Praise of the Rhode Island Wiener

Rhode Island Chowder

The rich broth of this delicious clear broth Rhode Island clam chowder is loaded with potatoes, bacon, and either cherry-stones or quahogs.

Yankee Magazine

No wonder Rhode Islanders prefer clear broth over cream—at every turn, they’re surrounded by saltwater. To savor the Ocean State’s take on clear broth clam chowder, visit Matunuck Oyster Bar, overlooking the eddies of Potter Pond in South Kingstown. The rich broth of this clear broth Rhode Island clam chowder is loaded with potatoes, bacon, and either cherry-stones or quahogs (same species of hard-shell clam, quahogs being bigger than cherrystones), depending on what’s fresh that day. Owner Perry Raso is so fastidious about his shellfish that he operates his own seven-acre oyster farm right by the restaurant.

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Hands-On Time: 45 minutes
Yield: 8 to 10 servings

Matunuck Clear Broth Clam Chowder

Ingredients

8 pounds small quahogs or large cherrystone clams
7 cups water
6 cups clam broth (from steaming) or 4 cups clam broth plus 2 cups bottled clam juice
3 slices thick-sliced bacon, cut into ¼-inch cubes
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 medium-size onions, cut into ¼-inch cubes
3 ribs celery, cut into ¼-inch cubes
2 bay leaves
2 pounds Yukon Gold or other all-purpose potatoes, peeled and cut into ½-inch pieces
2 tablespoons chopped fresh Italian parsley
2 tablespoons minced fresh chives
1 teaspoon minced fresh dill
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Instructions

Scrub the clams and rinse them clean.

Add 7 cups of water to a large stockpot fitted with a steamer basket or colander, and bring to a boil.

Add half the clams to the basket and cover. Steam until the clams open, 5 to 10 minutes. (Discard any clams that don’t open.)

Repeat with the second batch of clams. Reserve 6 cups of the broth. Set aside.

Cool the clams; remove the meat from the shells and dice it into ½-inch pieces. Keep them covered and refrigerated until ready to use.

Put the bacon in a 5- to 7-quart pot over medium heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, until golden brown, about 10 minutes.

Pour off all but 1 tablespoon of the bacon fat, leaving the bacon in the pot. Reduce the heat to medium-low.

Add the butter, onions, celery, and bay leaves, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are softened but not browned, 6 to 8 minutes.

Add the potatoes and reserved clam broth to the pot. Continue cooking over medium heat until the chowder begins to simmer. If it begins to boil, reduce the heat slightly. Cook until the potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes.

Just before serving, remove the pot from the heat, stir in the clams and herbs, discard the bay leaves, and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serve hot.

Note: Steaming the clams might seem laborious, but it’s actually easy and makes a briny broth. Aim to extract 6 cups of broth from the clams; if not, you’ll need to have some bottled clam juice on hand to round it out.

Red Flannel Hash | Yankee Recipe Archives

Made with boiled dinner leftovers like corned beef and potatoes, a classic side of Red Flannel Hash comes with the added bonus of beets.

In New England, what do you get when you take a recipe for corned beef hash and swap out some of the potatoes with beets? A savory dish, known as Red Flannel Hash, which is named for the (so-called) flannel-esque patches of red made by the beets. We say crack in a few eggs, and just call it Sunday breakfast.

England hash variation, especially popular on diner menus, but had never made a batch. Fortunately, Yankee Magazine‘s 1972 cookbook, Favorite New England Recipes, had not just a red flannel hash recipe, but also one for the New England boiled dinner needed to produce the necessary leftovers.

A traditional boiled dinner — the kind with corned beef, cabbage, and veggies — often has leftovers, and it’s these “next day bits” that make the tastiest hash, be it plain corned beef or red flannel with beets.

Our recipe is a simple one — just leftover corned beef, potatoes, beets, butter, cream, and a few shakes of salt and pepper. Yours, however, may include onions, peppers, cheese, fresh herbs… whatever you like or happen to have on hand.

