Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [32]
We enjoyed our shore dinners on occasions when we visited last summer, but weren’t happy with the other eat-in-the-rough shoreline fare. Fried clams were thick and drab, and the tired meat in the lobster roll was a sorry contrast to the fresh meat we picked from the whole lobster in the shore dinner. Desserts, however, were as good as ever: swell sweet-tart rhubarb pie, seriously good Indian pudding, and, at the very end of the summer, pumpkin pie. We missed visiting during strawberry season, when Aunt Carrie’s traditionally offers Yankee strawberry shortcake.
Evelyn’s Drive-In
2335 Main Rd.
401–624–3100
Tiverton, RI
BLD (summer only) | $$
Evelyn’s is a fair-weather drive-in with the nicest possible outdoor dining area: a row of covered picnic tables perched over Sakonnet Bay with a view of pleasure boats and the Newport shores. The outdoor dining is strictly self-service—carry your own food from the order window. We actually saw one couple spread a tablecloth and open their own wine to accompany lobster plates.
Regular customers tend to eat inside at tables and a short counter, where the view is of one another and the tight quarters are filled with conversation and the hum of air conditioning (rather than the lap of water and the screech of seagulls). We noted that many of the locals order non-seafood meals from the broad menu: meat loaf, burgers, chicken pie, and one oddity we couldn’t resist trying: a chow mein sandwich. It is a plate of frizzled-crisp chow mein noodles, soy-sauce gravy, and vegetables (beef optional) with a hamburger bun floating in it. Weird!
Evelyn’s is at its best being a seafood shack, where the blackboard menu lists market prices for fried clams, scallops, and lobster. Scallops and clams are available in small-and large-size plates, the large being immense. In our experience, the clams are extraordinarily uniform in shape—the classic diamond-ring formation, with a chewy hoop and a gooey belly. The lobster roll, available with a choice of butter or mayonnaise served on the side, is only pretty good—more shredded meat than chunked. Chowder and clam cakes make a nice single-digit-priced meal—those market prices for seafood can take the better part of $20 for a single lunch. You want to have a little cash to splurge on the Rhode Island favorite for dessert: Grape-Nuts pudding.
Gray’s Ice Cream
16 East Rd. at Four Corners
401–624–4500
Tiverton, RI
$
On a summer day in Tiverton, Gray’s parking lot is packed with people who come from miles around to indulge in the time-honored ritual of standing in line at the order window and getting cups and cones of ice cream that ranges from normal flavors to that Yankee oddity, Grape-Nuts. Gray’s also is proof of our contention that Rhode Island is one of the most coffee-conscious places in the nation. (Where else do you find coffee milk—like chocolate milk but coffee flavored—sold by the cup and pint?) Coffee ice cream here is robust and just-right sweet. The other great Gray’s flavor is ginger, made with bits of fresh root that give the creamy scoops a brilliant spicy bite.
Haven Brothers
Fulton and Dorrance Sts. at Kennedy Plaza
401–861–7777
Providence, RI
D late night | $
From the time the Haven Brothers truck pulls up alongside City Hall at 5:00 P.M. sharp to its 3:00 A.M. closing, there is always a colorful parade of Providence characters, inside and outside the movable diner, who carry on continuous conversation with the staff, with customers, or—if no one will listen—with the voices inside their own heads. To say that the clientele at this 1888-vintage late-night haunt is diverse is a ridiculous understatement. Among the regulars are big-shot city politicians, police officers, drunks who need to sober up when the bars close, and street people who range from wildly entertaining early in the evening to wild and scary after midnight.
There is a full menu of sandwiches, including lobster rolls and a great steak