Lost City: Providence Edition: Haven Bros. Rolling Diner

One of the strangest, and best, culinary traditions in Providence, Rhode Island, is the Haven Bros. diner, which, every night at 5 PM, rolls to the corner of Dorrance and Fulton, right outside City Hall, and parks there until 5 AM. A door opens on the metal truck, a set of stairs come out, and the public is invited to climb in and chow down on chili dogs, french fries, coffee milk and "Murder Burgers." The kitchen fills up half the interior, the other side taken up by a few stools and a counter. They even have an ATM in there. Prices are cheap, the food is acceptable and you leave full. (I wonder who eats here at 4 AM? Besides drunken Brown U. students, I mean.)

It's a weird thing, this truck. They call themselves one of the oldest rolling diners in the U.S., having been founded as a horse-drawn cart in 1888 by the widow Anne Philomena Haven. The Havens went through two more generations before selling in 1953 to the Mollicone family. Currently, the Giusti family owns the truck.

Some years ago, a Providence mayor tries to kick the diner to the curb, saying it didn't fit in with the rest of "modern Providence." The population protested, and the Haven Bros. diner was allowed to stay. That mayor is gone now.

During my sole visit, I had a chili dog and a coffee milk. The grizzled old fry cook implored that I could "handle" two dogs. I declined. He seemed quite disgusted with my timidity. Which made me like the place even more.

Lost City: Providence Edition: Olneyville New York System Weiners

Unique ways of eating hot dogs is a New England tradition. I learned this during my 2009 jaunt to Troy.

Providence, Rhode Island, has it's own peculiar frankfurter traditions. First of all, their called weiners. Don't call them anything else. And they're served automatically with mustard, meat sauce (really, a kind of chili), raw onions and celery salt, unless you specify otherwise—and you would never do that.

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Lost City: Providence Edition: Little Rhody and The Dunk

I never thought I could feel tenderly toward the Dunkin' Donuts chain until I visited Providence.

Providence loves donuts, and consequently loves Dunkin' Donut. There are more Dunkin' Donuts per capita in Providence (a city of 170,000) than there are in any other city in America. They are so prevalent and so beloved that they are used in giving directions, as in "You go straight and then take a right at the Dunkin' Donuts." In fact, I am told, people actually give directions based on where a Dunkin' Donuts used to be.

Dunkin' has returned the love. The bought the naming rights for the indoor arena that became known as the Dunkin' Donuts Centers. Locals call it "The Dunk." It all contributes to that rare phenomenon in which a national chain actually feels like an integral paint of the local cultural fabric. I still don't like Dunkin' Donuts. Don't like their product, their obnoxious signs, their ubiquity. But I kinda like that Providence likes them.

Lost City: Providence Edition: Signs of Federal Hill

Federal Hill, the Italian province of Providence, Rhode Island, is home to a quantity of Italian restaurants and bakeries to match any of New York's Little Italys, and a great many of them are of significant age and boast the most wonderful of old neon signs. The one above, to Joe Marzilli's Old Canteen, is my favorite. Dates from 1956. Pink tablecloths inside. Kind of place you go after your kid's graduation.

The joint's sign around the corner (it sits at an intersection) is even better.

Not sure of the age of Cassarino's. Lovely signage, though.

Camille's is the oldest of the Italian restaurants along Atwells Road. Founded in 1914, in it's current location since 1919.