If we had to find one person who represents Dominicans in Rhode Island, it would have to be Josefina Rosario. “Doña Fefa” is loved, respected and celebrated as the "Mother of the Dominican Community."

Dominicans are now the largest group of Latinos in Rhode Island. But in 1955, when Doña Fefa arrived in the state, she was convinced she was the first. Others soon followed.

Rosario opened a little store known as Fefa's Market in 1959, near the entrance to Roger Williams Park. She sold the foods she missed from home, including plátanos, yuca, coffee and cilantro, stocked Dominican newspapers, and gave the newcomers advice on finding a job, getting a driving license, and registering their children for school. She was a one-woman welcoming committee, and her store became a community center providing familiar comforts and advice in a new and strange world.

She and her Puerto Rican husband, Tony, often sponsored Dominican immigrants and housed them in their seven-room house at 145 Chester Street, on the corner of Broad Street, until they could find an apartment. Their daughters, fluent in English, served as translators when the newcomers needed help with myriad details of life in Rhode Island.

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In Rhode Island, you are never far from the ocean. Many of the state’s most beloved foods come from the sea and are tied to the history of marine industries like fishing. Prior to the arrival of European settlers, indigenous peoples like the Narragansett and the Wampanoag ate from the ocean, bay, and numerous inlets and rivers. Today, when the weather turns warm, Rhode Islanders head to the nearest “clam shack” for some seaside dining. Flo’s Drive-In was established at Island Beach Park in Portsmouth in 1936, originally operating out of a repurposed chicken coop. After the hurricane of 1938, the owners built a new structure on the site and continued rebuilding after each subsequent hurricane, emerging each time as strong and as popular as before. In 1991, Flo’s opened a second location at a beach cottage in Middletown outside Newport. Flo’s offers the seafood dishes that set Rhode Island apart from its neighboring states. All New Englanders enjoy lobster rolls and a variety of deep-fried bivalves, shrimp, and fish. But in Rhode Island, you should start by ordering the state’s official appetizer -- calamari. Then, try a cup of homemade clam “chowda.” Flo’s offers the creamy white and the red versions, as well as the local clear option. Next, order some clam cakes, doughy fritters flecked with pieces of clam. Finally, enjoy a “stuffie,” a baked quahog clam stuffed with breadcrumbs, chopped clam, and a few other secret ingredients. These filling, portable, and relatively inexpensive treats have come to represent Rhode Island’s identity as self-sufficient, resourceful, and down to earth.

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Walking into Ponto Um, an unassuming shop on Warren Avenue in East Providence, you may be greeted with a cheerful “Bom dia!” or another Portuguese expression. Ponto Um, which translates to Point One, advertises the “Best Variety of Brazilian Products” and, indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find another local store that sells more. The small market contains an eclectic and expansive inventory of goods, ranging from cosmetics and household products to hard-to-find spices, frozen foods (like pão de queijo), fresh breads and pastries, meats, and non-perishable products, many of which are imported directly from Brazil. In the back you find clothing, much of it emblazoned with the Brazilian flag, including jerseys so you can support the national futebol team. The Ponto Um Market has only served this neighborhood and wider region since 2007. However, it is part of a long tradition of diverse Lusophone, or Portuguese-speaking, communities in Rhode Island and southern New England. Besides Brazilians, the Ocean State is also home to people from Portugal, Cabo Verde, the Azores, and Madeira, as well as several generations of their descendants. Some of the first people of Portuguese heritage to come to Rhode Island were Jewish families escaping religious persecution in Europe, who traveled by way of Brazil and Barbados in the seventeenth century. By the mid-eighteenth century the community was large enough to need a house of worship, and Touro Synagogue--the oldest in the United States--was established in Newport in 1763. Throughout the nineteenth century, sailors from Cabo Verde and the Azores came to Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts to work in the whaling industry. By 1870, Portuguese speakers began working in the textile industry rather than whaling. Families from mainland Portugal and Madeira arrived in increasing numbers to work in mills and garment shops, joining the Azoreans and Cabo Verdeans who had already settled here. This long history of labor and immigration resulted in the presence of a vibrant multi-ethnic community of Portuguese descent in Rhode Island. Cuisine inspired by these groups can be found on the menus of many restaurants, in the form of Portuguese sweet bread French Toast, and linguiça and choriço sausage pizza. Along Warren Avenue, within blocks of Ponto Um, there is a Madeiran restaurant, Portuguese restaurants, and at least one other Portuguese market. Places like these and Ponto Um allow people to access foods that ensure the maintenance and growth of the foodways they and their ancestors brought with them to Rhode Island.

