I always thought this would be more of a secret spot, a hidden destination. I never knew it would be as renowned as it is today.”

Todd Blount

You drive down Water Street on a Friday night, and every restaurant is packed right now. Every parking lot is full.”

Joel Cary

Yelp Loves Warren Restaurants

(Shown are current Yelp ratings)

WATER STREET

• Blount Clam Shack: 4
• Bywater: 4.5
• Cafe Water Street: 4.5
• Revival Craft Kitchen & Bar: 4.5
• Square Peg: 4
• Tav Vino: 4
• The Admiral Pub: 3.5
• The Guild Warren: 4.5
• The Wharf: 3
• Trafford: 3.5
• Waterdog Kitchen & Bar: 4

COMING SOON

• Chomp: 4.5

NEARBY

• Federal Hill Pizza: 4
• Hunky Dory: 5
• La Piñata: 4.5
• Rhody Roots: 4.5
• Richardson’s: 4
• Uptown Food & Spirits: 4

Could Water Street in Warren hold the densest collection of great restaurants in all of Rhode Island?

It’s been a legitimate question for a few years, and recent developments have only strengthened the obvious answer: Yes, it is.

Already boasting an impressive resumé to begin with, Water Street in the past year has seen the reopening of a gorgeous, waterfront restaurant, the massive renovation of another, and the addition of a brewery with widespread name recognition and waterfront dining.

In a stretch that is less than half a mile (from The Guild at the northern end to Blount Clam Shack at the southern end),Water Street itself is home to 11 restaurants. Eight of the 11 have ratings of 4 or 4.5 (out of 5) on the popular dining app Yelp.

Two of the three with ratings below 4 briefly suffered through rough patches before righting their ships. The Wharf reopened following a massive renovation to lukewarm reviews, but has since turned it around and today offers an extremely popular waterfront experience. The same is essentially true for Trafford.

The third is The Admiral Pub, a beloved combination of food and drink with a devoted, local following, which has a rating of 3.5, still considered very good.

So in less than half a mile, Water Street has nearly a dozen places to eat that are considered very good or great. It will soon be a perfect dozen, when the enormously popular Chomp (4.5 rating) opens next to Café Water Street.

There are other great dining destinations in Rhode Island. Federal Hill has a renown collection of restaurants serving mostly one variety of food. In contrast, Water Street has high-end seafood, a clam shack, pub favorites, great bar scenes, eclectic locally sourced dishes, a darling coffee shop (with must-try crepes), not to mention those spectacular waterfront views.

Newport has some great food districts — good luck parking, and none are as densely clustered as Water Street. The same is true on Main Street in East Greenwich — great character, good eats, but lacking the vibe of Water Street.

Of course downtown Bristol is a great destination, too, but its top restauratns are more spread out than the tightly packed group on Water Street.

The Water Street scene

The Water Street reputation is growing, as evidenced by signs of life at nearly all times of day. A generation ago, Water Street was a cut-through for motorists hoping to avoid the traffic snarls of Warren’s Main Street. Today Water Street is its own destination.

Witness the scenes on a warm summer night: pedestrians up and down the sidewalks, packed parking lots at The Wharf and the town marina; loaded tables on the street corners in front of Square Peg and Revival; a long line at Blount; fire pits roaring at Waterdog and Bywater.

At all times of year, but specially this time of year, Water Street is buzzing.

“You drive down Water Street on a Friday night, and every restaurant is packed right now. Every parking lot is full … There are times when it’s like a mini New York City. On a nice, fall Saturday, it’s just crazy,” said Joel Cary, co-owner with his wife, Amy, of Square Peg.

The Carys opened their doors in 2011. At the time, Water Street was home to four somewhat popular restaurants — Tav Vino, an anchor that has been thriving for decades, The Wharf Tavern, the Nat Porter, and Stella Blues.

“When we first opened, you could count the number of people who walked down Water Street on any given day on two hands,” Cary said. The scene is quite different today, with a surge of activity coming from the hundreds of new residences in the former American Tourister mill at the north end of the street.

“Since the Tourister opened, it’s really exploded,” Cary said.

