Cold whole milk shaken with two to three tablespoons of Autocrat or Eclipse coffee syrup. Sweet, lightly caffeinated, the unofficial Rhode Island drink long before the state legislature made it official in 1993.

Coffee milk traces back to the 1920s, when southern Italian immigrants in Rhode Island brought their tradition of heavily sweetened coffee. Eclipse Food Products of Warwick (founded 1914) began selling coffee syrup to consumers in 1938. Autocrat of Lincoln (since 1895) countered with its own product in the 1940s; the two slogans (Eclipse's 'You smack your lips if it's Eclipse' and Autocrat's 'A swallow will tell you') ran in parallel for half a century. On March 30, 1993, the Rhode Island State Legislature designated coffee milk the official state drink, beating coffee cabinet (a coffee-milk milkshake) and Del's lemonade in the vote.

2 editor picks for Coffee milk in Providence, ranked by editorial score. All Providence signature dishes · Coffee milk across every city.