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Thomas Tew gained such renown for his exploits from 1692 until 1695 that he was nicknamed the Rhode Island Pirate. Tew, a privateer from Newport who turned to piracy, led two major voyages, and accrued more treasure than he could spend before he met a violent death. Due to his colorful role in the city’s history, the Newport Distilling Company named their first product after him--Thomas Tew Rum. Tew’s namesake is not the first rum to be made in these parts. Before the nineteenth century, Newport was the “rum capital of the world.” Today’s rum distillers use a process similar to that employed in the eighteenth century, mixing blackstrap molasses with local water and fermenting it in tanks using yeast from the adjacent brewery. This process yields a liquid called a “wash” that is then distilled twice. The resulting spirit is aged for several years in oak barrels before water is added to lower the proof. Finally, the rum is individually bottled, corked, and sealed with wax. Rum played a central role in “the triangle trade,” a term used to describe the selling of rum, sugar, goods, and enslaved Africans among the nations of Europe, Western Africa, the Caribbean, and the Eastern United States. Rum-making and the triangle trade historically provided much of Newport’s wealth, and depended on the labor and selling of enslaved Africans and African Americans whose contributions are too often ignored. In addition, African Americans contributed a great deal to the culinary heritage of the Ocean State, such as the oysters and other foods offered by restaurateur George T. Downing at the Sea Girt Hotel in Newport, another stop on this tour and on the Rhode Island Black Heritage Tour. Today, visitors to the Newport Distilling Company can go on free tours of the facility, also home to Newport Storm Brewery, and reflect on the shifting social and political climates of the past three centuries that have led to the revival of this once-ubiquitous spirit.

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Entering Narragansett Bay in 1524, the explorer Giovanni de Verrazano was probably the first Italian visitor to Rhode Island, long before tomatoes made it to these parts. Rhode Island named the Jamestown Verrazano Bridge (in the southeastern part of the state) after him. It took more than three centuries before many other Italians settled in Rhode Island. Like many urban areas throughout the Eastern United States, Providence experienced several waves of immigration from Italy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Providence’s India Point was a main port on the Fabre Line, which offered the only transatlantic route to southern New England. Almost eighty-four thousand immigrants came into the United States through Providence, and around eleven thousand of them stayed. These Italian immigrants settled in the area now known as Federal Hill, on the west side of Providence, where their descendants and many other Italian Americans still live today. Visitors to this unique enclave of Italian-American heritage pass under a large sculpture of a pine cone, called La Pigna, which hangs above Atwells Avenue. The symbol of welcome and abundance tells people that they have arrived at one of the best-known culinary and cultural districts in the state. DePasquale Square marks the cultural, if not geographic, center of this vibrant neighborhood. A large central fountain is surrounded by outdoor seating, colorfully-painted buildings, and seagulls galore, all of which help create the feeling of a Mediterranean piazza. Numerous restaurants, serving Italian-inspired cuisine from all regions of Italy, fill the streets surrounding the square. Diners have options ranging from upscale dining in candlelit establishments to busy late-night pizza parlors. Numerous specialty food stores like Antonelli Poultry, where savvy cooks can purchase chickens wholesale, stand alongside bakeries and cafes where diners enjoy both espressos and an Ocean State classic, pizza strips -- consisting only of pizza dough topped with spicy tomato sauce.

