Louis Family Restaurant

About this Property

#Reason for Closing

Brothers John Gianfrancesco, 76, and Albert, 66, announced their retirement and the closing of this iconic diner on the last Sunday of 2025. December 31st, they would serve their last stack of pancakes. Already the second generation of Gianfrancesco’s to run Louis’, there was no new generation ready to take their place.¹

There will be many remembrances of this place that was more than a restaurant. Since it was located in the heart of the student community, many people have come through it doors and spoke of it delights over the years. Many Providence locals who started as Brown students would make their pilgrimage back to Louis whenever they needed a taste of their homestyle cooking.

#Current Events

The diner and building are for sale according to news reports but we have not located a listing.

#History

From the College Hill Historic District nomination form, Edward F. Sanderson & Keith N. Morgan, January 1976

This building is considered “non-contributing” to the district but a description is included in the manuscript: Louis’ (after 1937): 1-story, brick and concrete, flat-roof commercial building, now a restaurant, three bays wide with wood-framed showcase windows flanking a recessed center entry with an aluminum-framed glass door.

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Maps

• 1920–1921 Sanborn Insurance Map, Volume 2, Plate 21 (page 30) — On the block between Benevolent and Charles Field Streets, at portal number 286A, are two conjoined structures that were later replaced. One is labeled a tailor and the other a cobbler shop.
• 1926 G.M. Hopkins Insurance Map, plate 19 — Difficult to tell because the scale of these maps is much smaller, but the structures on the corner look to be the same as the 1921 map.
• 1920–1951 Sanborn Insurance Map, Volume 2, Plate 21 (page 32) — At the same location is a one-story structure in blue, indicating concrete block. Next door at 284 in the rear of the lot are many smaller concrete block buildings as well.
• 1920–1955 Sanborn Insurance Map, Volume 2, Plate 21 (page 26) — Same configuration and information as 1951.

#In the News

Brown University 250 years | Life on College Hill told in 50 different voices

by Andy Smith
Providence Journal | May 25, 2014 (abridged)

[…] In “Number One Tofu Scramble with Johnny Toast,” Robert Arellano, class of 1991, remembers receiving some unconventional therapy for a bout of lovelorn depression, courtesy of Louis Family Restaurant on Brook Street. They made him peel potatoes.

Arellano, a novelist and professor at Southern Oregon University, said he spent 16 years in Providence as a student, graduate student and teacher.

“I knew I wanted to make it personal, and I knew the center of gravity had to be Louis Family Restaurant,” he said. “Those late teen, early 20s years are just hard. I didn’t know how to deal with the things I brought to Brown with me. I kind of needed a family, and [the restaurant] provided that.” […]

— SMITH, ANDY. “Brown University 250 years

Life on College Hill told in 50 different voices.” Providence Journal (RI), 1 ed., sec. Features, 25 May 2014, p. RISLANDER_03. NewsBank: America’s News – Historical and Current, https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info%3Asid/infoweb.newsbank.com&svc_dat=AMNEWS&req_dat=D4BD6B42F1AB4706B5E1244D477DEE03&rft_val_format=info%3Aofi/fmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Actx&rft_dat=document_id%3Anews/15241EBA3349F588. Accessed 25 Jan. 2026.

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Louis | A place to satisfy hunger for the comforts of home

by Gail Ciampa
Providence Journal | June 17, 2010 (abridged)

I love breakfast at Loui’s. I love breakfast at Louis Family Restaurant. Most of all I love breakfast at Louis, just Louis.

I don’t care if there are different names assigned the place depending on whether you look at the sign that juts out over the sidewalk, the awning that provides sun protection from the few tables on the street, or the paper menu. It all spells comfort food.

Last summer I met “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” host Guy Fieri there when he filmed a segment for his Food Network show. Now this College Hill institution is my go-to spot in Providence for some of the best pancakes you never had at Mom’s.

Since 1946, this tiny diner at 286 Brook St. has been enjoyed by college students, local workmen taking a coffee break and indeed anyone looking for a home-cooked meal, and a bargain. The prices are ridiculous. A short stack of pancakes costs $3.80; a full, $5.10. A side of bacon or sausage is $2.25. A half order of Shepherd’s Pie is $3.25, and a full, $5.55. When ordering, go for the smaller portion every time because it’s more than enough.

Louis Gianfrancesco was a cook in the Army and when he got out, he opened the place up. Today, his children run the place, including John and Albert there cooking up a storm.

“As long as they come, I don’t care what they call it,” said John in the low key manner that is his signature there behind the counter.

Nor do I, as long as they keep making the granola, pumpkin or fruit pancakes. I’ve had all three and I love them all. These are pancakes that don’t even need butter. And to put syrup on them would be a travesty. All the pancakes start with the batter from Louis’ Army cookbook, John told Fieri. But how could turmeric and rum be in that book? Whatever that recipe calls for, it’s got it right. The granola ones add in old fashioned oats, raisins, wheat germ, sesame seeds and bran that is baked with fruit, honey and maple syrup. How can they not be amazing? The pumpkin ones are so full of all those great fall spices, you long to rake leaves. I can’t decide which I like better so I order one of each ($1.90 each). The fruit ones, currently strawberries, are drenched and delicious.

