Each time I go to a brand new metropolis, I spend a number of days rethinking my total future. “What if I lived HERE,” I mutter, trawling Zillow for residences in San Francisco or Brooklyn or Philly or Asheville. Proper now, Windfall is the article of my obsession—largely due to Del’s, an iconic Rhode Island frozen lemonade model that’s stored me salivating lengthy after my current trip to the shore.

What’s Del’s Lemonade?

Final week, my boyfriend and I set out for a tiny beachside city on the Rhode Island shore. En route, I bought a message from a Rhode Island–born good friend.

“I don’t care what you do,” she stated, “as lengthy as you get your self a Del’s.”

A cursory Twitter search confirmed: Del’s is a Rhode Island staple. “Did I even go to Rhode Island if I didn’t have a Del’s?” tweeted one fan. One other posted an isochrone map exhibiting the estimated drive time to a Del’s location from anyplace in Rhode Island. Folks go nuts for these items, which seems to be like a reasonably easy frozen lemonade served out of a waxed paper cup.

That is no extraordinary frozen lemonade.

Per the model’s web site, Del’s makes use of fresh-squeezed lemons to attain a gently candy, tangy product. that acrid chunk you get with artificially lemon-flavored merchandise like frozen Minute Maid? Del’s doesn’t have that. As a substitute, Del’s has a lightweight, refreshing taste paying homage to an old-school lemonade stand. It tastes like the actual factor with out a trace of sickly-sweet focus. It’s additionally softer and fluffier than a water ice, yielding gently to even the flimsiest of plastic spoons. Del’s tastes like a Rhode Island summer season: carefree, nostalgic, and genuine because it will get.

The household behind the model has had years of apply, ever since “Nice Grandfather DeLucia” developed the recipe in 1840 in Naples, Italy, by hauling snow into close by caves and flavoring it with lemon and sugar. The patriarch’s son, Franco DeLucia, then introduced his father’s frozen lemonade recipe to the U.S. on the flip of the century. He handed the recipe on to his son, Angelo DeLucia, who perfected the method. Lastly, in 1948, Del’s Frozen Lemonade was born in Cranston, Rhode Island, the place the model continues to be primarily based in the present day.

The place can I discover Del’s Lemonade?

I left Rhode Island per week in the past, however I can’t appear to get Del’s out of my head. Sadly, I don’t have a whole lot of choices wanting bidding on Windfall actual property. The Del’s location map reveals the vast majority of Del’s franchises scattered all through Rhode Island and the encompassing states, though there may be one outpost in Las Vegas and some within the Carolinas. I may at all times order Del’s combine on-line, however I appear to have misplaced my commercial-grade ice shaver. Ah, properly. My proximity to Del’s was fleeting, similar to my time away from electronic mail. However I needn’t fret—we’ll at all times have Rhode Island.