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Eleanor Dove’s recipe for Raccoon Pot Pie was so beloved, so well-known, that it is now preserved in the Congressional Book of Records, according to her great-granddaughter. Eleanor and her husband Ferris Dove, both members of the Narragansett tribe, opened the Dovecrest Restaurant on this site in 1963 as a steakhouse. They soon began serving more traditional Narragansett foods based on recipes from Eleanor’s father. People came from all over the country to try the Dovecrest’s buffalo steak, rabbit stew, succotash, venison, and especially johnnycakes--the best in the world, as a 1981 New York Times article concluded. After several decades of culinary success, the Dovecrest Restaurant closed and the Tomaquag Museum took over its space. Today, museum visitors learn about Indigenous ways of fishing, hunting, and agricultural practices on the same spot where they used to eat johnnycakes. Many of the foods Rhode Islanders consider unique to the Ocean State’s heritage date from before the arrival of Roger Williams and other European colonists. Indigenous peoples, like the Narragansett, Wampanoag, and Nipmuc, had complex foodways that continue to influence Rhode Island cuisine. Although the Dovecrest Restaurant no longer exists, curious cooks can recreate Eleanor’s Quahog Chowder from the recipe below. Clam chowder can be a contentious topic around these parts. While the so-called New England version is creamy and thick, the Manhattan version is tomato-based. Rhode Island clam chowder, on the other hand, more closely resembles the Dovecrest’s--a clear broth, rich with salt pork, potatoes, and local quahog clams. Since dairy and tomatoes did not exist in New England prior to contact with European settlers, one might say that the Dovecrest Quahog Chowder is indeed the most Rhode Island of them all.

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“Stop at the sign of the lemon!” declares the Del’s soft frozen lemonade slogan. The Del’s symbol, a frost-covered lemon, can be seen everywhere during summer in the Ocean State. Made from crushed ice, lemons, and sugar, Del’s sells their signature product at their franchises, trucks, stands, and at the grocery store. The company dates its production back to 1840 in Naples, Italy, when its founder’s great grandfather made a mixture of sugar, lemon juice, and snow, which he sold at the local market. The founder’s grandfather, Franco DeLucia, brought the recipe to the United States at the turn of the century. After developing a machine to produce the frozen lemonade, Angelo DeLucia created Del’s Frozen Lemonade in 1948. He first opened a small stand in Cranston and later began serving his product from mobile carts, or Del’s Trucks, which spread his business throughout the state. A sign of summer, Del’s carts begin cropping up across the state as the months get warmer. An iconic Rhode Island beverage, Del’s unfortunately lost the competition to become the official state beverage to coffee milk, but their shared southern Italian origins and continued popularity signal an abiding influence of Italian foodways in Rhode Island.

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“Chow mein” and “chop suey"—both American appropriations of Cantonese words—have been part of the American English vocabulary since the late 19th century. With the end of mining and railway building as viable industries, Chinese food service establishments, along with hand laundries, became the major economic opportunity available to Chinese immigrants, as well as a crucial site of cultural exchange. Americanized Chinese food became an important part of the food landscape.

Chan’s Fine Oriental Dining, Jazz & Blues first opened in Woonsocket in 1905 as the New Shanghai Restaurant. A Chinese-American restaurant, Chan’s continues to offer variations on chop suey, chow mein, and fried rice.

In 1965, Ben F. Chan purchased the space, refurbished the dining area, and changed the name to Chan’s Fine Oriental Dining. In 1986, the restaurant doubled in size and added jazz, blues, folk, cabaret, and comedy performances. The space hosts acclaimed musicians while also providing familiar food options for locals.