Boiled dinner and the leftover hash (no matter the variety) are both New England comfort food classics, but in a 1991 Yankee food feature by Malabar Hornblower titled “Some of Our Frugal Classics Actually Taste Better the Morning After,” the author gives an extra nod to today’s featured variety:

The early settlers knew how to salt cod and beef, preserving them for use when food was scarce. From corned beef evolved one of New England’s favorite meals-in-one: New England boiled dinner (actually a version of the classic corned beef and cabbage). But there are many who maintain that the only reason to eat a boiled dinner is in order to enjoy the leftovers, chopped up and fried as red flannel hash.

How about you? Are you a fan of red flannel hash? Do you consider it to be as good (or maybe even better?) than the boiled dinner it comes from? Let us know in the comments!

New England Food Festival

MAINE LOBSTER FESTIVAL | Aug. 1–5, 2018

Rockland, Maine

From creamy lobster chowder to buttery lobster rolls to grilled lobster with savory sides and toppings, it’s hard to go wrong with this classic seafood treat. To find it all, look no further than the internationally recognized Maine Lobster Festival at Rockland’s Harbor Park. With entertainment, fine art, and 20,000 pounds of lobster in the world’s largest lobster cooker, what’s not to love?

VERMONT CHEESEMAKERS FESTIVAL | Aug. 12, 2018

Shelburne, Vermont

With rolling fields and meandering cows alongside Lake Champlain, Shelburne Farms provides a stunning backdrop for the annual Vermont Cheesemakers Festival. Crowds flock to the festival grounds every year to learn more about cheesemaking at workshops, taste world-class cheeses and local products, and meet the chefs and producers that make it all happen. With dozens of artisan food producers setting up shop, be sure to bring your appetite.

CHOWDAFEST | Sep. 30, 2018

Westport, Connecticut

Finish your summer with a bang and make your way to Westport for one last flavorful celebration before the cold weather sets in. Join award-winning New England chefs as they try to prove they have the best chowder, soups, and bisques in the region. Sample the competing recipes and help select the winner of each category: classic New England clam chowder, traditional chowder, creative chowder, soup/bisque, and vegetarian.

The Hot Wiener: A Rhode Island Icon

By Grace Lentini

Hot wieners are firmly planted in Rhode Island’s culinary psyche. They’re to the Ocean State what cheesesteak is to Philly, what barbecue is to Kansas City and what street tacos are to Los Angeles. Everyone has the wienie joint (their words, not ours) they grew up with, their gold standard against which all others are judged. There’s The Original New York System on Smith Street in Providence, Olneyville NY System, Sparky’s Coney Island System in East Providence (now closed), Wein-O-Rama in Cranston, Rod’s Grille in Warren, New York Lunch in Woonsocket, Sam’s New York System in North Providence, Snoopy’s Diner in North Kingstown and plenty more scattered throughout.

We wanted to know who served the very first hot wiener, so we asked wienie joint owners across the state, and the answer was always the same: hot wieners started at the Original New York System (424 Smith Street, Providence. 331-5349). It’s the OG of the wienie.

No matter where you go, getting them “all the way” is always the same: steamed bun, wienie, mustard, meat sauce, onion, celery salt. Of course you don’t have to get them all the way, but what fun is that? That’s like getting a cheesesteak without the cheese: you just don’t do it. However, what differs joint to joint is the meat sauce, with each place remaining as true as possible to their original recipe, some over 70 years old.

Iconic Ingredients

There are distinct differences between hot dogs and hot wieners: hot dogs are typically very processed, with a hodge podge of different cuts of meat. Hot wieners on the other hand are made with beef, pork, veal, spices and one preservative. There are two types of hot wieners that wienie joints use: ones in a natural casing, and ones without. According to Greg Stevens, the owner of Olneyville NY System(18 Plainfield Street, Providence. 621-9500, OlneyvilleNewYorkSystem.com) who is directly related to the family who first served hot wieners in RI, it’s tradition to serve hot wieners that have a natural casing. The wieners with a casing come as one long rope, meaning that each wiener must be cut by hand. Most joints get theirs from either Little Rhody Brand Frankfurts and Wieners (831-0815, LittleRhodyHotdogs.com), which makes skinless and rope wieners, or from All American (294-5455, All-American-Foods.com), who carry Marcello’s skinless, pre-formed wieners.

