Haven Brothers a Providence Institution

Picture it; Last call has come and gone and you are drunk in Providence, Rhode Island. The only thing you can think of is food. Where do you go? Well you head over to the central square of the city Kennedy Plaza and there parked in front of the city hall is a diner on wheels. Haven Brothers diner has been pulling up in front of Providence City Hall since 1888. Quick do the math. It's 128 years. 
This is not elegant dining by anyone's standards. It is although fun and a Providence staple. Almost anyone you talk to in Providence (in all of Rhode Island for that matter) has a Haven Brothers story. Celebrities and street people sit side by side in the cramped aluminum clad interior chowing down on burgers or baked beans with hot dogs maybe a cup of coffee. Haven brothers is only open at night when it is pulled into the plaza and plugged into its own special electrical outlet attached to a pole near the grand stair case to City Hall. There is often a line especially around last call at the nearby bars and nightclubs. 

Haven Brothers is one of the original diners created in Rhode Island and the oldest one in the country.Originally the cart was pulled into the plaza by horses. The horses were long ago replaced by a truck that pulls the diner to work now and home to its parking lot to rest during the day. The current diner is the third version the new diner is a 1949 Fred W. Morse dining car. The original was bought by widow Anne Philomena Haven with the insurance money she received upon her husband's death. The brothers of Haven were her two sons. Oddly it was her daughter and her husband that took over the diner keeping it in the family until 1953. Ownership has changed a few times over the years but the experience is still the same. 
Haven Brothers has had its time in the lime light too. Once it was brought to New York to be on the Today Show when RI native Meredith Vieira and RI alum Matt Lauer requested their favorite diner for a segment. There is also a documentary film about the joint as well as a segment on "Man vs. Food Nation" on the "Travel Channel".The rules are the same as they have always been. Order you food, eat and don't be a pain in the ass.