A notable regional specialty is the chow mein sandwich, an amalgam of French Canadian, Italian, and Chinese cultures. Popularized in the predominantly Catholic towns of Fall River, New Bedford, and Woonsocket, Chinese restaurants and food trucks offered meatless sandwiches on Fridays in observance of religious strictures. The chow mein sandwich is served on a hamburger bun with noodles and a brown gravy made with onions, celery, and bean sprouts. An affordable and filling lunch option for textile mill workers, the chow mein sandwich also appeared in school cafeterias and on lunch counter menus. The sandwich signals the adaptation of traditional Cantonese cuisine to the tastes of Anglo-Americans.

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In the 1920s, when southern Italian immigrants brought their tradition of heavily sweetened coffee to Rhode Island, coffee milk was born. The beverage is so popular in Rhode Island that on March 30, 1993, the Rhode Island State Legislature designated coffee milk as the official state drink. Between 1898 and 1932, nearly 55,000 Italian immigrants arrived at the Port of Providence, in spite of limitations imposed by federal laws which discriminated against immigrants from outside northern Europe. Many Italian immigrants worked in the textile mills at low wages while introducing the state to their culinary traditions. As soda fountains and diners developed across the state, coffee milk moved from immigrant kitchens to diner menus. A soda fountain operator developed a coffee syrup by sweetening leftover coffee grounds with milk and sugar to create a molasses-like extract that, when mixed with milk, became coffee milk.

People also made coffee milk at home by mixing milk with the coffee syrup themselves. Coffee milk should not be confused with a cabinet, a drink made from milk, ice cream, and flavored syrup blended together. The blender used to make them was stored in a cabinet, giving the drink its name. If you ask for a milkshake in Rhode Island, you will receive milk shaken with flavoring, either powder or syrup, but no ice cream.

Two companies, Autocrat and Eclipse, quickly began producing the popular coffee syrup used to make coffee milk at home and in restaurants. Autocrat and Eclipse maintained a decades-long rivalry as each other’s primary source of competition. Founded in 1914, Eclipse began producing syrup in the 1920s and started selling it to consumers in 1938 when retailers, in addition to restaurants, began selling their syrup. Based in Warwick, Eclipse popularized their product with the slogan “You smack your lips if it’s Eclipse.” In the 1940s, Autocrat, based in Lincoln since 1895, countered with their own marketing campaign: “A swallow will tell you.” Although they acquired Eclipse in 1991, Autocrat continues to manufacture and market both brands. Newer local brands like Dave’s Coffee and Morning Glory offer syrups with no artificial colors, sweeteners, or high fructose corn syrup and show that contemporary Rhode Islanders still crave the long popular state drink, coffee milk.

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BAM! While Chef Emeril Lagasse’s catchphrase may not have started at Johnson & Wales University’s College of Culinary Arts, Lagasse did graduate in 1978 from J&W and go on to become a professional chef and television host. The Portuguese and French-Canadian restauranteur was born in nearby Fall River, Massachusetts, but launched his career in New Orleans, where he mastered his signature Creole and Cajun cuisine. The culinary arts program had only recently started when Emeril attended. While the university was founded in 1914 as a business school, what is now known as the College of Culinary Arts opened in 1973 and became more formally established in 1992. The Culinary Arts Museum at Johnson & Wales University is a teaching museum that preserves and interprets culinary and hospitality heritage. Connected to the university, the museum features work and materials by and for students attending the College of Culinary Arts while also operating exhibits for regular museum visitors. In 1979, Johnson & Wales accepted industrialist Paul Fritzsche’s donation of 7,500 rare historical cookbooks, followed a decade later by a donation from educator and restaurateur Louis Szathmary of 64,000 items, including books, artifacts, menus, silver, matchbooks, pots, pans, appliances, artwork, correspondence, autographs, antiques, and advertisements spanning five hundred years. These two collections led the university to create the Culinary Archives & Museum in 1989 to highlight culinary history and culture. More recently, Zack Hanle of Bon Appetit magazine donated over 4,000 menus from around the world, and the museum has also accepted donations from Earle MacAusland of Gourmet Magazine, New York Times columnist and cookbook author Jean Hewitt, McCalls editor Mary Norton, and author and chef Julia Child, who received an honorary doctorate degree from the university in 1995. The renamed Culinary Arts Museum tells stories about food trends, traditions, and innovations, including the significant impact of the College of Culinary Arts on the Rhode Island food scene. The College of Culinary Arts has served as a catalyst for the culinary arts in the state, especially in Providence. Johnson & Wales alumni have established numerous restaurants in Rhode Island and significantly shape local food culture and the culinary arts. As Emeril would say, “Feel the love.”

