I’m currently hooked on Man vs. Food via Netflix streaming. We LOVE food!
In this post we’re talking about stuff you can’t find everywhere but you also don’t find in just one restaurant. They’re town or city or regional specialties. Here’s some favorites from places we’ve lived or visited:
kolaches — sweet egg enriched dough with meat or fruit or cheese in it, similar to a danish but the dough is more bready
cheese curds — they make your teeth squeak!
beer nuggets — deep fried lightly fermented (day-old) pizza dough, served with pizza sauce or sprinkled in cinnamon sugar
frozen custard — eggy soft serve icecream like substance
Pittsburgh steak salad– comes with steak and french fries on top
red bean frappe– red beans in an ice cream shake… or should I say frappe?
king cake– colorful cake that hurts your teeth with the sweetness
St. Louis style ribs– sweet goey pork bbq in a rich tomato based sweet sauce, charred to perfection. It’s all about the sauce.
TX style brisket– The other end of the bbq spectrum where only the meat matters. You can tell it’s real by the smoke ring.
Bialy– Like a bagel with *stuff* in the center
Apple pie with cheddar cheese– on the East Coast they thought I was an abomination but they just go SO WELL together.
any deli sandwich with coleslaw and Russian dressing, oh man I miss sloppy sandwiches
almonds from almond plaza…. and chocolate from Giardelli square
The absolute best regional food: Chicago style stuffed pizza!!! A layer of deep dish dough, a layer of cheese and meat/veggies (I’m partial to spinach… or sausage and onion), another layer of dough, then covered with pizza sauce. You only need to eat one heavenly piece to feel full, but you might have two anyway.
What are your favorite regional foods?
January 18, 2011 at 2:51 am
Wow..there are a lot of these things I’ve never heard of.
Here are some of my favorites:
NY Bagels – hate it when I get the bread like ones. they have to be chewy
Chicago Pizza for sure. In fact, there are several styles of regional pizzas I really enjoy.
Maryland Crab Cakes
Tea from the Boulder Tea Room (forget the name)
Generally I love the ethnic parts of big cities. China town, little italy, etc. I particularly like finding the grocery stores there and coming home with great stuff. I was just at an Italian grocer this week and came home with pumpkin ravioli.
January 18, 2011 at 6:26 am
Ooh, you’re right about the ethnic towns… that reminds me of soup dumplings. Dumplings that you eat with a spoon that have broth and meat inside. Amazing!
January 18, 2011 at 6:06 am
Kolaches are delicious. I don’t see them in restaurants around here, but we had a ‘cultural lunch’ at school where people brought in food from their background. I could have eaten Kolaches all day long.
Man Vs Food is an interesting show. I don’t know Adam or whatever his name is is not 800 pounds.
I didn’t know it until a few years ago that Coney Island restaurants do not exist everywhere in the country, but there are countless Coneys here in Michigan. My brother always wants to go when he visits from where he lives.
January 18, 2011 at 6:25 am
I have a fantastic recipe for them in my Old Fashioned Cookbook (written in the 1970s by the former Mrs. Iowa– my mom’s mom gave it to my dad with information on my mom’s favorite food indicated… I got it after my mom went on a healthy diet).
January 19, 2011 at 7:08 pm
I saw the Detroit MvF episode yesterday! He highlighted the coney island dogs!
January 18, 2011 at 7:08 am
Beignets!!!
Least fave (grew up with this); lutefisk und lefse
January 18, 2011 at 7:46 am
urk… cannot stomach lutefisk
(but Beignets are awesome!)
January 18, 2011 at 7:47 am
Pierogies, potato dumplings, lefse, poutine…hmmm…my favorites are a little carb heavy, huh?
I didn’t try it when I lived out there, but I hear scrapple is popular out east.
Maryland Crab Cakes are the best. It makes me sad that I can’t get a good crab cake in MN.
January 18, 2011 at 7:52 am
yummy carbs though!
crabcakes are great too
January 18, 2011 at 8:18 am
I must have been a southerner in a previous life because most of the regional foods I love are southern. Or maybe I just appreciate them so much because they are associated with the annnual vacations we’d take down south when I was young. (Disneyworld seven years in a row!)
* Grits. Plain cooked grits with butter and salt are yummy. Cheese grits are gross.
* Cornbread. Up north most cornbread is made sweet. That is wrong. The southerners have this one right.
* Biscuits. Yes, I can get something called “biscuits” in the north but they don’t seem as flaky and delicate as biscuits down south. I do not like gravy, though. Only butter and/or honey go on my biscuits.
* Greens. I love them all: collards, turnip, and mustard are all good. Slow cooking with some sort of smoked pork product makes them especially tasty. Add a dash of vinegar for some kick just before eating.
* Beignet are great. I think it would be hard to find anyone who’d argue with that!
Odd as it may seem, I live in Chicago but prefer thin crust pizza. I guess having the deep dish pizza so readily available, I just don’t crave it very often.
