's a place with a lot of potential, but they need to work on their customer service in a major way.
Had not been here in awhile so we thought we would give it another try. Went for drinks only on a Friday night, we there roughly 10pm to midnight. The dining room did not have a soul, completely empty and dark. The bar and lounge area throughout the course of the evening had maybe 10-15 people flowing in and out. Again none of the bartenders were the same, service was spotty at best. Can not believe this place is going to last. Seems not even built in business from the hotel can bring people in here.
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1 Previous Review: Show all »
-
5/3/2009
I will start with the one plus, decor, all downhill from there. The food is terrible, expensive and… Read more »
Ok so we are in agreement the decor is great but my positive perspective stops there.
The food is not good. Can I just say it- can we not tip toe around it....yuck!
For lunch my dining partner and I ordered take out from the manager's podium.
We chose the truffled mac and cheese (elbow macaroni with a slight flavor of aged cheddar....slight!, garden salad- coated in dressing...I mean sopping in it and a mushroom and spinach pizza- greasy greasy and greasy...and they forgot the spinach but we forgot until after we ate it so I cant blame it all on them). The manager who was the only one working the lunch shift seemed highly disoriented by the process of our order (everything from finding a pen for us to sign the slip to trying to tell us there were no bags for the 4 boxes of takeout and two glass bottles of water we were trying to leave with....ummmm. not acceptable- we asked her to check again and she returned after a while with an old crinkled shopping bag....good enough, good enough.
I also need to comment on the oh so popular graffitti. Cool ok. I know when they took over the building the entire interior was decorated in the graffitti and so this is a hip way to remain connected to it's history. What I happened to notice was that a lot of the "original graffitti" that was left behind highlighted some tags of the local boys gangs within Providence. Ummm..not so cool. I was laughing to myself as I watched some 50 something year old diners looking at the graffitti'd door in awe and complimenting the restaurant's salute to current urban living......
If I want to look at some gang tags, I know the streets, bridges and buildings to drive by. Not something I am particualrly interested in nor is it something I prefer to glance at while having a dining expeirience.
Temple- mediocre food, candles and gang tags. Thank you Providence!
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I went there with two girlfriends in a Tuesday night, so it felt a little empty for such a large place (although the bar was still packed with an older crowd). The staff was uber-friendly, and the drinks were great (I had the Juner, which was a little too sweet but still well-done). We had three appetizers: The spinach/feta pizza was a little on the salty side, but the sauce and dough were good, so I think a different pizza would be a good choice; the French fries, which were perfect; and the calamari, which I did not like -- there was too much dough on it, and the sauce was too heavy on the mayonnaise without enough flavor. But all in all, we had a good experience. The place felt very Christmassy.
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All show, little substance
Good place to see be seen. Scratch the surface and you find it's all a veneer.
The bar has the same-old middle of the road stuff except for a few cognacs to please big spenders. Boring single malts, tired old Bourbon. The bartender I talked to was woefully ignorant of what they had. The rest of the staff was young and inexperienced. Definitely chosen for appearance and not for the job.
Providence definitely needed a place like this.
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Hippest lounge/bar area in Providence, hands down. Very relaxed space for lounge and some creative signature cocktails in addition to all the usuals.
Dining area is fairly open and not too crowded or noisy. We were there with a group of 10 and they had no problems accomodating us. Food was excellent with some creative choices (tempura rabe), but wide enough range for everyone to find something to enjoy.
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What a hip and stylish addition to the nightlife of Providence!
Located in the new Renaissance Providence Hotel, this place completely compliments the modern and hip atmosphere that the hotel embodies.
So relaxing, comfortable, and exciting to be here. Velvet cushions, couches, and stools litter their lounge. Candles provide the light. Delicious food comes quickly and trash disappears. Portions are generous.
Service is excellent. The bartenders can make anything you can think of. Come here for a nice night out, or an impressive date.
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We went here one night, and the atmosphere is truly unlike anything else in providence. I wouldn't say it was 'relaxing' but pretty cool.
we were just getting a few things to eat here, and i Have to say, i was quite underwhelmed with the food we got. We had a pizza, and it was too expensive and not very tasty. and then we were still hungry, so we ordered the broccoli rabe tempura, which i had heard good things about, but was too bitter and the sauce tasted odd.
Our first round of drinks took too long to come (they came after the pizza), and our waiter apologized, but they were very very good. We ordered more drinks and they too took over 10 minutes to come, the bar was very full and the waiter said something like "i don't know who would want to wait that long for drinks" yeah, exactly. He messed up our 2nd drink order (brought us the same as a first drink) so we got another drink on the house, which was ok with us, the drinks were really fantastic, much better than the food we had.
As we were leaving some guys in baseball caps came in and knocked down the candles on the stairs, laughed, and didn't pick them up. It felt like there were alot of guys like this at the bar, unfortunately. But the drinks were really really good.
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Just for drinks, this place is rad. Ive heard the food is meh, so I skipped. On a Wednesday night, the place was jumping, if folks over the age of 45 can still jump. This place will become a see and be seen place, im sure, but that isnt always a bad thing. The attached lounge has a cool concept, taking the actual graffiti that riddled the outside of the Temple and using it as the decor. I enjoyed it, reminiscent of many hotel lounges in larger US/Euro cities. We just grabbed a couple of drinks at the bar, because they dont have service in the lounge, which is stupid, but whatever, I have feet. The bartender was kinda bitchy and too cool (Amy Winehouse meets Avril Lavigne) but she was quick. Drinks were priced as you would expect ($5 draft, $7-9 cocktail). This place has a great atmosphere for those not wanting to club it or dive it, just a nice place to sit back and sip. Or chug. Oh, great bathrooms by the way. Music could have been a bit louder, it was lounge muzak, but wasnt quite able to drown out surrounding conversations.