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In the village of Usquepaugh, on the banks of the Queen’s River, Kenyon’s Grist Mill has ground whole berries of grain and whole kernels of corn into meal or flour continuously since 1696.

Kenyon’s still uses the 1886 mill built by John Tarbox and the name of former owner C.D. Kenyon, who purchased the mill in 1909. At first, farmers brought their own corn or grist to be ground, and later Kenyon sold the ground meal in branded sacks with the Kenyon name, available for everyone to purchase. Rhode Islanders make one of their favorite traditional foods, johnnycakes, with Kenyon’s stone ground cornmeal. Mix cornmeal with salt and hot water or milk; sometimes sweeten with sugar or honey; then fry on a flat surface and serve thick or thin, depending on regional preference. South County johnnycakes are thicker and traditionally served with butter only, but Newport residents slather theirs in butter and maple syrup. American Southerners call a similar dish a hoe cake, named after the gardening tool on which they were originally cooked. While recipes and stories about the name and origin vary, Indigenous Peoples prepared the pancake-like cornmeal patties for generations before European colonialization. Some claim that the name derives from “journey cake,” referring to the food’s durability and portability during long trips. The term may also have indigenous or African origins. Benjamin Franklin called johnnycakes “better than a Yorkshire muffin.” Between 1973 and 2014, Kenyon’s hosted Johnny Cake Festivals. The events drew thousands of people and featured local vendors, live music, mill tours, and food—including, of course, johnnycakes.

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“I would have been a millionaire today if I had bent to prejudice.” So said George Thomas Downing, prominent African American Rhode Island restaurateur and civil rights champion. From behind the curtains of his lavish Sea Girt Hotel, built on this site in 1854 and destroyed by arson just six years later, Downing fought against racial injustice in a life-long struggle that would eventually ruin his fortunes and cause the demise of his hotel.

George T. Downing was born in New York City, in 1819, into a family of successful restaurateurs. His father, Thomas Downing, helped elevate the city’s street snack, the oyster, into the world of fine dining. His luxurious Wall Street oyster house served pickled oysters and jellied turkeys to Charles Dickens, Queen Victoria, and the city’s elite. George owned his own restaurant in New York City before moving to Newport in the 1840s to open an offshoot of his father’s oyster house, catering to big city gentry on holiday.

The oyster house has a long history in African American heritage, particularly in Rhode Island. Emmanuel Manna Bernoon, an emancipated slave, had opened one of the first restaurants in the United States, an oyster and ale house, in 1736 on Towne Street (now Main Street) in Providence. By the 1840s, oysters had become a shared passion for rich and poor. For many black entrepreneurs like Downing, oysters became the foundation on which they built their culinary empire.

Downing’s crowning centerpiece was the Sea Girt Hotel. Catering to a white clientele, the grand five-story building included large stores, a restaurant, accommodation for gentlemen boarders and families, and served as the Downing residence. Martin R. Delany, the African American intellectual, said of Downing’s Newport enterprise: “This fashionable establishment is spoken of as among the best conducted places in the country, the proprietor among the most gentlemanly.”

The Sea Girt served the community until an arsonist burned it down ten days before Christmas in 1860. While the culprit was never caught, many believed that the fires were lit in retaliation for Downing’s staunch advocacy of civil rights. A “race man” like his father and grandfather before him, Downing was keenly interested in the treatment of African Americans. As one of America’s earliest civil rights activists, Downing led the campaign for the desegregation of Newport schools and was instrumental in getting the first African American into the Diplomatic Corps.

