Everywhere I travel, I ask, "What do people around here eat?" People in most states give responses like, "I don't know. Hamburgers?" But in Rhode Island, I get real answers. And more than I can eat in a weekend.

"Jonnycakes," they'd say. Not pancakes like I find elsewhere, but little disks of stone-ground white cornmeal, pan-fried like silver-dollar pancakes. With real maple syrup, of course.

Or maybe they'll say, "Coffee milk." Rhode Islanders love coffee. They drink it hot. They drink it iced. They drink it as a flavoring in milkshakes which they call "coffee cabinets". And they drink it that syrupy sweet milk-based concoction they call coffee milk.

They drink that coffee with donuts. Sure you can find donuts anywhere, but never in more abundance than in Rhode Island. Of course donuts aren't really a Rhode Island food, but doughboys are. Dougboys, also called "fried dough", remind me of Mexican sopapias -- sweet deep-fat fried pieces of dough that puff up like little pillows. Sprinkled with sugar, they're sort of what my mother made when she tried to make donuts by deep-fat frying Pillsbury biscuits.

Deep-fat frying is one of the favorite ways to prepare foods in the Ocean State. Fish and chips (french fries, usually eaten with vinegar rather than catsup) are a perennial favorite. They'll also fry up the Rhode Island version of hushpuppies called "clam cakes". These are flour based rather than corn meal based, and feature bits of chopped clams rather than onions or shrimps you might find in other parts of the country. They're served in bags of a half-dozen.

"Chowda!" I'm sure I'd hear shouted in their New York-Boston hybrid accents. Chowder in Rhode Island comes in three varieties, the white clam chowder you're probably familiar with, red chowder that's also called "Manhattan Chowder", and the Rhode Island special -- clear chowder. The clear chowder has no cream to mask the flavors of the clams and vegetables.

And while I'm on the subject of clams, how about a clam bake? Clams and lobster and mussels and fish and potatoes and corn, all steamed together and served with hot melted butter. (Hungry yet?) Or maybe a giant stuffed clam, the variety Rhode Islanders call "quahaugs". Or a pot full of little-neck clams they call "steamers".

No, I'm not done yet. If you stick around in Rhode Island long enough, you're bound to get someone to mention "Del's Lemonade". This is very similar to the Italian soft-frozen fruit ices, it has the flavor of lemonade and the texture of wet snow.

"Spinach pie!" Spinach pie? The words don't seem to go together, do they? Okay, they're a little misleading. Spinach pie is a variety of the Italian calzone with spinach and diced onions and spices sauteed in olive oil and baked in a thin wrapper of bread.

If you go in a Rhode Island diner, you might hear someone order "Three all the way". They're ordering three hot dogs done the Rhode Island way. They call them "New York System weiners", though no one seems to know why. These weiners are not individual links, but cut from a continuous hot-dog-like sausage. They're placed in a bun sliced vertically and buried under a nutmeg and garlic flavored meat sauce and onions, and sprinkled with celery salt.

Their sub sandwiches are called "grinders", which, technically is the original name for sub sandwiches. Here the buns are sliced horizontally half-way through, opened flat, layered thick with meat and veggies, and usually toasted before serving.

So you can see, "the food of the common man" in Rhode Island is not so common.

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