Wright's Farm

Biggest on the bandwagon

by Bill Rodriguez

84 Inman Road (Route 102), Harrisville, (401) 769-2856
Open Thurs-Fri, 4-9 p.m.; Sat., 12-9:30 p.m.; Sun,12-8 p.m.
No credit cards
Sidewalk access

Food is sometimes so much more than food it's a wonder that you can fit it all into your mouth. I mean, a hot dog at the late, great Rocky Point was also a Ferris wheel, roller coaster squeals, and a big, jostling crowd. So we had to experience Wright's Farm Restaurant out in Harrisville. The place is a Rhode Island institution, purveyors of the traditional Blackstone Valley family-style chicken dinner on the scale of a PawSox doubleheader.

First, a little background. It all started in the 1930s at the Bocce Club in Woonsocket. Italian immigrants were served an inexpensive trimmed-down version of the elaborate Sunday chicken dinner they knew in the old country: salad and pasta courses, then chicken and roasted potatoes. The offering was a hit and caught on.

It's still quite a bargain. All you can eat, for under 10 bucks per appetite, so even populous families can afford a big meal out. Some two dozen restaurants, from Pawtucket to Bellingham, hopped onto the bandwagon over the years, some specializing in the spread, some serving it just one or two nights a week. Now and then a restaurant tries it and gives up, since the competition north of the Blackstone River has created loyalists to particular establishments and recipes.

The Barnum & Bailey among all these culinary carnivals is Wright's. Since the Galleshaw family took over and expanded the place in 1972, it has become the largest restaurant in the state, seating up to 1600. Seventy-five ovens pump out an average 25 tons of chicken per month. We're talking humongous.

We are also talking circus. A few months ago, we made the mistake of checking out Wright's on a Saturday night, and if I'd seen a few elephants in the jam-packed crowd that was waiting for seats, it would have seemed too natural to prompt a double take. Fortunately, smoking is prohibited, so it's only on the walkway outside that you have to face a gauntlet of exhaling smokers. Inside, the waiting area is as vast as the wait is lengthy -- 45 minutes that night. There are bars and tables, but there wasn't enough seating for everyone. Reservations are only for parties of 10 or more. We left.

This time, we came on a Thursday, the only non-weekend evening when Wright's is open. The wait was a far more tolerable 20 minutes, which our party of eight spent by chatting and remarking on the single-minded decor. There were roosters in an endless row on the wallpaper, as well as chicken plaques, ceramics and pictures elsewhere.

We were led through two of their five large rooms, and one enormous one. Brass rails glinted, Formica table tops sparkled where they weren't covered by elbows or piles of bones. (Did the fact that Johnnie and I saw the adorably anthropomorphizing Chicken Run the night before take the edge off our appetites? Ha!) By the way, you don't get seconds unless your server can bring back an empty bowl.

First came the salad, a bowl for each end of our table. It was mainly iceberg, with a few pieces of spinach, shreds of red cabbage and carrot, and tomatoes. The pasta was shells under a marinara sauce that was so-so -- but better than the Bocce Club version we'd recently had, which may have contained more black pepper than tomatoes.

As for the roasted chicken, it was succulent, falling off the bone but with crisp skin. One end of the table thought the white meat could have been more moist, though (in fairness to the Bocce folks, I liked their olive oil and garlic-infused version even more). The potatoes were thick French fries, an odd part of this traditional dinner. They were greaseless, but not as crisp as some of our party would have preferred. I loved them, even though they weren't complemented by roasted potatoes, which some of the competition provides.

Wine is available, as well as beer, and there's a full bar in every dining room.

Profits at these places depend on churn as well as volume, but our attentive and friendly waitress Lori never made us feel rushed, even when we lingered afterward over conversation rather than dessert. (Ice cream pie in three varieties, $1.95 per wedge.) The cost? Well, the chicken dinner went up recently to a whopping $8.25 ($4.25 for kids 10 and under). For $17.50 you can get a one-pound sirloin, with only the accompaniments all-you-can-eat.

But the point of the Wright's experience is only partly the food. A Rhode Island family-style chicken dinner is a treat, a trip, and also patriotic. The state bird, after all, is not the eagle.