His political concerns led him to Washington, where he made alliances with white abolitionists and other African American activists. In 1865, he became the manager of the Members’ Dining Room for the U.S. House of Representatives, a position he held for twelve years. There, he was able to wield his influence through political ties and friendships, such as the one he shared with Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. During his time in Washington, he worked for the passage of public accommodation laws in the capital city.

Downing died in 1903, a “galvanizing and enduring symbol of African American entrepreneurship and culinary excellence.”

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Step through the doors of the Modern Diner, slide into a window booth or snag a stool at the counter, and order two eggs, toast, and a side of hash browns. Order up!

In 1940, the Modern Diner opened on Dexter Street in downtown Pawtucket. Patrons could choose a booth along the diner’s windows or perch on one of the stainless steel stools that lined the narrow countertop separating the diners from the small galley kitchen. The Modern Diner quickly became a bustling breakfast hub serving up large plates of eggs, bacon, pancakes, and daily specials including the Rhode Island favorite, the “Cabinet,” a coffee flavored drink akin to frappes or milkshakes.

Small prefabricated eateries began to appear in American cities in the early twentieth century, replacing traditional food wagons as a source of casual cuisine. By the 1920s, the term “diner” had entered popular lexicon. Diners reflected popular styles, and by the 1930s, many diners featured aerodynamic shapes, curving silhouettes, and bright chrome accents – all hallmarks of the “Streamline Moderne” style of the Art Deco movement. Inspired by the sleek trains that crisscrossed the country, particularly the elegant new “Zephyr” trains of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad, designer Roland Stickney created the “Sterling Streamliner Diner.”

From 1939 until 1942, Sterling Streamliner diners were fabricated by the J.B. Judkins Coach Company, of Merrimac, Massachusetts, a company primarily known for its custom car bodies. Sales of diners offered an alternative market for companies affected by the decline of automobile sales during the Great Depression. Selling at around $15,000, Judkins’ Sterling Streamliners were the ultimate diner, with porcelain-clad exteriors and interiors accented with mahogany trim. They were built in four-foot modules that could be easily shipped and assembled at their final destination. Advertisements even marketed this feature with the claim that additional sections could be added as patronage increased. Unfortunately, only seventeen Sterling Streamliners diners were produced before the United States’ entry into World War II curtailed most civilian industries.

Today, the Modern Diner is one of only two Sterling Streamliners still in operation. It gained widespread recognition in 1978, becoming the first diner added to the National Register of Historic Places. The Modern Diner also gained notoriety after attracting the attention of Disney. In the early 1990s, Walt Disney Company sold thousands of shirts featuring Mickey and Minnie Mouse standing before the Modern Diner and its iconic neon sign. While attempting to tap into the origins of Americana, the company overlooked copyright laws and soon after, the owners of the Modern Diner filed suit against Walt Disney Company and won.

At first glance, the Modern Diner retains its historic 1940s appearance. After it was moved to East Avenue in the 1980s, however, an additional structure – containing modern amenities like an expanded kitchen and restrooms – was attached to the rear of the diner. Although the diner’s menu has expanded over the years to meet the tastes of new clientele, the traditional diner fare of breakfast is still their specialty.

Ready for breakfast?

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In the 1780s, a visitor traveling through the Blackstone River Valley might have smelled the rich aroma of roasting cacao beans wafting from a small wooden building as they passed through the hamlet of Central Falls. Americans consumed chocolate products with a passion in the late eighteenth century, and for nearly two decades, Central Falls was a center of chocolate production, earning itself the title of “Chocolateville.”

Chocolateville’s namesake mill opened in 1782, operated by confectioner William Wheat. Wheat, who had previously established a chocolate-making business in Providence, moved to Central Falls to take advantage of the power provided by the Blackstone River. His chocolate mill was one of America’s earliest water-powered chocolate manufacturing facilities.