The inside Dish

Another business owner to witness the explosion is Keri Cronin, who wears multiple hats when it comes to Water Street. A longtime member of the Warren Town Council, which has helped draft zoning plans and ordinances to boost the business community downtown, she has operated her Dish retail shop on Water Street for almost two decades.

“When we took a leap about 20 years ago, people were like, ‘Are you nuts? Water Street in Warren? Nobody goes there. It’s dead,’ Cronin said. “But this is where we wanted to be, for so many reasons.”

Cronin loves the Water Street vibe — historic homes, walkable streets, working waterfront, unique shops, artists, entrepreneurs. “There’s a great mixed-use atmosphere,” she said. “We’ve got people who work here, people who live here, and a lot of people who do both.”

Cronin gives a lot of credit for the Water Street scene to Jen and Nigel Vincent, a husband and wife team who renovated one of Warren’s most historic properties and opened the Nat Porter restaurant in 2004. “That was the birth of it,” Cronin said.

The Vincents were one of the first to invest serious money and attention in Water Street, and though that spot has turned over a couple of times — from Nat Porter to Simply Devine to Waterdog — it has been a draw for almost two decades.

The Blount effect

Another Water Street property owner with a long view of its history is Todd Blount, president of Blount Fine Foods. His family business prepares soups and seafoods and ships them around the country, but they are also proud members of the Water Street dining scene, with their waterfront clam shack featuring fresh seafood favorites and live music throughout the summer.

“I always felt that the buildings and properties of Water Street were underestimated and underutilized, and I was always felt this could someday happen,” Blount said. “But I always thought this would be more of a secret spot, a hidden destination. I never knew it would be as renowned as it is today.”

Blount has done more than just watch his clam shack grow in popularity. He and his firm have invested in the area. He served on the town’s waterfront commission in the late 1990s, when much of the vision for Water Street was conceived. That group strongly favored preservation of a “working waterfront,” with protections for commercial fishermen, manufacturers and commerce.

“We wanted to do our best to make it a working waterfront,” Blount said. Many of those regulations helped avert a proliferation of waterfront condos, and today the restaurants have flourished.

Blount has also invested in the area by cleaning up its own backyard. “We took so much of our fencing out. We took out tractor trailers. We’ve slowly opened up visibility to the waterfront,” he said. “Our yard used to be a mess … It’s night and day how much we’ve cleaned out.”

Visitors from afar

Blount is used to hearing from his Bristol County friends about dining on Water Street; that’s been going on for years. The difference now is that diners are coming from everywhere. Carey at the Square Peg said the same thing, as they see a huge influx of customers from southeastern Massachusetts. So does Cronin: “If you did an arc and captured the edges of Massachusetts and the north and south areas of Rhode Island, that’s where we’re seeing a really strong group of regular visitors to our restaurants. We’re also getting a ton of people from Providence. We’ve also got a huge community of people who have second homes or have family in the area, and they’re going to their favorite restaurants every time they come here.”

Cronin gives a lot of credit to tourism as well, which is where those Yelp reviews really play a role. “We have a ton of visitors in this town now, with VRBO, Airbnb, and short-term rentals,” Cronin said. Many check out the reviews and venture to Water Street.

A symbiotic relationship

All three of the business owners interviewed for this story talked about the symbiotic relationship between the restaurants and the shops on Water Street. Beyond the 11 restaurants, the street is home to places like Cerulean, The Peyton Co., Luca Boutique, Beach Barn, Dish and more.

“This is such a great village business district,” Cary said. “We came in with the thought this would someday be a little walking village.” And that’s what it became.

Cary said the village vibe extends to the owners and employees of the various businesses on Water Street. “It’s a really small community,” he said. Some restaurants share bartenders or waitstaff. They dine in each other’s restaurants. They collaborate on marketing. They look out for each other.

“There’s a really cool, small industry down there,” Cary said.

Asked about the future and whether Water Street can handle more growth in dining and shopping options, Cary was optimistic. “There may be a saturation point eventually, but we haven’t hit it yet.”

Blount, straddling the two worlds of big industry and small shop, is proud to see what’s become of his beloved little street. “We’ve always believed in this area, but we were kind of on our own,” he said.

“We’re very excited to be part of the fabric of what’s happening here now … Like all of Warren, it’s entrepreneurial, and it’s authentic.”