The consensus on hot wiener buns is that Homestead Baking Company of East Providence (145 North Broadway, Rumford. 434-0551, HomesteadBaking.com) bakes the buns that virtually everyone uses. “We make [the buns] sweeter than the typical hot dog roll,” says Homestead General Manager TJ Pascalides. “Restaurants are super particular about how they steam them up. Everyone has a different steamer and everyone leaves them in for a different amount of time, so we have to use a strong flour.”

To get an idea of the demand for the buns, Homestead receives shipments of 200,000 pounds of spring wheat flour at a time via railway. Three railway cars fit alongside the bakery, where the flour is then moved to three flour silos. One silo holds 150,000 pounds of flour, the other two hold 125,000 pounds each. Just as the meat sauce recipes never change at the restaurants, the bun recipe has also remained the same: sugar, water, flour and yeast.

As far as the onions sprinkled on top of the wieners, survey says that white onions are used. Everyone uses celery salt, although any information about the brand was held close to the vest. The mustard? Well, it’s not French’s. That’s about all the info the owners were willing to reveal. Same with the sauce. Everyone is tight lipped about their secret recipes, but some said that one of the most important factors in making a perfectly spreadable meat sauce is to use 70/30 ground beef. Fat is flavor, and no one’s eating a hot wiener for its health benefits.

Who Served them First?

It was in the early 1900s that Greek immigrants came to New York, passing through Ellis Island and settling in Brooklyn (most likely in the Coney Island section). As the Greeks moved out of Brooklyn and across the country, they brought with them and served up a form of hot dog or hot wiener which they covered in a Coney Island meat sauce.

We caught up with Greg to learn about his family history, and where the first hot wiener was served. As the story goes, Augustus Pappas and his son Ernie opened the Original New York System on Smith Street in Providence in 1927. In the late 1930s, Augustus Pappas fell ill, so Ernie called on his cousins Anthony and Nicholas Stavrianakos (Greg’s great grandfather and grandfather, respectively) to help run the restaurant. In 1933, Greg’s father, Peter, was born in New York where his name was shortened from Stavrianakos to Stevens. In 1946, Ernie no longer needed help running the Smith Street location. His son Gus eventually took over in the ‘60s, running the place until he retired in 2014. Once Gus retired, the business changed ownership and eventually had its doors closed for ten months. This past July, restaurateur Taner Zoprak bought the business, and plans to keep to the original recipes.

Back to Anthony and Nicholas. The father and son team branched out on their own after leaving the Original New York System and bought a small restaurant located at 11 Olneyville Square (where the bar Lonely Street is currently located). The restaurant was located right next to a taxi stand, which in 1954 was built over into a restaurant (the current location of Olneyville NY System). Anthony and Nicholas bought that space in 1964, and have been there ever since. In 1957 Nicholas passed away, and in 1958, Anthony passed away at age 97, working until his last day. Greg’s father Peter took over the business in 1958. Greg was born in 1960, and when he was old enough he worked at Olneyville NY System on weekends and during the summers. At the ripe age of 15 he knew he was going to join the family business, and in 1979 he started working full time, side by side with his dad until the early ‘90s when Peter retired. Greg and his sister Stephanie Stevens-Turini have operated the restaurant ever since.

More Wienie Joints

The Original New York System and Olneyville NY System opened their restaurants with the express goal of being hot wiener joints. Of course there’s plenty else on their menus, but folks typically go there for the wienies. Other restaurants have followed suit, while others have simply added hot wieners to their menu to get folks through the door.