Within the mill, imported cacao beans were roasted and ground into a chocolate slurry, with plenty of sugar and spice added for taste, before being shaped into small blocks. Don’t think of a delicious chocolate bar when you imagine these blocks – even after processing, the chocolate of this era was chalky and gritty. Most people purchased chocolate to use in baking or in concocting the fashionable beverage of “drinking chocolate.”

“Drinking chocolate” or “hot chocolate” became enormously popular during the late 1700s; Thomas Jefferson even predicted that it would overtake tea and coffee in usage. In 1773 alone, over 320 tons of cacao beans were imported into the American colonies. By this period hot chocolate was affordable to nearly everyone and was frequently served in coffee houses, where colonists would gather to talk about politics and the news of the day. When colonists boycotted tea during the American Revolution, hot chocolate was favored as an alternative drink.

Chocolate was also sought for its supposed medicinal powers. Thought to aid everything from the stomach to the brain, people used chocolate as a home remedy for illness. At least one doctor in the period even prescribed chocolate with a biscuit as part of one’s preparation for a smallpox inoculation.

Chocolate production connected the small community of Central Falls with the wider Atlantic world. Caribbean and South American slave plantations provided William Wheat, and other New England chocolate manufacturers, with cacao beans. Once processed, Wheat found a ready market for his chocolate in the bustling port cities of Providence and Newport. It’s even thought that chocolate from Wheat’s mill may have fed European soldiers fighting in the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars – a far cry from the waters of the Blackstone.

However, Chocolateville didn’t last. The chocolate mill changed ownership in 1784, and as economic tides shifted, cotton production soared in the region – surely a blow to the area’s chocolate aficionados. Following a major flood in the early 1800s, the empty and dilapidated building became known to locals as “the Quail’s Trap.” By around 1834, all traces of the mill that gave “Chocolateville” its name were gone. In recent years, Central Falls has reclaimed its identity and nickname, opening the Chocolate Mill Overlook Park. Visitors can imagine the smell of chocolate drifting over the park, linking the area to its tastiest product.

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In 1880, about 104,000 people lived in Providence. Thirty years later, the city’s population had more than doubled, reaching over 223,000 people. Most of this population increase was due to immigration; among those attracted to the city’s numerous manufacturing and industrial jobs were Irish, Italians, French Canadians, and Germans. This rapid population growth fueled the dramatic expansion of new residential areas at the city’s edges – areas like the Reservoir Triangle neighborhood of Mashapaug Pond. Today, although the people who call the neighborhood home have changed over time, Reservoir Triangle remains one of the most ethnically diverse spaces in the city.

In recent years, immigrants have come from such places as Cambodia, Ghana, and Vietnam. Since the 1950s, a large number of Latino immigrants also have made Providence their home. Today, Latinos make up close to forty percent of the city’s population and tiny Rhode Island is the twelfth most Hispanic state in the country. Asian Americans are also well represented within Providence, consisting of seven percent of the city’s population.

These groups – like the immigrants to the region in the early twentieth century – are united in their common interest to create new lives for themselves, using both what they find here in their new country as well as skills, traditions, and practices brought from their homelands. Immigrant groups and refugees in the United States face many challenges, but there is much to learn from neighborhoods where diverse groups work together to create positive change. In the Reservoir Triangle neighborhood, Mashapaug Pond can be the catalyst that unites these groups.

Mashapaug Pond, with its contaminated water and restricted access, can be an imposing site to newcomers in the neighborhood. Sokeo Ros, who moved to the Reservoir Triangle neighborhood from Cambodia, says that many of his neighbors avoid the pond: “It’s a beautiful neighborhood. It’s quiet, it’s not loud, it’s nice. There’s a lot of trees, which I like. I love trees. And then there’s this pond. That nobody goes near.” The big fences that surround the contaminated land of the former Gorham plant intimidate residents, block their view of the pond and create a culture of fear.

