Noshing Across New England travels took me to Rhode Island for breakfast, lunch, and dessert. The treats include a couple of famous Rhode Island specialties! Here's where my day trip took me.
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Our most recent work-road trip took us on a jaunt through The Ocean State—Rhode Island! It included several, fun little stops for antiquing and such. Most importantly, we found four new places to grab tasty bites of New England fare.
Here's where the road took us in Rhode Island.
Eggs in Exeter, RI
We left home and headed to Exeter, Rhode Island to check out an eatery I'd been hearing about. I can't remember where exactly I saw it—a social media post or possibly a comment on one, but the charming name caught my attention: the Middle Of Nowhere Diner. I do love me a good, old-fashioned diner.
Our non-interstate route from central Massachusetts to Exeter was a winding and sometimes wooded one, a drive that fed my anticipation for just how far out in the "middle of nowhere" this diner might be.
Middle Of Nowhere Diner
As it turns out, that name has more to do with the town's location away from the more populous cities of the little state than the restaurant's remoteness. For this spot isn't buried in the woods; it's on the quite busy Route 3, near a fence company, a pond supply store, and a Dunkin'.
The first thing we noticed when we pulled in was that Middle Of Nowhere was hoppin', with a full lot and several people waiting outside for tables to free up. But we got lucky with two open seats at the counter.
A good diner tip
When the server at a diner offers you a counter seat, take it. Not only does it bump you ahead of others waiting for tables, you get a first-hand view of the impossible choreography behind the scenes.
There, the neverending orders of food go from the cook's window into servers' arms and out to waiting customers, drinks get poured, counters get wiped, pies are sliced—and it all happens in one space that's barely big enough to sneeze in.
Counters are handy places to rest one or both elbows while you sip your coffee. And these seats are perfect places to chitchat with the staff, eavesdrop on their gossip, and get to know fellow diners seated quite close to your hip.
Best of all, you're positioned very close to the coffee pot, so refills of your cup of joe happen fast and often!
It was from this vantage point that I watched a server make two orders of chocolate milk. She squeezed a large plastic bottle into tall drinking glasses; so much chocolate syrup splorted into each one that they looked at least half full before the cold milk went in.
When stirred, swirls and streaks of chocolate still coated the insides of the glasses. And I felt a pang of nostalgia—I used to add way too much chocolate to my chocolate milk as a kid, too!
In addition to counter seats, there are tables and one cute corner booth that I heard the servers refer to as "Elvis"—because there's a huge picture of Elvis on the wall above it!
The staff looked up every time the door opened, smiling and calling out whenever regulars came through. The overall impression of Middle Of Nowhere Diner is one of friendliness and of everyone enjoying themselves.
To go with the bottomless coffee, we had some tasty eats.: I had the Non-traditional Western Sandwich with eggs, cheddar, onions, and ham. It was made with the softest English muffin ever! (The woman sitting next to me and I couldn't stop talking about those muffins.)
My husband had a big plate of scrambled eggs, seasoned home fries, and toast. We were so stuffed!
We will happily trek to this middle-of-somewhere again for another round of Middle Of Nowhere Diner food. Hopefully the next time, the ice cream shop next door will be open—it's cutely named the Next To Nowhere Creamery.
Check this out!
Steamed Cheeseburgers
When visiting central Connecticut, try this unique, regional favorite!
Sweets in Warren, RI
Our next stop was Bristol, Rhode Island, home of Roger Williams University where our daughter went to college. We took a quick stroll around the campus for a trip down memory lane and grabbed a decal at the bookstore for our car. (We failed to remove our last Roger Williams decal before trading in the old car. Whoops!)
We were in downtown Bristol a day late for the town's biggest claim to fame: the country's oldest 4th of July parade. (The line down the center of the parade route, Hope Street, is even painted red, white, and blue.) Oh well—at least we were able to see the festive, patriotic trimmings on the businesses and old, historic houses along the route.
I was hoping to find our lunch in town, but we were still feeling the weight of our huge diner breakfasts. We'll catch you next time, Bristol!
The Perfect Sweet Shoppe
We headed north to the town of Warren, which also has a pleasant little downtown of shops, pizzerias, and cafes. My husband spied a sign for an ice cream shop tucked around a corner, so we decided to follow it.
The shop is aptly named The Perfect Sweet Shoppe. Inside we found a case of beautifully tinted, perfectly shaped macarons, plus cakes, dipped cookies, and more.
There are also two cases of hard ice cream flavors to try to choose from. Several of these flavors are nods to Rhode Island's obsession with sweet coffee syrup: like Coffee Heath, Coffee Oreo, and Coffee Milk.
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My husband went with a cone-full of Rollin' In The Dough—peanut butter ice cream with chocolate chip cookie dough chunks and a salted caramel swirl!
And to answer your question, yes: it's dang delicious.
Delekta's Pharmacy
I headed back around the corner for a different ice cream treat served up by the famous Delekta's Pharmacy.
Old soda fountains
Delekta's is a family-owned, old-fashioned soda shop in Warren that was first established in 1858. Up until a few years ago it was still a working pharmacy—this combination of drugstore and scoop shop was quite common from the mid-1800s through the mid-1900s.
Back then pharmacies housed soda fountains where their patrons perched at the counter for restorative tonics, ice cream, floats, hand-mixed sodas, and seltzers. Those pharmacists concocted the secret formulas for sodas we still drink today, like Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, and Moxie (invented in Lowell, MA.)
Remember in "It's A Wonderful Life" young George Bailey worked at Gower's Drug Store? That was a soda fountain! It's there that Mary has her chocolate ice cream—topped with coconut at George's insistence.
