The Big Flavors Of Little Rhode Island

By PAUL LUKAS
Published: November 13, 2002

''NOW that's a New York System hot wiener,'' Jack Chiaro said, biting into a small frankfurter topped with meat sauce, which despite his pronouncement was utterly unlike anything found in New York.
Over the next hours, he discussed the finer points of such delights as Awful Awfuls, Del's lemonade, stuffies, cabinets, johnnycakes, doughboys and clam cakes, washing down his meal with a big glass of coffee milk.
If all this sounds like gibberish -- it probably does -- that's a sure sign that you have never lived in Rhode Island (a k a the Ocean State and Little Rhody), the home of these delicacies. And if the notion of Rhode Island food specialties seems dubious, think again.
Ridiculed by some for its diminutive size and largely ignored by many others who lump it in with the rest of New England, Rhode Island, with a population of just over one million, offers a surprisingly large number of local dishes, each with its own traditions, heritage and terminology.
Most have not only stubbornly persevered but have also stayed within the state's borders, remaining virtually unknown to nonresidents. The result is an unusually vibrant food subculture concentrated in a very small area.
In an age when chain restaurants, malls, cable television and the Internet have erased many regional eccentricities from American life, how has Rhode Island managed to keep so many of its food traditions intact? And why haven't they migrated beyond the state line?
''Maybe because Rhode Islanders are very provincial,'' said Mr. Chiaro, who teaches cooking at Johnson & Wales University in Providence and is a self-styled authority on the state's food heritage. ''Because we're so small, any trip is a big trip, so people don't really travel anywhere. They stay close to home, and their culture stays close with them.''
Ted Widmer, a historian who grew up in Rhode Island and teaches at Washington College in Maryland, offered a similar explanation. ''That Middle American desire to succeed beyond your neighborhood has never animated Rhode Islanders,'' he said. ''What's important is your extended family, the people who live on your block and maybe 10 other people you've known all your life. It's very, very local.''
Food doesn't get much more local than the New York System wiener. Mr. Chiaro said that the term New York System dated from the early 1900's, when hot dogs began appearing in Rhode Island but were still associated primarily with New York, any invocation of which was considered a badge of authenticity. (Hot dogs in the Midwest are often called Coney Islands for the same reason.)
Although Rhode Island franks are now usually called wieners -- never hot dogs -- the New York System tag endures in the signs on wiener shops, which typically carry names like Sam's New York System Restaurant and Riverside Kitchen New York System.
But the New York System is more than a name. It's a distinct style of preparation, which crystallized around 1940 among Providence's Greek immigrant hot dog vendors and then spread through the state.
The wieners are cut short, usually about four inches. They cook slowly on a low-heat griddle all day and are served in a soft steamed bun. Counter clerks apply mustard, chopped raw onions, celery salt and the true hallmark of hot wieners: a greasy ground-beef sauce that's not quite chili, not quite gravy, distinct unto itself.
Since the wieners are small, most customers order several, which means a table of three or four people may order a dozen or more.
Griddle men respond to these large orders by lining up a series of buns on one extended forearm and then adding the franks and dressings with their free hand, usually in a quick, mesmerizingly ritualistic fashion. This prep method, sometimes called ''up the arm,'' is the essence of the New York System.
At Olneyville New York System in Providence -- a gritty, old-school lunch counter that Mr. Chiaro cites as the state's definitive hot wiener emporium -- the supersoft bun, tender frank and mild sauce meld into an appealing mass of sloppy goodness. But at the Wein-O-Rama, a family oriented shop in neighboring Cranston, the elements are more distinct, because of a spicier sauce, with hints of allspice and cloves, and a meatier, substantial frank. (This is bad form to Mr. Chiaro, who said that the whole point of hot wieners was to keep the experience ''as low grade as possible.'') Subtle variations like these keep the hot wiener scene lively and competitive.
The classic beverage at hot wiener shops -- and at most other Rhode Island restaurants -- is coffee milk, which is like chocolate milk but is made with coffee syrup. Cynthia Wall, vice president of Autocrat, a coffee producer in the Providence area, traced coffee milk's origins back to the 1930's, when enterprising diner and drugstore operators sweetened leftover coffee grounds with milk and sugar, creating a slurry extract that became as popular with children as hot coffee was with adults.
Ms. Wall said the first coffee syrup available for retail sale was a Warwick-based brand called Eclipse, which made its debut in 1938 and became known for the slogan ''You'll smack your lips when it's Eclipse.'' Autocrat soon followed with its own version and later acquired Eclipse. The syrups were instant hits, presaging a statewide love affair with the coffee-sugar-dairy combination. (Rhode Island is among the national leaders in coffee ice cream consumption, and supermarkets offer a locally produced coffee gelatin dessert mix.)
With coffee milk a ubiquitous presence on menus and Autocrat -- now a fourth-generation family business -- still making coffee syrup for grocery sale, it's tempting to think of coffee milk as the unofficial state drink. Except that it's actually the official state drink, having been so designated by the Legislature in 1993.
That certification did not come without controversy. Some Rhode Islanders felt that the government's imprimatur should have been bestowed upon Del's Frozen Lemonade, a Cranston-based chain founded in 1948 by Angelo DeLucia, who used a recipe that his grandfather brought from Italy.
Del's now has dozens of festively designed roadside outlets throughout the state, each offering a signature product midway between Italian ices and a Slurpee: imagine a cup of half-melted snow. It is as refreshing for its icy texture as for its tart flavor, which comes from real lemons, not processed syrup.
