TO UNDERSTAND Rhode Island, start with the coffee. “Don’t ask for a regular,” Zach Miller warned me over breakfast in Little Compton, the Stephen King-ready, clapboard-faced town on the state’s eastern flank.
Miller’s a North Carolina-born architect who now lives in Rhode Island and is renovating a historic hotel there (more on that later).
“A regular coffee here will come with half a cup of cream and half a cup of sugar,” he warns me.
I opt for an espresso.
The java’s just the beginning. Seemingly, this tiny state — at barely 1,000-square miles of land, the smallest in the union — has its own, very particular way of doing and saying almost everything.
By rights, Rhode Island should feel like little more than Massachusetts Plus.
Tucked into the crook of its New England neighbor, it has a distinct and, at times, aggressive identity (more on that later, too).
If there’s such a thing as patriotism for your state (oh wait, there is — just ask a Texan), Rhode Island displays it proudly everywhere.
The Island mentality is always evident. This is still a place where few give the area code on phone numbers — after all, even that cellphone’s likely a 401. Signs are sporadic, as if directing you to another town shows disloyalty to wherever you are now.
“There’s a certain passive aggressiveness in not having street signs,” laughs official state folklorist Michael Bell, an Indiana native.
“It’s as if they’re saying ‘If you have to ask, you probably don’t belong here.’ When I first moved, the motto on the license plates was ‘Discover Rhode lsland,’ and boy was that true.”
Locals are renowned for a fondness for phantom landmarks when giving directions: “Remember where the Moonshine Diner used to be? Turn left there.” (Resisting the urge to retort “If I knew where that used to be, I wouldn’t need directions” proves challenging as days pass.)If you get lost, God help you: Rhode Island is littered with linguistic landmines.
Locals loudly grumble that robo-voiced GPS systems mangle the names of towns like Pawtucket and Woonsocket — emphasis on the second syllable, please.
Most locals quickly and proudly cough up the historic hairball that Rhode Island was the first colony to declare independence from England and the last to sign up to the United States (it never endorsed Prohibition, either). Browsing the list-packed, 150th issue of “Providence Monthly,” there’s a feature touting “10 Things We Love About the State Now.” At No. 3 is the burgeoning trend of getting RI inked on your body as a tribal tattoo.
Yet for all its indelible independence, odds are when driving around the state, you’ll end up ducking briefly into Massachusetts, particularly if you’re not a map reader.
Locals are glaringly aware of its puny size: as drivetime duo Jones and Heatheron 105.1FM/WWLI discussed the staycation trend one recent morning, Jones sighed and chuckled. “Well, everything over half an hour in Rhode Island, you might as well pack a bag.”
There’s an ornery wariness of outsiders that I experienced first hand.
After accidentally snapping a truck in the corner of a bucolic landscape photo, the irate and suspicious driver tailed me for 40 minutes, horn blaring at each stop light, furious at my having supposedly captured his likeness. “Discover Rhode Island,” indeed.
Yet somehow its aloofness — the New England characteristic dispensed with gusto here — isn’t off-putting. It’s endearingly unfawning. Rhode Island doesn’t seem to care whether you visit or not and, perversely, is all the more appealing for it.
Not that this is all that gives the state its appeal.
Rhode Island possesses one of the most alluring bits of coastline in the East, stretching from Watch Hill up towards Newport.
The most appealing seaside strip, though, is the chunk once ruled by Massachusetts. Little Compton was incorporated originally into what’s now the Bay State via King Philip’s War in 1675.
The settlements here are laid out differently from the rest of the state, ordered around a town green in classic New England style rather than the haphazard, organic layout elsewhere.
It does show a touch of Rhode Island rebelliousness, though. Along with Connecticut, the state never ratified the 18th amendment.
Historians recall how farmers in Little Compton, an easy-to-reach but hard-to-police outcrop, cashed in during the booze ban. Many converted their barns to moonshine warehouses and there were plenty of speakeasies.
It’s something coffee-loving architect Miller discovered when he bought a rundown waterfront B&B for a lavish historic makeover.
Under the main building was a low-ceiling cellar, dug out in 1933 for illicit tippling only to be filled with mud by a 1938 hurricane.
It was excavated in the 1960s and Miller has turned it into the showpiece of his new hotel — albeit with a legal liquor license.
“We’ve called it 1854, but everyone just uses its old name, the Tap Room,” he says wryly.
A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, he’s been living in Little Compton for almost a decade. “But I don’t think you’re considered a local until you’re third-generation.
How did such a tiny state develop such a ferocious sense of self?
Local historian Joan Roth pins her state’s singularity down to its founding by Roger Williams, who fled the Massachusetts Bay Colony to what’s now known as Providence.
“He came here looking for religious freedom, and found the Puritans were doing the same thing that they’d objected to in England: making their religion the state religion,” she explains.
“Williams wouldn’t toe the party line, and was finally officially told to get the hell out. And it’s something we’re really proud of. His attitude carried through, establishing this colony and attracting like-minded people.”
From the outset, it was a safe haven for independent thinkers — and has cherished that standalone quality all along.
Driving around its inlet-pocked coast, zigzagging on detours over bridges, I realized that Rhode Island’s sense of self is probably as much due to geography as theology.While Alaskans may see Russia from their kitchen windows, Rhode Islanders just see more Rhode Island. Most of its 1 million inhabitants cluster along the pitchfork-shaped coastline, so that their houses manage to be simultaneously oceanfront and inward looking. The perfect view to enjoy a regular coffee or two.
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EAT LOCAL
Delve into Rhode Island’s food culture
Nowhere is Rhode Island’s distinctive identity as glaring as on its menus and surprisingly freedom from chains — one local realtor marveled how few outposts of Chilis, et al., he could find after decamping to Narragansett from Tampa.
Here’s an easy way to decode the seemingly exotic offerings.
Cabinet
What the rest of the world calls a milkshake — ice cream, milk, flavored syrup — is called a cabinet here. Order a milkshake, and it’ll come ice cream-free.
Autocrat syrup (autocrat.com)
Coffee-flavored syrup, often used in a cabinet (see above). Coffee-flavored sweet treats are a distinctly Rhode Island delicacy, whether ice cream, candy or cabinets. The local yen for this, historian Joan Roth posits, might well be linked to the Caribbean plantations of slave-owning wealthy locals, who were exposed to coffee that way.
Jonnycakes
The hike-friendly if far from gourmet patty made from cornmeal, salt and water like rough-hewn polenta. Some local recipes sweeten them with molasses, another fossilized vestige of the local slave trade, explains Joan Roth.
Quahogs
The local catch-all name for a hard clam. The bigger clams are called chowders and sold per pound; the smaller ones called counts and sold by the piece.
Clam chowder
Rhode Island chowder, according to Michael Bell, isn’t tomato-based like New York’s version, or creamy as in the rest of New England. Here, the chowder’s ultra-simple: water or stock, clams, potatoes and herbs. There’s a reason you won’t see this version served from coast to coast, but here, it works.
Del’s Lemonade (dels.com)
A statewide treasure, founded in Cranston and serving Italian-recipe lemonade brought over with an immigrant family from Naples more than a century ago. Look for the roadside Lemon signs.