Although the pharmacy side of Delekta's is no more, you can head into the historic shop to take in the old decor of dark mahogany walls and trim, tin ceilings, and the long, marble counter above a cracked tile floor. Old apothecary bottles are visible on the shelves around the space as a nod to Delekta's legacy.
At the counter, you can still order ice cream, drinks, and candy—and that's where I ordered my ice cream treat: a coffee cabinet. No, not a piece of furniture. A cabinet is a Rhode Island milkshake.
Coffee milk and coffee cabinets
Have you ever had a coffee milk? Rhode Island is a great place to try one—it's the official drink of the state! The beverage is a simple blend of sweet coffee syrup and cold milk. Coffee lovers will find nothing wrong with this regional favorite.
You can simmer up coffee syrup at home, or purchase it from Rhode Island brands like Autocrat and Dave's Coffee.
Want to turn that coffee milk into a milkshake? Well, in Rhode Island that's a coffee cabinet: a blend of milk, coffee ice cream and coffee syrup.
As to why it's called a cabinet, no one is quite sure. The best guess from the owners of Delekta's is that because milkshake machines were sometimes stored in a cabinet, customers got in the habit of calling the drink by that name.
Delekta's makes its coffee cabinet using its own coffee syrup recipe. It's a simple milkshake (I mean cabinet) with no need for frivolous toppings of whipped cream, cherries, or (as seen in the recent trend of over-the-top milkshakes) cotton candy, donuts, or cake slices.
It's just a good, cold, frosty milkshake with lots of sweet coffee flavor.
Make your own!
Homemade Coffee Syrup
For your coffee milk and milkshakes.
Wieners in Woonsocket, RI
Fully sugared up on milkshakes and ice cream, we meandered our way north. We stopped at antique stores and shops along the way, and a few hours later found ourselves in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, a town just a stone's throw from the Massachusetts border.
While leaving a shop on Main Street I spied a little storefront down the street with a red and white striped awning. The sign above the door read New York Lunch, Inc. Hot Wieners. And that reminded me that we had not yet tried Rhode Island's famous take on a hot dog, called a New York System.
New York System
A New York system (also called a New York lunch) is a hot wiener (never hot dog) made of veal, pork, and beef. It's served in a steamed bun and topped with mild meat sauce, chopped onions, yellow mustard, and celery salt—when you order a wiener "all the way" this is what you'll get.
According to the New England Historical Society, these wieners got their name in the 1900's, when hot dogs were the hottest new street food in New York City. Saavy vendors in Rhode Island jumped on the trend and named their hot dogs "New York System" for an air of authenticity—and the name stuck. Over the next couple of decades, hot dog shops in Providence owned by members of the Greek community developed the now famous combination of pork-veal wieners and toppings that is a New York System.
And as we learned at New York Lunch in Woonsocket, it's customary to down several wieners in one sitting—and weird to order just one!
New York Lunch
The first thing to know is that these are not hot dogs—they're wieners. And when you walk into New York Lunch and peer over the counter at the cooktop behind it, you'll see dozens and dozens of sizzling wieners, just waiting to be eaten.
The space inside New York lunch is small and cozy: follow the narrow space that runs behind the counter seats and you'll find a small dining room. There are booths, tables, a vivid black and red checkered floor, and a gleaming tin ceiling.
And every square inch of the walls is covered in signs, posters, and framed photos. Three Stooges, hot rods, Beatles, Coca-Cola memorabilia, a framed newspaper with news of the Kennedy assassination, old TV shows, cigarette ads—a jumbled blend of nostalgia and kitsch that you could spend hours looking at!
Our unusually conservative order—two all-the-way wieners to share—really seemed to surprise the staff. "Just two??" exclaimed the woman who took our order with a wink and smirk. When another server brought them to our table, each wiener precariously teetered on a little paper plate. "They're so much harder to carry when there's just one!" she said.
That's when we realized that regulars order these wieners in many multiples to down in one sitting. No wonder the cooktop was loaded, even on this slow afternoon!
This tradition goes back a long way—people ordered so many it was common for purveyors to hold a line of New York System wieners in buns down the length of their arm as they topped them. (And some, like the famous Olneyville NY System in Providence still do this!)
Well, we learned our lesson: those wieners were very tasty and we could have easily eaten another one or two apiece. They bear some similarity to the Vermont favorite Michigan dog or red hot, except the meat sauce is very mild. The dusting of celery salt over the chopped onions was a surprisingly distinct and savory addition.
(By the way, I'm sticking with this spelling: wiener. It's a little confusing as the word is spelled as both "weiner" and "wiener" on New York Lunch signs. Even in other online articles about New York Systems the spelling varies!)
Catch ya later, Rhode Island
Those wieners were the delicious culmination of our day spent trekking through the country's smallest state. We have much more exploring to do, including eateries in Bristol that we couldn't get to on this trip. Plus our daughter gave us a few ideas for Newport, and we haven't even scratched the surface yet in Providence.
Of course, there are plenty more "middle of nowhere" areas of Rhode Island. In our experience, and as that Exeter diner proved, those hole-in-the-wall spots often end up being the tastiest destinations!
Heidi says
I highly recommend Lasalle Bakery in Providence! We used to go there almost everytime we were in town to drop off /pick up Hannah at PC. Their breakfast sandwiches were a favorite. Looks like you and Christian had a lot of fun!
Nancy Mock says
Oh Heidi, thank you so much for the recommendation! We will definitely check out Lasalle—we both love breakfast sandwiches. Yes, it was a lot of fun and we're looking forward to more road trips soon!