For some residents, the pond beckons with the opportunity to fish and enjoy nature in the city.  Samnang Yong, another Cambodian resident who grew up in the neighborhood in the 1980’s, remembers shopping at local Asian markets and fishing in the pond: “Coming from a country where we were just always fishing in our backyard. We don't expect anything, we just go and fish for food.” Now  years of pollution have made the fish unsafe to eat. Discouraging this practice and educating people about the pond is an ongoing struggle.

Some area residents try to teach their neighbors about the pond. Ana Quezada, originally from the Dominican Republic, works with the Environmental Justice League on outreach and education. She compares the neighborhood – and especially the presence of the pond and its plant and animal life – to her experiences growing up in the Dominican Republic. “Well for me being near the pond is normal because I come from the Dominican Republic. There it is hot all the time. We had a lot of mosquitos and we used to see all kinds of wild things.” Ana Quezada notes that her husband enjoys sitting out by the pond and that she has community events at her house. She hopes that in the future the cleaned up pond will be a more vibrant and lively space for all members of this diverse community.

Discussion Questions

Besides the United States, what other countries do you have ties to?

Do you smell any food being cooked in your neighborhood? What types of food does your family make at home?

What can the immigrant history of this area teach us about Providence and the United States?

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Walking down Resevoir Avenue today, the sweet fragrance of Popeye's Chicken and Biscuits mixes with the aroma of traffic. Strolling through Reservoir Triangle and the surrounding neighborhoods, the scent of Cambodian and Spanish food wafts out of kitchen windows. Buckets filled with garden soil, sprouting chili peppers, lemongrass, cucumbers, and squash serve as makeshift gardens of fresh produce.

Every community has its own food culture, history, and traditions – its own foodways. Over the past half-century, the foodways in the neighborhoods surrounding Mashapaug Pond have changed dramatically, reflecting the community’s shifting demographics and the influx of new ethnic groups. Nonetheless, foodways continue to be an important part of life in these close-knit neighborhoods.

In the 1950s, the Hide-Away Diner occupied the site where Popeye’s now stands near the southeast corner of the pond. Built from an old Pullman railroad car, the twenty-four hour diner was a popular local haunt. As the noontime sun sparkled off of Mashapaug Pond, workers at the Gorham Manufacturing Company slipped out to spend their lunch breaks at the diner. Sounds of sizzling hamburgers, clanging pinball machines and chatting workers filled the cozy restaurant. Nearby, children beamed over mountains of ice cream swirling with flavored syrups, seltzer, strawberries, and bananas – the signature “Bumper” dish of the The Hut, a popular ice cream parlor.

But on the opposite side of the pond, in the neighborhood of West Elmwood – now the Huntington Expressway Industrial Park – paved streets gave way to dirt roads. Backyards bustled with chickens, cows, goats and ducks. Neighbors walked door-to-door selling surplus garden vegetables. Vendors sold fish and crabs out of trucks. Kids collected turtles and crawfish from bubbling brooks, picked huckleberries and wild strawberries to make rich jams and jellies, and pilfered ripe peaches, apples, and plums from neighborhood trees. Chewing on sassafras roots dug from the shores of Mashapaug Pond, the taste of root beer filled their mouths.

Demolition crews have long since torn down Reservoir Triangle’s diners and ice cream shops. The fruit trees and lush gardens of West Elmwood have been flattened to make way for the industrial park. Today, area residents have different shopping and dining haunts.

At Sunny’s Market on the pond’s southeast shore, for example, residents and visitors can find food products from countries around the world, reflecting the neighborhood’s growing immigrant population. Delicacies favored in neighborhood homes range from Cambodian style fish poached in coconut milk to Arepa, a Dominican cornmeal cake served as a dessert.

“Walking down the street, I can smell Asian food, Cambodian food, Spanish food…I love the smell of food,” said Sokeo Ros, a Cambodian resident of the Reservoir Triangle neighborhood. Ros appreciates the rich diversity of foodways shared by his neighbors today.

Discussion Questions