How Frozen Lemonade Came To Be A Rhode Island Staple

No matter where you live, there's a good chance that a hot day will have you craving a frozen beverage of some sort. That could mean a slushie from a convenience store, a movie theater Icee — or, if you're in the state of Rhode Island, the first thing that comes to mind is probably Del's frozen lemonade.

You might be familiar with the brand even if you've never stepped foot in the Ocean State: Today, Del's has locations as far off as Las Vegas and Fort Myers, Florida. However, the company still has its headquarters in Cranston, Rhode Island, where it was first established in 1948 by a family of Italian immigrants. And chances are, Del's will be closely associated with Rhode Island for as long as it exists, having become one of the state's signature noshes. It even has an official collaboration with Narragansett Brewery: A shandy made with a mix of its famous lager and Del's lemonade.

If you've never had the pleasure of a cold Del's on a hot day, know that it tastes exactly how it sounds — a deliciously tangy-sweet lemonade blended into a soft slush. And unlike most slushie drinks, the traditional way to drink Del's is sans straw, straight from the paper cup. Using a straw, or heaven forbid, a spoon, will give you away as a tourist immediately. It may be a simple treat, but it's one with a rich history and consistent popularity with generations of Rhode Islanders.

Long before Del's, there was granita, an icy treat made with water, sugar, and flavoring from fruit or nuts. Today, you can find granita at cafés and gelato shops all over Italy, but its origins can be traced to 7th century Sicily when Arab militaries began to invade the island. With them came an icy drink called sharbat, which was ice flavored with fruit juices or rosewater. Eventually, the Sicilians made it their own, flavoring it with local ingredients like pistachio and Sicilian lemons.

Flash forward to Napoli in 1840, where the patriarch of the DeLucia family would gather snow in the winters and store it in caves until the summer months when he would flavor it with fresh lemon juice and sell it at the market — the first iteration of the family recipe. When his son Franco immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1900s, he brought the recipe with him. Later on, Franco's son Angelo developed a machine to make the treat (thank you, electricity; goodbye, snow-filled cellars). The DeLucia family officially founded Del's in 1948, and what was initially just a single frozen lemonade stand eventually grew to cover the state of Rhode Island and beyond.

Nowadays, you don't have to search very hard to find Del's in Eastern New England, especially if you're in one of Rhode Island's beach towns. Just look for the crowd of bathing suit-clad, boogie board-wielding beachgoers.

For such a small state, Rhode Island has a more significant and distinctive food culture than you might expect, blending local Native American traditional dishes with the influence of Italian and other immigrant cultures. Coffee milk is another refreshing drink you'll more or less only find in the Ocean State: Think chocolate milk but with a coffee-flavored sugar syrup instead of chocolate syrup. Doughboys, another signature sweet treat, are similar to doughnuts or zeppoli — they're essentially squares of dough, deep-fried and coated in powdered sugar.

Rhode Island is also home to several unique styles of preparing seafood, especially quahog clams, the official state shellfish. Clam cakes, Rhode Island clam chowder, and stuffies — quahogs stuffed with bread crumbs, bell pepper, onion, celery, and herbs — all claim a Rhode Island heritage and are easily found around the state's coast. Rhode Island is also the only state with an official appetizer: Calamari, or fried squid.

And yet, nothing screams "Rhode Island" like a slushy cup of Del's. So, should you ever find yourself parched in Providence, you know what to do — look for the big, frozen lemon sign.