If you’ve never had the salad topping called Rhode Island dressing, it may be because you’ve never been to Sweden,where you can find it on grocery store shelves. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Rhode Island Dressing”
Grant, have you ever eaten Rhode Island dressing?
Have I ever eaten Rhode Island dressing?
Mm—
Is this R-H-O-D-E or R-O-A-D?
Because if it’s R-O-A-D, I’m wondering what you’re talking about.
No, it’s R-H-O-D-E.
And the reason I ask is that you’ve traveled in Sweden, as I recall.
I have, yeah, several times.
Well, apparently Rhode Island dressing is a thing in Sweden.
It’s not a thing here, but it’s a Rhode Island sauce, the S-A-S with the little circle over the A.
Yeah, you can look it up on the Internet.
Some chef there invented Rhode Island dressing.
It sounds like one of those names that, you know, you want to make sound fancy, so you just name it after some faraway place.
Yeah, Rhode Island could sound absolutely exotic, right, when you do all this.
And plus, because Sweden has this whole seafaring and fishing culture, and Rhode Island has this fishing culture, right?
They might actually think of Rhode Island as kind of a kindred place.
So maybe there’s something to that.
That’s very interesting.
Yeah, looking at the bottles of it online, it looks sort of like Thousand Island dressing.
But yeah, I guess Rhode Island sounds like this glorious place that you might visit someday.
Maybe they’re twin.
Do you know how they do twin cities or sister cities?
Maybe in Rhode Island and one of the provinces of Sweden are twins.
Well, if you’re Swedish and you know about this, we’d love to know more.
Call us 877-929-9673 or explain it all to us in email.
The address is words@waywordradio.org.