Rod’s Grille in Warren in one of the restaurants that has had hot wieners on their menu since the day they opened in 1955. Meghan Rodrigues is the fourth generation to work at Rod’s Grille and credits her great grandmother with creating the meat sauce they use until this day. “My dad, grandmother or I make the sauce,” she says. “No one else knows the recipe. You have to follow every single step of the recipe or the taste will change.” Unlike the sauce at either the Original New York System or Olneyville, there is a touch of spice in it, which slowly builds as you eat it. Meghan also puts less onions on it compared to other places; she doesn’t want the onions to overpower the secret sauce. The sauce is so popular that their regulars regularly add it to other menu items, like the burgers.

The Future of Hot Wieners

One thing that rings true at every hot wiener restaurant is the need to stay true to the ingredients. “We’ve tried other products and they just don’t taste the same,” says Meghan Rodrigues. Greg Stevens of Olneyville is of the same mind. “Do not change a thing. That’s the theory with Olneyville NY System,” he says. “When people come in and have their hot wiener and coffee milk I’ll ask, ‘does it taste exactly as you remember?’ If they say yes, that’s the best compliment I can get. Keeping everything the same… it’s harder than it looks.”

The Origin of the Coney Island Hot Dog Is a Uniquely American Story

They also have very little to do with the New York City amusement park

By Erick Trickey

SMITHSONIAN.COM

This July 4, as with every July 4 going back to the 1970s, an all-American display of gluttony will feature rubber-stomached competitive eaters once again gorging themselves in the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest on Brooklyn’s Coney Island. This year’s gastronomic battle, at the corner of Surf and Stillwell avenues, will honor the 100th anniversary of the founding of Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs at the same corner in 1916.

It’s a patriotic event, and not just because it’ll be echoed at holiday barbecues across the country. The hot dog, that quintessential American food, has been associated with Coney Island, America’s most storied amusement resort, since frankfurter first met bun. But Nathan’s century-old triumph of entrepreneurship is only part of the Ellis-Island-meets-Coney-Island story. Thanks to immigrants from Northern and Eastern Europe alike, the name “Coney Island hot dog” means one thing in New York, another in the Midwest and beyond.

Historians disagree on the hot dog’s origin story, but many credit Charles Feltman, a Coney Island pie-wagon vendor, with inventing the fast food, serving hot dachshund sausages in milk rolls as early as 1867. The National Hot Dog and Sausage Councilsays Feltman opened a hot dog stand on Coney Island in 1871 and sold 3,684 sausages that year. Wieners took Feltman far. By the turn of the century, he’d gone upscale, with Feltman’s German Gardens, a huge complex of restaurants and beer gardens on Surf Avenue that employed 1,200 waiters. Though seafood became Feltman’s specialty, he still had seven grills dedicated to hot dogs, which he sold in the 1910s for ten cents apiece.

Nathan Handwerker, a Polish immigrant with a day job as a restaurant delivery boy, worked Sunday afternoons at Feltman’s German Gardens, slicing rolls. According to Handwerker’s 1974 New York Times obituary, Jimmy Durante and Eddie Cantor, who worked as singing waiters on Coney Island before they found fame, encouraged Handwerker to strike out from Feltman’s and sell hot dogs for a nickel instead of a dime. In 1916, he did just that, opening a small hot-dog stand at Surf and Stillwell with his wife, Ida. The subway’s extension to Coney Island in 1920 brought countless New Yorkers to his stand. “Society people, politicians, actors and sportsmen flocked to Nathan’s,” the obituary recalled, “brushing shoulders with truck drivers, laborers, and housewives.” Franklin D. Roosevelt famously served Nathan’s hot dogs at a 1936 lawn party for Britain’s George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth (mother of the now-reigning Queen Elizabeth II).

Meanwhile, outside New York, the Coney Island name evokes an entirely different hot-dog tradition. In Michigan, “Coney Island” doesn’t mean an amusement park, but one of an estimated 500 diners in the Metro Detroit area alone that serve Greek food and “Coney dogs” -- hot dogs smothered in chili or ground beef, plus mustard and onions. There are plenty more elsewhere in Michigan, across the Midwest, and beyond.

