I miss only a few things about Rhode Island since moving from there to Idaho in 1992: Pawtucket and Boston Red Sox games, good Chinese food, and good native Rhode Island cuisine. There are not many people here in Idaho who can make a good clam chowder and no one here knows that chowder is best served with clam cakes. It seems that everytime I eat clam chowder made by an non-New Englander, I get a stomachache.
My mom makes the best clam chowder (chowda as we say in Rhode Islandese) and her clam cakes are to die for. Clam cakes are made with a special mix only found in Rhode Island or from a family recipe, and have clam bits in them. The mix is made into a thick batter and dropped into hot oil in small balls and deep fried.
Lately, I have had a craving for Stuffed quahogs. Quahogs are a close relative of the clam, except they are bigger in size. Stuffed quahogs are made by taking the quahog meat out of the shell, mixing with a spicy bread stuffing, and baking it in its shell. My nana used to buy them for me almost every week as a reward for taking her to the market. It is sheer heaven and not found anywhere else in the USA except for southern Massachusetts.
The Friday night staple for many Rhode Islanders is Fish ''n Chips, clam chowder, and clam cakes at the River Street Pub in Riverside, Rhode Island. If you are thirsty, you can wash your meal down with Narragansett beer or coffee milk.
Coffee Milk is milk with sweet coffee syrup that is made by the company Autocrat. Everytime someone we know visits Rhode Island, they bring home a gallon of the stuff and it goes a long way. I still have a couple of bottles in my refrigerator from 1999 -- it doesn''t go bad.
Coffee ice cream is very popular in Rhode Island on a cone or in a milk shake. Milk shakes are known as cabinets, and you can go to Newport Creamery and get a cabinet or an Awful Awful, which is a decadent shake made out of your favorite ice cream.
When I was working at Bryan''s Burger Den in McCall, Idaho about 10 years ago, a lady came to the counter and asked if we had coffee milk shakes. I asked her, "Are you from Rhode Island?" She said, "Yes, I''m from Warwick!" Small world!