Courtland Club

The story

51 Courtland Street is a corner building on a residential West End block that has spent a century being whatever the neighborhood needed. In the 1920s and '30s it housed bakeries — Public Service, Parisi, and Crugnale, the name behind Rhode Island's pizza strips. The twin baking ovens are still built into the back wall. Around the end of World War II, with soldiers home and looking for somewhere to sit, the building turned over to social clubs: the Santa Maria Incoronata di Puglia, the San Bernardo Society, and, briefly, one called The Old Man Club.

Jason “Jay” Shechtman opened Courtland Club here in 2018 and kept the building's habit of not explaining itself. There is no sign, and the keypad beside the front door is not actually locked — you turn the knob. Inside: concrete floors, wooden ceiling beams, brick in several ages of color, a stained-glass window, a marble-topped bar down one wall, candlelit tables, dark booths in front of the old ovens, and an open kitchen with an arched window and a waist-high door. Twelve bottle lockers, honeycomb mesh across each, run deep into the wall.

It works as cocktail bar, restaurant and small music room at once. The kitchen runs as Paula's, chef Panagiota “Paula” Agganis's “Greek-ish” menu — spanakopita wheel, gemista, fried halloumi with Wishing Stone Farm peaches, skewers of Baffoni's Poultry Farm chicken. Most of the bar's bitters, liqueurs and infusions are made on site, including an Italian-style amaro built by beverage director Laura and sold, inevitably, as Lauramaro. Sundays belong to Leland Baker & Friends, a jazz night that has played the Newport Jazz Festival and been named Best Local Jazz Night by Rhode Island Monthly; Fridays are The Big Dig, a vinyl-only DJ series. Membership exists but has never been required.