美国国家公共电台 NPR What's In That Coffee Cabinet? A Delicious Taste Of Rhode Island History

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What's In That Coffee Cabinet? A Delicious Taste Of Rhode Island History 

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When you go to Rhode Island, you got to have a coffee cabinet. For you non-New Englanders, that's a drink known as a milkshake in most other parts of the country. So why do they call it a cabinet?

Rhode Island Public Radio's John Bender tried to find out.

JOHN BENDER, BYLINE²: Hey.

ERIC DELEKTA: How you doing?

BENDER: Good, how are you?

DELEKTA: Good.

BENDER: Walking into Delekta's Pharmacy³ in downtown Warren, R.I. is like stepping into the past. An old-school silver soda⁴ fountain sits atop a stone bar. You can still fill prescriptions⁵ in the back. The guy behind that bar is Eric Delekta. And you should know, if you order a milkshake here expecting a frothy, thick drink, you're going to be disappointed.

DELEKTA: A milkshake here is just milk and syrup⁶.

BENDER: If you want ice cream blended into that cup, you're going to have to order a cabinet. Delekta's has been serving up the drink with the quirky name since before World War II. Delekta says, he's got regular customers, some daily, just for the beverage⁷.

Rhode Island resident, Justin Riley's been coming here for years.

JUSTIN RILEY: It's Rhode Island. It's the drink you've got to have. And you've got to have them here.

BENDER: But as to the name, Riley's stumped⁸. So is fellow customer, Lisa Murphy.

LISA MURPHY: I don't know. I know there are different names for it in different parts of the country, but I don't know. It's always been a coffee cabinet to us.

BENDER: All this sleuthing has got me thirsty. So I order - what else? - a coffee cabinet. Delekta takes out an aluminum⁹ cup and begins adding ingredients.

DELEKTA: So we put in some coffee syrup.

BENDER: That's homemade syrup, by the way. The exact recipe is top secret, Delekta tells me.

DELEKTA: A couple of scoops¹⁰ of ice cream - we use Hood¹¹ ice cream and a carton of milk from local surplus dairy. Then we put on the mixer and blend it all up.

BENDER: And that's it, just three ingredients. Likely, the drink was a happy marriage of the state's historically robust¹² dairy production, European immigrants' love of coffee and coffee syrup and modern-day refrigeration technology.

And as for the name, Eric Delekta says the story might be as simple as the drink itself.

DELEKTA: I've heard that they used to keep the machine inside of a wooden box or a cabinet, hence the name. But I don't, definitely, know for sure.

BENDER: But as long as Delekta's keeps churning out these coffee cabinets, perhaps it's fine to just let the mystery be.

Wow. That is insanely good. That's - oh, that's delicious.

For NPR News, I'm John Bender in Rhode Island.