Del's has opened a few outlets in other states, but it still carries virtually zero name recognition outside of Rhode Island. ''I don't really know why it never caught on in other places,'' said Bruce DeLucia, Angelo's son. ''Maybe we just like to keep things to ourselves around here.''
As for losing out to coffee milk in the state-certification sweepstakes, Mr. DeLucia was diplomatic. ''It would've been a nice honor,'' he said, ''but it was also a great honor just to be considered for something like that. Plus, you're dealing with politics -- what are you going to do?''
More substantial beverages than coffee milk and Del's are available in Rhode Island, but the dialect can be confusing. If you ask for a milkshake, you'll just get a mix of milk and syrup; if you want what most Americans call a milkshake, with ice cream mixed in, you must order a cabinet. The term's precise origins are unclear, but the most commonly accepted explanation involves early milkshake blenders, which were shipped in heavy wooden cabinets.
There's also an übercabinet called an Awful Awful -- short for ''awful big, awful good'' -- which is available from a regional chain called Newport Creamery. An immense thick shake that is nearly impossible to finish (and never mind the standing offer to ''Drink three, get one free!''), the Awful Awful has become a statewide institution.
Thanks to its coastal setting, Rhode Island has a rich seafood heritage, much of it centering on quahogs, which are large chowder clams, usually measuring four or five inches across. The region's first European settlers learned about quahogs from the Narragansett Indians, who had been eating them for centuries and had cultivated clam beds that remain bountiful today.
''Because of the way the state is configured, almost everybody is near a shoreline, so they all go to the beach,'' Mr. Chiaro said to explain the state's quahog mania. ''And if you're down at the beach and dig with your toes, you'll hit a quahog.''
Although the term quahog is not unique to Rhode Island, and technically also applies to smaller hard-shell clams like cherrystones and littlenecks, it has a specific meaning on local menus. The fresh-shucked clams are chopped or ground and mixed into a stuffing, which typically includes bread crumbs, Tabasco sauce, minced onions, celery, peppers and often the Portuguese sausage chourica (reflecting the influence of Rhode Island's large Portuguese population). The stuffing is then spooned back into the large clamshells and baked, resulting in a big, delicious serving. Stuffed quahogs are often called stuffies, and the two terms are used interchangeably throughout the state.
Stuffies are popular at George's, a lovely seaside restaurant in Galilee, which is a good source for another Rhode Island seafood specialty: clam cakes. Although the name implies a mollusk-driven version of crab cakes, clam cakes aren't cakes at all. They're clam fritters, fried like a brinier rendition of Southern hush puppies. Although some renditions are a bit light in the clam department, well-executed clam cakes are a treat.
So are doughboys, another type of fritter. Doughboys, hunks of deep-friend pizza dough, usually rolled in granulated sugar, probably originated with Rhode Island's Italian population and are often available at pizzerias, but they are also found at many of the seafood shacks that serve clam cakes and stuffies. At Iggy's, one of the eating places clustered down by Narragansett Bay in the Oakland Beach section of Warwick, the doughboys are delicious little gut bombs and addictive enough to become a meal in themselves.
Finally, no overview of Rhode Island's culinary heritage would be complete without johnnycakes, the unleavened cornmeal pancakes served at breakfast haunts. The name's origin is a matter of some dispute as is its spelling: johnny-cake, jonnycake, Johnnycake and Johnny Cake are frequent variants. Some say the name derives from ''journey cake'' or ''Shawnee cake,'' although Mr. Chiaro dismissed both theories. ''Johnnycakes don't travel well,'' he said, ''and our Narragansett Indians never had anything to do with the Shawnees.'' His favored explanation is that the term derives from joniken, an Indian word for corn.
In any case, it's generally agreed that johnnycakes, or something very much like them, were being prepared by the Narragansetts as far back as the 1600's, when European colonists arrived and learned about them.
They haven't changed much over the years, mainly because the recipe is simplicity itself: cornmeal and water. The batter is fried in a skillet and topped with butter, syrup or honey. An excellent version is available at the Commons Lunch in the hamlet of Little Compton, where the deep-brown johnnycakes are toothsome and hearty, perfect for a brisk autumn day.
Johnnycake purists -- that is, most Rhode Islanders -- insist that a johnnycake isn't authentic unless it's made from whitecap flint corn grown and ground into meal in Rhode Island, preferably with millstones made of Rhode Island granite. The near-universal brand of choice is Kenyon's, produced by a local mill that dates back to 1886 and whose little blue boxes of meal are staples in Rhode Island groceries. But at the risk of sending half the state into cardiac arrest, here's the truth about Kenyon's: most of its corn comes from Virginia.
''The fact is, we don't raise much in the state of Rhode Island anymore except houses, babies and taxes,'' explained Paul Drumm Jr., Kenyon's owner. ''We still get some local corn occasionally, but there just isn't enough of it. It's the reality of doing business -- go to Vermont, and you won't see too many buckets hanging from maple trees either.'' Regardless of the corn's origin, Kenyon's meal still turns out the definitive Rhode Island johnnycake.
Can Rhode Island sustain its regional food culture? Mr. Chiaro has his doubts. ''It's probably going to die out,'' he said. ''These provincial foods can't compete with places like McDonald's, where a milkshake is called a milkshake, not a cabinet, and so on. I think my generation may be the last one to know these foods the way they are now.''
But Mr. Widmer, the historian, has higher hopes. ''If any place can resist homogenization, it's Little Rhody,'' he said. ''I think we've actually turned a corner, and people are more defiantly proud of Rhode Island culture than ever. Many of the new converts are people who moved here, not natives, but I think their energy and passion are important. I don't see it changing.'' Let us hope he's right, for the demise of this underappreciated eating scene would truly be awful, awful.