Some of the Chicago style pizza places will make up a pizza and freeze it so you can transport it out of town. I once brought a frozen one down to the Bahamas where I was staying with some friends. I carried it right on the plane. When I got to customs the guy was a bit confused but let me through. ;-)
January 18, 2011 at 9:28 am
Wow, my tastes are like completely orthogonal. I LOVE sweet corn bread and HATE greens.
And gravy oh heaven… we stopped in El Paso once on a cross-country road trip and got biscuits with jalepeno sausage gravy. Beyond wonderful.
January 18, 2011 at 1:39 pm
I just saw this and thought it was ironic that you were both writing about regional food on the same day: http://www.foodlushblog.com/2011/01/regional-foods-an-incomplete-check-list.html
January 18, 2011 at 2:06 pm
Ooh, there’s a lot on that list I’ve had but didn’t mention… like I’ve totally been to New Orleans and had more than just beignets. And oh, fish tacos, delish.
January 18, 2011 at 3:21 pm
I never had real Chicago style pizza… :(
Check out what we had for dinner Sunday..
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/photo.php?fbid=128507523881061&set=a.128507520547728.24176.100001654418342
January 18, 2011 at 3:24 pm
Doh! No facebook account!
January 18, 2011 at 4:14 pm
My most fave cuisines are Malaysian, Thai and Indian esp south.
When I get to the states, i’m so keen for southern and cajun.
Also, Mexican. And cheese steak. And NY/Chicago pizza.
January 18, 2011 at 5:40 pm
all good stuff
January 18, 2011 at 5:29 pm
Green chili on/in stew, enchilada’s, relleno (OK, that is a chili!),…throw a fried egg on top and I’m in heaven!
I SO love beignets!
January 18, 2011 at 5:39 pm
mmmm
January 18, 2011 at 5:31 pm
Tex Mex enchilada plate (enchiladas, refried beans and Spanish rice with lots of cheese on top)
Liege waffles – a waffle with a sweet slightly crunchy exterior served in paper bags (like french fries are served in) in Belgium
gelato
January 18, 2011 at 5:35 pm
We had a waffle from a street vendor in Luxemborg that was out of this world.
January 18, 2011 at 8:43 pm
I bet it’s the same. And you can smell them from far away.
My sister found me a recipe. It involves making two batters–one of them a yeast batter–and mixing them and putting the mixture in the waffle iron. That’s probably not going to happen in my house!
January 19, 2011 at 6:49 pm
DH just got very excited. I think he is willing to try the two batters.
January 18, 2011 at 7:55 pm
“Biayl– Like a bagel with *stuff* in the center”
Lord have mercy!! First, it’s a bialy. And second, it’s not like a bagel with stuff in the center.
A bagel is boiled before baking. Bialys are not boiled first, and the texture is completely different than a bagel.
January 19, 2011 at 12:11 am
#2 says, thanks for clearing this up. I’m a sucker for most kinds of carbs!
January 19, 2011 at 5:20 am
sorry for the misspelling
It was the onion garlic in the center that struck me.
January 18, 2011 at 8:40 pm
We moved here for the hot sauce.
January 19, 2011 at 5:23 am
hot sauce is awesome… our area has a really amazing green version
January 18, 2011 at 9:42 pm
Cheese steaks. The roll has to be a Philly-style roll, i.e., from the Amoroso bakery.
Hoagies. Ditto.
Soft pretzels right out of the oven at the Reading Terminal Market, spread with butter and sprinkled with coarse salt.
Herrs potato chips. It’s a Delaware Valley thing.
Tastykakes, a snack cake that began in Philly and is gaining nationwide attention from fans of the Stephanie Plum mysteries. My brother sent me Tastykakes for Christmas. Bless his heart.
Ponczki, a Polish yeast doughnut filled with fruit and sprinkled with powdered sugar. I discovered these in Chicago. My favorite is the kind with fresh strawberries.
Okay, now I’m hungry.
January 19, 2011 at 12:12 am
Oh yeah, there are some kinds of subs on the east coast that just… *drools on keyboard*
They’re not the same in other places!
January 19, 2011 at 5:21 am
wow!
January 19, 2011 at 5:56 pm
BUTTERSCOTCH MOTHERreproducingEN KRIMPETS, NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
January 18, 2011 at 11:13 pm
Mmm… Chicago deep dish pizza… I would fly 9000 miles for that.
January 19, 2011 at 5:23 am
good choice!
January 19, 2011 at 9:07 am
Pastelitos de queso and croquetas de jamon aka Cream Cheese Pastries and Ham Croquettes Cuban style all washed down with a Cortadito de leche evaporada or a Cortadito with evaporated milk. Cortadito is a small cup of cuban coffee cut with milk- evaporated or otherwise.
January 19, 2011 at 12:21 pm
oooh
January 19, 2011 at 7:00 pm
I’m not sure if arepas count because I’ve only had them from one place. Like a sandwich made from corn with tasty fillings. They’re from Columbia and Venezuela apparently.
Chicago’s stuffed pizza would be my top choice too. More than once I’ve thrown three-course meals/parties in which each course was a pizza.
New England sandwiches come a close second…why can’t other areas of the country make sandwiches that good?
January 19, 2011 at 7:10 pm
It’s true! New England does have the best sandwiches. What is up with that?