Thayer Street, Providence, RI. (Photo by N.Millard/GoProvidence.com.)

I left Rhode Island more than 20 years ago with little sense of looking back. It was a nice enough place to grow up; I have many memories of learning to ride horses or playing outdoors with my cousins and sister as a kid, going to plays and concerts at edgy alternative venues as a teenager, and hanging out in cafes with like-minded artsy-fartsy types in the College Hill area of Providence, especially Thayer Street, during my university days. The state takes just over an hour to drive end to end, and I always had the sense of knowing exactly where I was going. But by the time I’d finished grad school, the state’s tininess—its calling card—had begun to feel a lot less charming and a lot more claustrophobic.

My parents still live in Rhode Island, so I go back a few times a year to visit. Beyond the major cleanup of the Providence riverfront—a huge improvement over the sad, run-down banks of 20 years ago—I’m always struck by how little the state has changed. There may be more shopping centers, office parks, and sushi restaurants, but on the whole, the “biggest little state in the union” feels like a time capsule.

When my sister, Jill, and niece came up from Texas last month to visit my parents, we couldn’t come up with an activity the four of us (my husband included) could agree on. Visit Green Animals, the sweet topiary garden in Portsmouth? Too far to travel for too little payoff. Pedal around on a Rail Explorers tour? Too low-key, especially if we got stuck behind a cart of slowpokes. Try an escape room? Not interesting for our 11-year-old budding Instagram star. Then Jill texted, “Is the Brown U area in East Prov still fun to visit?”

Thayer Street, Providence, RI. (Photo by Jill Feig.)

I knew Thayer Street, which borders one end of the Brown University campus, was still considered the city’s hipster district, and I had a lot of great memories of the frequent visits I made with friends and college classmates. So we drove out on a blazing-hot, 90-plus-degree day to see how it had changed.

Thayer Street is still home to funky shops, restaurants, and cafes, though these days there are some chains, like Starbucks and Urban Outfitters, mixed in with the indie shops that have always given the area its charm. And it’s still the place to hobnob with students from Brown, RISD, and Providence College, as well as the city’s artistic contingent. But after parking the car in the Brown University visitor’s lot and walking up Thayer, I was struck by how much smaller it is than I remember. It’s funny how youthful nostalgia makes everything seem so outsize.

There are no hotels on Thayer Street that I’m aware of, but if you’re okay with a short walk, the Hotel Providence offers boutique lodging that’s an antidote to the big-name franchises that populate this and most capital cities. Cool and artsy, it’s less than a mile away from Thayer Street and nearby attractions.

We arrived on Thayer a little after noon, and since the four of us were already hungry, we didn’t waste much time looking around for a place for lunch. We stopped at By Chloe, a hipster-rustic salad-and-sandwich shop and the only all-vegan restaurant on Thayer Street. Turns out By Chloe is a franchise out of New York City and California that caters to “elite vegans,” and its carefully curated aesthetic—striped floors, whitewashed brick walls, black-painted metal patio chairs, and banquettes upholstered in fabric inspired by vintage kantha quilts—speaks to this.

By Chloe on Thayer Street, Providence, RI. (Photo by Robin Catalano.)

The adults in the group went for sandwiches: pesto “meatballs” for my husband, a tempeh-lentil burger for Jill, and whiskey barbecue seitan for me. My meal was the winner of the three, with its satisfyingly chewy texture and surprise addition of pineapple slices, and the air-baked fries—sweet potato and white potato—were the big winners. However, sandwich portions were stingy, especially for the price tag ($12 to 14 for most sandwiches). If the fussy preteen in our group hadn’t taken two bites of her paprika-doused mac and cheese and turned up her nose, leaving the adults in the group to polish it off, we’d have left hungry and a bit disgruntled.

A meal at By Chloe, Thayer Street, Providence, RI. (Photo by Robin Catalano.)

After lunch we headed back out into the heat for a bit of shopping. The top pics here:

• Pie in the Sky for fun and irreverent T-shirts, pouches, cards, and stickers, plus jewelry and other gift items. Prices here are on the low to medium end, making it easy to pick up souvenirs for everyone back home.
• Spectrum India for imported tops, skirts, dresses, and sandals, plus body care items, incense, and decor. With its almost criminally low prices on certain products—soaps for $3, string lights and wall hangings for less than $15, for example—this is the place to pick up a little something to brighten an apartment or dorm room. If we didn’t have other places to explore, my niece probably would have spent the entire day going through each of the $5 ring bins.
• Pleasant Surprise is full of—you guessed it—fun little surprises, like fluffy slippers, kitchen tools and utensils, witty décor, and a large collection of humor and gift books.
• Tealuxe, for an exhaustive selection of teas.
• Sneaker Junkies for a large selection of both famous and under-the-radar brands. Unlike most shops on the street, this one is open, airy, and minimalist, and a great place to take a breather.

Thayer Street, Providence, RI. (Photo by N.Millard/GoProvidence.com.)

There are plenty of places on Thayer Street for snacks, including popular Froyo World and Insomnia Cookies. But when I visit Rhode Island, I tend to have a two-track mind.

For savory snacks, I want clamcakes, preferably on the beach, scarfed out of a grease-stained paper bag. No joke: Rhode Islanders are so serious about their fritter-ific delicacy that my high school English teacher actually taught from a book called Grammar and Clamcakes—which I have yet to be able to track down as an adult. E-mail me if you have a copy.

But let’s get back to snacks. When visiting Rhode Island, for something sweet, I want—nay, must have—Del’s Lemonade.

Del’s Lemonade, Providence, RI. (Photo by Jill Feig.)

As kids, we’d grab our quarters and hightail it every time we saw the Del’s truck heading down the block, just for a taste of that slushy-sugary, half-frozen confection served in a crackly waxed paper cup. With no truck parked on Thayer Street, we instead drove over to the Del’s stand on nearby Waterman Avenue. Del’s usually offers a half-dozen or so different fruity flavors, but we went for three classics: lemon, watermelon, and grapefruit.

The older I get, the less tolerant I become of sugar-heavy snacks and drinks, but this one struck just the right nostalgiac chord. I was actually disappointed I had to abandon my cup in the car on our next stop.

(Fortunately for me, the alchemists of Del’s have engineered their icy treat to stay frozen for an unaccountably long time, and I still had plenty of frozen lemonade left more than an hour later. Want to try it at home? Make a damn close facsimile by following this crazy-easy recipe. Bonus: you can control the amount of sugar, and give it a slightly more grown-up flavor.)

Having exhausted Thayer Street and wanting to get out of the hot sun for a while, we headed over to the Roger Williams Park Botanical Center. Small, sweet, and quiet, this botanical garden has several large greenhouses, a rose garden (mostly spent by the time we got there in mid-July) and a lovely outdoor summer garden packed with bee balm, veronica, black-eyed susans, astilbe, and other colorful flowers and humming with busy pollinators. It might not be as vast or impressive as its sister botanical gardens in Brooklyn or Montreal, but it’s still a worthy visit.

Roger Williams Botanical Center, Providence, RI. (Photo by Robin Catalano.)

We considered heading back to Thayer Street to park and explore some of the surrounding College Hill area—home to some stunning Federal architecture and the excellent RISD Museum, but with the notorious Northeast humidity making the day increasingly oppressive, we decided to pack it in and head back for some clam cakes. Priorities and all that.

Our visit to Thayer Street may have been more of a nostalgia trip than a sight-seeing destination, but it was fun diversion for a couple of hours. If you’re in Providence for a day or two, take a look around and try as many of those interesting-looking ethnic restaurants as you can. And don’t forget the side trip to Del’s.