Of course there are omelets and hash, egg breakfast specials, with home fries, and breakfast sandwiches, too.

It took me three visits before I was ready to try lunch. Chicken barbecued ravioli is a specialty. They are an interesting blend that starts with marinated chicken shredded and paired with ricotta cheese and stuffed into homemade ravs. The marinara sauce is simple but it completes the ravioli dish.

On Tuesday, the Shepherd’s Pie special is a wonderful version of mashed potatoes, gravy and ground beef paired with peas, spinach and corn. It now rivals breakfast as my favorite dish at Louis. But I like the griddle hamburger and fries, too.

Always, the coffee flows.

Eating alone? There is a counter where you can watch the cooking or you can sit along the wall where photos will occupy you for the very few minutes it takes to get the food hot from kitchen to you.

There are daily board specials and it’s hard to believe this small place offers so many different dishes from sandwiches to Italian specialties to fried scallops.

But everyone loves breakfast and there are as many versions of that as there names for this place. John Gianfrancesco surprised me by telling me about the Brown University students who appear at the door when they open at 5 a.m. If they’ve been up studying all night, they love an order of fish and chips to start the day. […]

— CIAMPA, GAIL. “REVIEW - Louis | A place to satisfy hunger for the comforts of home.” Providence Journal (RI), 1 ed., sec. Lifebeat, 17 June 2010, p. D11. NewsBank: America’s News – Historical and Current, https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info%3Asid/infoweb.newsbank.com&svc_dat=AMNEWS&req_dat=D4BD6B42F1AB4706B5E1244D477DEE03&rft_val_format=info%3Aofi/fmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Actx&rft_dat=document_id%3Anews/152423A642C620F8. Accessed 25 Jan. 2026.

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Muralist copes with interruptions Brown senior decorating diner now getting mostly support

by Vadim Kotlyar
Providence Journal | April 30, 1986 (abridged)

It took Michaelangelo four years to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but Grant Bongiorno has only until the end of the semester to do his mural on the outside wall of Louis Family Restaurant, on the East Side.

Louis, an unprepossessing diner at Brook and Benevolent Streets, is not to be easily confused with the Sistine Chapel, but Bongiorno says he feels just as much pressure to do a good job.

“For some, this is a sacred place,” says Bongiorno of the 50-year-old diner on 286 Brook St., “and I don’t want to mess it up.”

On a midnight in mid-April, he started painting the 34-by-4-foot mural of an Alaskan scene. Perched on the scaffolding over the restaurant’s front door, Bongiorno, a senior at Brown University, has learned to cope with interruptions from people who demand to know what he is doing. […]

Once completed, the mural will portray bears frolicking, a cow grazing by a mountain range and a couple canoeing across the sea, all underneath a blue, starry sky. […]

Even though he put up with a lot of skepticism during the initial stages of the project, he is now getting whole-hearted support from the observers.

“It looks great, I love it,” comments a passer-by and then gives Bongiorno the highest praise: “It’s just like the picture on a beer bottle.”

“We only had three complaints so far — weirdo hippies — saying it doesn’t fit in,” says Michael Gianfrancesco, one of about a dozen family members who work at the diner. “It’s nature… bears… How can you not like it?”

Abbey Sharpe, a waitress, takes a more sophisticated view. “This is a college area and the painting gives our place an artistic air,” she says.

Even Louis, who usually talks only to yell at the help to hurry up and tend to the customers, seems to approve.

“Grant does a good job… and he loves the blue,” he says after examining the sea foaming over windows that advertise $1.49 breakfast specials. “But I don’t know, I still think he should have painted some women.”

Louis is short, stocky, with a raspy Italian accent, and he is something of a celebrity among Brown students who frequent his place. The food is cheap and good, coffee is refilled for free, and talk of politics and poetry mixes with the smell of fried bacon and eggs.

Bongiorno is a habitue of the diner, and he invited Louis to his senior art show in February. Impressed, Louis asked Grant to paint something over the restaurant, “to give the place a new look.” In return, Grant would receive free food and a chance to leave his mark on Providence.

Louis did not meddle with artistic expression and left the subject up to Bongiorno, who chose the Alaskan scene to “put a window on nature in the middle of all this concrete.” […]

— KOTLYAR, VADIM. “Muralist copes with interruptions. Brown senior decorating diner now getting mostly support.” Providence Journal (RI), CITY ed., sec. CITY LIFE, 30 Apr. 1986, pp. 0-01. NewsBank: America’s News – Historical and Current, https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info%3Asid/infoweb.newsbank.com&svc_dat=AMNEWS&req_dat=D4BD6B42F1AB4706B5E1244D477DEE03&rft_val_format=info%3Aofi/fmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Actx&rft_dat=document_id%3Anews/1525BCB04264EE28. Accessed 24 Jan. 2026.