A few generations ago, the variety of foods now available to the average Rhode Islander would have been as hard to fathom as the smartphone app that delivers homemade Uyghur-style noodles to your couch.
Tonkotsu ramen and pork buns? The strip mall down the street. Birria tacos ? You’ve got a couple of good options. Do you prefer New York, New Haven, Detroit or Pascoag-style pizza? (One of those is made up.)
But in the search for the hottest new food style, there may have been a culinary style hiding for centuries in plain sight that, in its refusal to accept modern ideas about “flavor” and “taste,” is the most exotic of all.
Call it Yankee cuisine or, to be edgy, “Swamp Yankee” cuisine, food from a Rhode Island before restaurants.
What is a ‘Swamp Yankee?’
There is no agreed-upon origin for the term “Swamp Yankee,” but a 1963 essay by Ruth Schell offers a definition that has stuck: “A rural dweller – one of stubborn, old-fashioned, frugal, English-speaking Yankee stock, of good standing in the rural community, but usually possessing minimal formal education and little desire to augment it.”