The Coney dog was spread across the eastern U.S. by various Greek and Macedonian immigrants in the 1900s and 1910s. The restaurateurs were part of the great wave of Greek migration to the U.S. – 343,000 people between 1900 and 1919 – who fled the economic desolation caused by Greece’s 1893 bankruptcy and a crash in the price of currants, then Greece’s main export. “Many of them passed through New York’s Ellis Island and heard about or visited Coney Island, later borrowing this name for their hot dogs, according to one legend,” wrote Katherine Yung and Joe Grimm in their 2012 book Coney Detroit.

In that era, Americans associated New York’s Coney Island with hot dog authenticity. Back then, the name “hot dog” was out of favor; amid the concern about meat-packing standards inspired by Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle, it still carried a hint of suggestion that the cheap sausages were made of dog meat. Handwerker called then “red hots,” others “Coney Island hots.”

Naming the inventor of the Coney dog – the first person to slather chili or sprinkle ground beef on a sausage – is a fool’s errand. Various Coney Island restaurants in Michigan and Indiana vie for the title, claiming founding dates in the mid-1910s, but they don’t appear in city directories from the era until the 1920s. Many Greeks and Macedonians likely hit upon the idea of dressing hot dogs in variations on saltsa kima, their homeland’s spicy tomato-based meat sauce. “The Coney Island’s formidable beef topping with a sweet-hot twang has a marked Greek accent,” wrote Jane and Michael Stern in their 2009 book 500 Things to Eat Before It’s Too Late.

It’s easy, though, to locate the Coney dog’s ground zero, the Midwest’s version of Surf and Stillwell: the corner of West Lafayette Boulevard and Michigan Avenue in Detroit.

There, Lafayette Coney Island and American Coney Island have carried on a sibling rivalry for 80 years. For generations of Detroiters, their chili-topped weiners have been the ultimate urban-diner experience, the workingman’s lunch and the late-night craving after last call. Brothers William “Bill” Keros and Constantine “Gust” Keros, former sheepherders from the Greek village of Dara, founded the two diners to serve hot dogs to autoworkers. Each restaurant boasts it opened first, with American Coney staking a claim to a 1917 founding, Lafayette Coney to 1914. But city directories tell a different story than family and business oral history: the Coney Detroit authors say the brothers opened Lafayette Coney together in 1923, and Gust Keros opened American Coney in 1936 after a falling-out with his brother.

Outside metropolitan Detroit, Coney dog variations abound. In Michigan cities such as Flint, Jackson and Kalamazoo, their topping isn’t chili, but a sauce that’s mostly ground beef, often including beef hearts. A few Coney Island restaurants still exist outside Michigan, from the Coney Island Grill in St. Petersburg, Florida, to George’s Coney Island in Worcester, Massachusetts. Cincinnati’s version of Coney sauce is a chili, invented in 1922 by Macedonian immigrants Tom and John Kiradjieff as their own spiced version of saltsa kima. That iteration doesn't just go on hot dogs-- it's also served with spaghetti or as a stand-alone chili.

Closer to New York City, the names change. Rhode Islanders call their Greek-immigrant chili-dog diners “New York System” restaurants, and they serve “hot wieners” – never hot dogs. “They are made in a systemic way,” wrote the Sterns in 500 Things to Eat, “by lining up all the dogs in buns and dressing them assembly-line-style.”

But in far upstate New York, around Plattsburgh, they’re called Michigans, probably thanks to 1920s Detroit expatriates Eula and Garth Otis. From there, they smuggled themselves across the Canadian border, where the Montreal-area hot-dog chain Resto Lafleur offers a steamed or grilled “hot-dog Michigan” and poutine with “la sauce Michigan.”