The big BUT....Valet was ridiculous. The dude charged me which is fine, but said they were leaving at 11 and I got there at 10:50. He parked my car LITERALLY 5 feet (not even a full car's length) from where i had pulled up on the street and then gave me back my keys and said I could leave whenever, because valet was done. What the fuck are you valeting for? Then he asked for three bucks, I gave him a five, and he said he had already changed out for the night so he had no singles. Quite the grift indeed.
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Food was forgetable but I really wasn't there to eat I was there for the atmosphere and drinks. It is Beautiful and very chic. The service was good and not in your face. The room off the bar is beautiful really beautiful, very Euro/New York. The food was not something I would go for again.
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So gorgeous and Manhattan. Temple in the new Masonic Renaissance Hotel across from the Capitol (next to the mall) is a secret underground paradise. Pricey, but they work for it. The bar is pristine and the menu is spot on. Happen to visit here and the comparable Local 121 in the same week and Temple put Local 121 to shame. Perhaps it's that corporate training, but the place was elegant, organized and eager to please.
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I have been here three times since the bar opened last year. The first time, I loved it. I was able to score a couch in the back and the ambiance was great. The had drinks on the menu that I haven't seen in a long time... most notably, Caipirinha's, and the drinks were good - expensive but good. The next time, it was noticeably more crowded, but it was still nice. The third time though, I was disappointed. The bartender tried to have me pay 2 dollars more for the drink than what was listed on the menu. I argued it down the first time, but lo and behold, the next time I ordered the same drink the second bartender tried to charge me 3 dollars more than what the menu listed. Kid you not. The place was too packed and the service was too poor to deal with this hassle. Yes, the decor is great, and the drinks are good, but I'm not willing to be swindled in order to experience those two things.
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I just got home from this over-hyped restaurant and felt the need to write a review while my experience is still fresh in my mind. Normally, having had such a remarkably bad experience as I've just had, I would not waste the time and energy thinking about it any further, much less write about it, but frankly I feel that my experience was so terrible that it would be unjust to potential future patrons if I did not share it / forewarn them.
The decor is very nice, and I agree with my fellow reviewers that it is hip and trendy. In fact, one forgets he/she is in Rhode Island upon walking in and experiencing the candle-lit room. Unfortunately for the owner, the rest of the experience falls short of the decor. The food is enjoyable but painfully over-priced. Case in point: the "crab-cake" appetizer, which serves just 1 and sells for a whopping $12. Yes, $12 for ONE crab-cake. It's approximately 3 inches in diameter. ...Given the Manhattan-esque surroundings, one might be inclined to overlook the skewed menu pricing, but the service is so regrettably poor that it makes a patron wonder what the heck they're actually paying for here besides the decor.... Mediocre food and under-experience waitstaff sum up Temple.
We were served by a variety of wait staff, all of whom were friendly- but in an unrefined, puppy-dog sort of way. None of them seemed to know their role. Our water glasses were never topped off, nor did we ever see the sommelier once, despite ordering several glasses of wine and a bottle. Instead, our unrefined goofball waiter (whose last job , based on his serving style, was most likely at Applebees) poured wine for us, slamming the neck of the bottle down on each of our wine glasses as he did so and dripping wine everywhere. He grossly misinformed us as to how much food we were ordering. Our waiter erroneously lead us to believe that we needed 1 appetizer per person; yet upon doing so, we had a table full of [overpriced] food which, had we eaten, would have been so much that we would have had no room for our entrees. The entrees were brought by Mr. Goofball and a cast of buffoons, each equally clueless as their leader. They dropped down our entrees without clearing our appetizers, leaving us awkwardly dangling our appetizer plates in the air to make room for the entrees. After some of us were done eating, a very eager woman who was not very fluent in English came around to clear our plates before the rest of the party was finished..... a MAJOR, unforgivable FAUX PAS! Serving staff at any decent restaurant should NEVER clear any plates unless everyone in the party is finished eating. We shoo'ed her away and finished our meals, and when she returned, she took only 2 of our plates away (despite us all telling her we were finished eating) and we never saw her again. It was another 5 minutes before Goofball came over to clear up the rest of our plates and offer us dessert. We asked to see a dessert menu to which he replied that they didn't have one and instead uttered with a foolish grin, "I am the dessert menu" and proceeded to recite a list of very basic desserts like New York Cheesecake. Unimpressed, we passed on dessert and instead received our bill -- over $200 for 4 people. Certainly, our average food and painfully pathetic service in no way reflected the prices we were expected to pay for it.
We thought that was the end --that we were finished being victimized by inexperienced restaurant staff-- but we were mistaken as we headed out to retrieve our car from the valet. The valet, mind you, CHARGES a fee. Temple is indeed the first restaurant I've ever heard of that charges its patrons for a valet service AND parks their cars on the street. My car was literally parked 4 feet from the restaurant entrance, yet because of the 2 very disorganized valet staff, I was made to wait 7 minutes for my keys. When I received my keys, the valet simply handed them to me and did not even bother to open the door to the car or at least back it up for me. Instead, he boxed my car in by double-parking an SUV next to me and thus I waited another 4 minutes or so for him to get his act together.
Considering the high quality of restaurant food and service in Providence, Temple will no doubt be out-competed in a short amount of time. Ironically it hasn't even had its official grand opening yet, but it's already a failure in every possible way, mostly due to its vast array of unqualified / inexperienced staff members. In fact, we were there on a Friday night at 8pm and the place was quite empty, so perhaps (and hopefully) the more discerning local patrons are already taking notice that this place is all for show.
I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS HORRIBLE RESTAURANT!
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