As mentioned in my last post, we visited New England last month and spent a few days in Rhode Island. Looked at the famous mansions of Newport, poked around Providence, admired the ocean cliffs, etc.
But you know what I find myself thinking about? The Newport Creamery.
We ate there twice. We also ate at several other restaurants — the trendy TSK, Belle’s Cafe, Scampi up in Portsmouth, and so on — but it’s the Newport Creamery I remember.
You know why? Nostalgia.
I grew up in New England — in Massachusetts, in Billerica and Bedford. Naturally, like any kid, I thought that what I grew up with was normal; it wasn’t until I moved away that I began to realize what was standard American, and what was specifically New Englander fare. It took even longer before I began to miss the New England stuff.
And some of it I still didn’t necessarily realize was New England specific; I thought it was just old-fashioned.
But eating at the Newport Creamery brought back a lot of memories, and a realization that some of that stuff is unique to New England.
When I was a kid, we used to eat at Friendly Ice Cream sometimes. That’s the chain that later became Friendly’s, but in my youth it was Friendly Ice Cream, no apostrophe S, and it was still pretty local — they didn’t get outside New England at all, and were mostly just in Massachusetts. For 95 cents you could get a cheeseburger and a frappe — that’s the New England name for what most of the country calls a milk shake; it’s one syllable, “frap,” not the same as the whipped-fruit thing called a “frappé.” And the cheeseburger would be on butter-grilled toast, not a bun.
But then the chain started expanding, they changed the name to “Friendly’s” and updated the menu, and the burgers were on buns…
Getting sandwiches on butter-grilled toast — that wasn’t just Friendly. There were a lot of places that did that when I was a kid.
Turns out there still are — in New England. It’s not so much old-fashioned as regional.
And the Newport Creamery of today has almost exactly the same menu that Friendly had fifty years ago. Not at the same prices, of course, but wow, everything tasted just the way I remembered the food at Friendly.
So for the past month I’ve been thinking about that food, and wishing there was some way to get it here in Maryland.
I also grew up in Massachusetts, not very far from where you did (Natick and Wayland), at about the same time (I’m 5 years older). I remember Friendly Ice Cream well. A couple more details your post reminded me of:
1. We called it “Friendly’s” even before they changed the name. Maybe that’s why they changed it, if everyone was calling it that anyway.
2. The hot dogs came on buns, but of a type I’ve never seen outside New England. The bun was basically an oblong chunk of bread, about 2 inches tall, an inch and a half wide, with a slit down the length in which the hot dog sat. Friendly’s butter-grilled both sides.
Not food-related, but another thing that was unique to New England: candlepin bowling. When I was a kid that was the only kind they had in our local alleys; I think I was in college before I knew there were big balls with holes in them.
Yeah, some people in Bedford called it “Friendly’s,” probably most people, but some didn’t.
And yes, I remember those hot dog buns! They still exist in New England, not much anywhere else.
I grew up with candlepins, of course. When we spent a summer in Connecticut (my Dad’s job had him at Yale for awhile), I discovered duckpins, and there are a few duckpin alleys here in Maryland, should I ever feel nostalgic for them.