Today, Nathan’s is an international chain, with more than 300 restaurants and stands, mostly on the East Coast. It’s added a chili dog to its menu. In another example of hazy hot-dog lore, Nathan’s apocryphally claims it’s about to host its 100th hot-dog-eating contest – actually a creation of carnival-barker-style bunkum that started in the 1970s. Meanwhile, Coney Island blogger and historian Michael Quinn is reviving the Feltman’s red-hots brand, which went extinct with Feltman’s restaurant in 1954. He’s teamed up with a sausage-maker to make a red hot in homage to the original, which he’s selling at pop-up events. In a history-minded revenge, Quinn sells hot dogs for half of Nathan’s price.

Travel Channel's 'Bizarre Foods' focuses on R.I. cuisine

The state's cuisine is featured, from seafood to Italian and Portuguese specialties.

Journal Food Editor

Rhode Island's iconic foods and its history of ethnic specialties will be celebrated on television Tuesday night when Andrew Zimmern hosts "Bizarre Foods: Delicious Destinations" on the Travel Channel at 9 p.m.

Producers for the badly named show came calling back in September to film hot wieners, coffee milk, quahogs, jonnycakes, snail salad, chowder, stuffies and salt cod. Though the show's "Delicious Destination" is billed as Providence, food was featured from around the state. The show was available for screening by critics.

It's a wonderfully produced melange of the delicious and the quirky. It begins with a burger at the Haven Brothers food truck. It includes that famous pizza at Al Forno being made by chef David Reynoso, the thick ice cream drinks Awful Awfuls from Newport Creamery, and wieners all the way at Olneyville New York System.

There's a big focus on seafood, clams on the half shell and other preparations that bring with them flavors that reflect a sea-to-table cuisine. Hemenway's Seafood Grill & Oyster Bar plates some lovely clams early on in the hourlong show. Perry Raso makes stuffies at his Matunuck Oyster Bar in South Kingstown.

Don't watch this show on an empty stomach, by the way.

Portuguese soul food, salt cod or bacalhau, is given plenty of screen time, both at O Dinis in East Providence and at North American Salt and Fresh Fish Corp. in Pawtucket, where fish is turned into dry, salted cod.

In his commentary, which was filmed after production in Rhode Island wrapped up, Zimmern talks about how the state attracted seafaring people from Europe, and with them came many traditions.

To show one of those traditions, a production team arrived at O Dinis to film second-generation restaurateur Natalia Paiva-Neves, who works with her father, Dinis Paiva. Producers had seen YouTube videos of her cooking and called. Since she's dreamed of stepping up to the granite counter in a TV kitchen, she was on board.

They filmed her talking about how cod is soul food here in New England and of the importance of sharing her Portuguese traditions with her children. Those two passions intersect when she heads into the kitchen to cook Bacalhau ne Brasa, a taste of Portugal on a plate, with accompanying boiled potatoes and onion and garlic sautéed in olive oil.

The visit to the salt cod production facility is fascinating. It reveals how whole cods caught in cold sea waters are butterflied before salt is shoveled over them to remove all liquid and moisture. That's why they have to be de-salted to make cod dishes.

Italian traditions are shared from Champlin's in Galilee, where they make a scungilli, or snail, salad.

Native Americans are credited with their role in local foods, not just with johnnycakes, which are featured from Jigger's Diner in East Greenwich, but also for their role in creating Rhode Island's clear broth chowder. If you didn't know or remember that local quahogs have purple in the shell, you will now because you'll learn they were used for wampum due to their color.

Throughout the hour, regular Rhode Islanders star in "Bizarre Foods: Delicious Destinations" as they are interviewed while they sip, slurp and savor all the treasured foods of their home.

— gciampa@providencejournal.com

State seafood pilgrimage: The best of Rhode Island

Larry Olmsted, Special for USA TODAY

The scene: Coastal New England is dotted with seafood shacks and eateries of every description, and no visit is complete without the region's famous fresh lobster, clams and chowder. But while you can find the staples like lobster rolls and oysters on the half shell everywhere, there are surprising hyper-local specialties and notable regional differences between neighboring states separated by just a few miles. Maine is best known for its lobster, in the shell and in the hot dog bun; Connecticut created the now-legendarywhite clam pizza; and Massachusetts proudly invented the fried clam on Boston's North Shore.

