Wiener Love

A little blog-on-blog love today, as Half Shell gives props to Fork in the Rhode, an Ocean State food blog, for its annual ranking of the top 10 New York System Wieners in Rhode Island.

Nice to see they included Rod’s Grill, my wiener local, in Warren. No surprise that the West Warwick wiener joints of Ferrucci’s Original New York System and Nick’s New York System made the list, along with the Providence classic, Olneyville N.Y. System. Three Warwick locales are featured, including perennial favorites Cosmic Steak, Pizza & Wieners, along with Sam’s New York System and Timmy’s Restaurant. The Cranston standby Wein-O-Rama also returned to the top 10, which this year extended a long arm to Ben’s Chili Dogs of Newport and Santoro’s Pizza of Coventry.

Fork in the Rhode’s RhodeCrew and 48 other judges visited 50 wiener joints around the state to make their selections. All wieners were ordered “all the way,” as they should be, (meaning dressed with meat sauce, chopped onion, mustard and celery salt). Each individual wiener was scored based on the following categories: Appearance, Steamed Bun, Wiener Texture, Meat Sauce, Onions and the vampiric-sounding Overall One-Bite Taste.

South County was shut out, even though locals have plenty of wiener options. On the other side of the parking lot from the Independent offices, Jessica’s Quick Rick’s serves them, while just down the road Kingston Pizza (the long-ago Anton’s on the back side of the Peace Dale Flats rotary) advertises “WILD WIENER WEDNESDAYS!” Even the University of Rhode Island is well-stocked, wiener-wise, with a handful of establishments in the Kingston Emporium offering them. Last week, prior to an interview at URI Theatre, I stopped in at Albie’s Place as a young man next to me asked for “nine wieners all the way.” The cook didn’t even blink at the request.

Fork in the Rhode, founded by bloggers David Newell, Scott Friedman and David Tagliatela, was created to cultivate a greater appreciation for Rhody’s unique cuisine (most of which involves wieners, clams, coffee, fried dough or some combination) and ordinary places (diners, pubs, greasy spoons, clam shacks, grinder joints, pizza houses and the like) in which you can partake in the Rhodyliciousness of it all – the dives and drive-ins and stay-a-long-times that are a staple of the Rhody gastronomic landscape. It’s a worthy quest. Here’s hoping Fork will one day consider Half Shell as a wiener judge. We would be humbled and honored to serve. All we ask is a coffee milk chaser to go.

Where can you find the best wieners in Rhode Island?