But when it comes to regionalized New England seafood, no state stands alone like Rhode Island, which has its own unique and eponymous form of clam chowder, claims the stuffed clam -- or stuffie in Rhody-speak -- as its own invention, uses hot peppers to spice up Rhode Island-style calamari, and loves clam cakes, largely overlooked in the rest of the region. These four dishes form the basis of must-try Rhode Island seafood specialties, and after asking numerous locals where to find the best, I got little but partisan disagreement.

However, a couple of names kept coming up, which led me to the Matunuck Oyster Bar, on the southeastern-most tip of the state near the Connecticut border; the full service Flo's Clam Shack in Middleton, abutting tourist-mad Newport; and the lesser-known but atmospheric Flo's Drive-In in Portsmouth. All three are on the southern coast, and Matunuck is the most full-service restaurant, with indoor dining, table service and full raw bar, but also ample outdoor seating and full bar overlooking the surf. It sits right along the road on a narrow spit of land with water on both sides, and it is so popular that the valet parking lot stretches down the coastline.

The Newport Flo's looks like a classic sea captain's house just off ultra-popular Easton's beach, which connects Newport and Middleton. It has outdoor seating plus indoor dining with oyster bar and kitschy décor with life vests and fishing rods hanging from the ceiling. There is almost always a line to get in, from a tiny back parking lot that usually overflows.

The simplest and easiest to visit of the three is Flo's Drive-In, a lower-key sibling of Flo's Clam Shack. A classic coastal joint, it is one simple small building with windows for ordering and picking up, picnic tables for dining, everything served in styrofoam clamshell containers, plastic sauce cups and brown paper bags, with a limited menu and little else - except the feel of New England ocean escapism at its best. They even hand out lobster-shaped buzzers to let you know when your food, cooked to order, is ready. Since 1936 this has been the site of the first Flo's, originally a chicken coop, twice destroyed by hurricanes and last rebuilt in 1991.

Reason to visit: Flo's clam cakes, Matunuck Oyster Bar's R.I.-style calamari

The food: Rhode Island clam chowder is quite distinct from both of its better known rivals, New England (white, thick, creamy and potato-laden) and Manhattan (red, thin, tomato-infused broth). It is the most straightforward take on the genre, clear broth (usually made with at least some clam juice) with minimal filling of red skin potato chunks, celery and clams. Some places add a bit of diced bacon. The emphasis is on the bivalves themselves and while it's thin, between the clams and clam broth, it packs in briny clam flavor, salty and tasting of the ocean. It's also one of those things appreciated more if you grew up with it -- if you like clams, it is worth trying for the novelty, but frankly, it is hard to imagine loving this soup. Flo's does a thicker style with more potato cut into bigger cubes, and while still brothy, this thickens it a bit. I preferred the purity of Matunuck's version more, with its pronounced clam taste, though the small added pieces of bacon made it even saltier.

Since last year, calamari has been the official "state appetizer," but not all squid is Rhode Island-style calamari. In the rest of the country, fried calamari is pretty consistent, served plain with cocktail sauce on the side. In the Ocean State they toss it with slices of pickled hot peppers, banana, cherry or pepperoncini (or a combo), and usually some of the vinegar they came in, sometimes made a bit creamier with the addition of garlic butter. The bite of the peppers and the tang of vinegar go perfectly with the oily fried squid, and when this dish is good, it is great, so much so that you may never want to eat fried calamari any other way. Matunuck does a fancified version that still focuses on very tasty and fresh squid, an ample serving tossed with just a few slices of hot pepper but also with a delicious, fresh and lemony aioli and baby arugula leaves. The result is still mainly excellent fried squid, but the flavor is amplified by the acidity of the dressing and nicely offset by the bite of the peppers and pepperiness of the lettuce. Flo's takes a completely different approach, serving a basic order of fried calamari with a chopped mix of hot peppers in a plastic container on the side to serve yourself. No matter how much I added it didn't integrate well, and for this regional staple, Matunuck won hands down.

The advantage quickly swung back to Flo's when it came to clam cakes. These are basically clam-studded fritters of dough, and like any fritter, the challenge is balancing the taste of the featured ingredient with the batter. I've had a fair amount of clam cakes, and most have disappointed, often doughy, oily and tasteless. But not at Flo's, where I had the best clam cakes of my life, and the single most standout thing on this coastal trip. They were fresh fried and doughy but light, studded with some corn kernels as well as clam, which gave them just a bit of sweetness – like a seafood version of Italian zeppoli or doughnuts. Hot, fluffy and balanced, I couldn't stop eating them. No wonder both people in line ahead of me were there just to take out clam cakes, a dozen each – a big order – but this is what Flo's is justifiably famous for. Their combo meal special is a cup of R.I. chowder and three clam cakes, a good local sampling.

The only real disappointment of the trip was the stuffies, I asked my friend Amy, a food-loving Providence native, where to go and she said simply "My house. You have to make them yourself. I've never had a good stuffie in a restaurant." The ones at Matunuck were big and lived up to their name in that they were certainly stuffed. Each was chock-full of small bread cubes, like bagged Pepperidge Farm mix for turkey, with far too much breading for the clam. The ones served at Flo's looked more promising and homey, with two assembled into a sort of closed clam held together with a rubber band. But inside was a stuffing paste, a smooth amalgam of breading and barely discernible clam meat, with no chunks. Because they had some bits of jalapeño and nice spices, the stuffing was actually quite flavorful, but not clam-flavored, and the consistency of mashed potatoes.

Flo's is well worth a visit for its signature clam cakes, and I'd definitely go back to Matunuck for its very fresh take on the state's unique calamari (while I was exploring these four local specialties, Matunuck Oyster Bar is also acclaimed for its oysters, and operates its own 7-acre aquaculture oyster farm in nearby Potter Pond, as well as its own vegetable farm supplying the delicious baby arugula).

Pilgrimage-worthy?: Yes, collectively because these unique Rhode Island specialties are just hard to find anyplace else.

Rating: Yum! (Scale: Blah, OK, Mmmm, Yum!, OMG!)

Price: $$ ($ cheap, $$ moderate, $$$ expensive)

Details: Matunuck Oyster Bar, 629 Succotash Road, Matunuck, 401-783-4202,rhodyoysters.com; Flo's Clam Shack, 4 Wave Ave., Middletown, 401-847-8141,flosclamshacks.com; Flo's Drive-In, Park Avenue, Island Beach Park, Portsmouth.

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Larry Olmsted has been writing about food and travel for more than 15 years. An avid eater and cook, he has attended cooking classes in Italy, judged a barbecue contest and once dined with Julia Child. Follow him on Twitter, @TravelFoodGuy, and if there's a unique American eatery you think he should visit, send him an e-mail attravel@usatoday.com. Some of the venues reviewed by this column provided complimentary services.

The hot wiener or New York System wiener

The Olneyville New York System

Olneyville New York System, in Providence's Olneyville neighborhood, is often cited as the "definitive" or "quintessential" vendor and dates to its opening by Greek immigrant Anthony Stevens in 1946. Stevens' cousin Gust Pappas ran Original New York System in the Smith Hill neighborhood, which claims its own founding as 1927. Still another institution, Coney Island System, claims an earlier date of 1915. There are dozens of establishments across the state that offer wieners, and the question of which is "best" is often contentious among residents

Modern Diner

Modern Diner: The first ever diner was invented in 1872 in Providence by an entrepreneur, Walter Scott. He decided to serve food from a freight wagon, which was horse-drawn. The diner's mobility lead to it being a great hit. Scott, soon had a roaring business, because he was moving his shop to where ever the people needed food. The meals served in diners are simple and hearty. The Modern Diner, at 13 Dexter Street, in Pawtucket is one such place, and it has made it to our list of top restaurants in Providence, by the sheer taste of the historic food served.

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