I’ve never had Cincinnatti chili but try to keep an open mind. The key to enjoying odd versions of dishes you like is to pretend it’s called something else. I’m ready for it, though, because my daughter, at an experimental age, has taken to adding allspice to spaghetti sauce. shrugging It works fine. And a local Chinese restaurant used it surprisingly often (one owner was Chinese and the other was Polish). Worked real well there, too.
My wife refused to tell me what was in mole poblano until had I tried it.
Ah, Packo’s. When arguing against going there for lunch during work, a friend described it as “drunk food”. Greasy, with meat, pickles and cheese. I’ll eat it, but it’s not my favorite ever.
Personally, my favorite semi-gross food is Jackson coneys. A hot dog with meat (ground cow hearts) with mustard and onions on top. Supposedly the cow hearts are what set them apart from all others. A proper coney like that is amazing. I haven’t had one in far too long. Normally if you offered me ground cow hearts I’d tell you to go screw yourself, but these are just too tasty to be ignored. Just make sure you eat them before the grease from the meat soaks through the bun, and eat over the plate, as some of the meat WILL fall off.
Also, when I was younger I remember the local roller rink selling frozen pickle juice in a cup. I always thought this was gross, but then again I hate pickles.
Allspice actually makes some sense in Chinese dishes. Allspice and anise are an accepted substitution for star anise, although anise is usually more expensive than star anise. That said, the spicy note allspice adds is not what I would consider oddball in Chinese cooking, although it depends on how forward the flavor is. In spaghetti sauce, I might find it a little more odd, but I tend to be a spaghetti sauce purist: the freshest tomatoes, olive oil, and basil. Maybe some onion or garlic and hot pepper flakes. Not much else (well, unless you start going into puttanesca territory, but I’m talking straightforward tomato sauce here. Oh, I guess an anchovy wouldn’t hurt, either.)
If it’s British food you want to pick on, forget about the black pudding (only a problem to the overly-squeamish) or mushy peas (think condiment, not menu item), and move onto the doner kebabs. One average portion of ‘meat’ which contains more than a man’s recommended daily calories? Ouch.
Can’t beat a Packo’s dog. Unfortunately their Hungarian Sausage isn’t what it used to be since they went commercial. It used to have a distinctive crunch and snap… it was a smaller batch, fresh, coarse ground sausage. Now, it’s meat paste and collagen.
They have the best Chicken Soup in Toledo though, A bowl of that with pickles is very healthy.
It was one of my favorites as a kid because they had Magicians and Jazz, Packo’s was home of Toledo legends, The Cake Walkin’ Jass Band.
You know I grew up in the Chicago area, and while Chocago is well known for its deep dish pizza, it also has phenominal thin crust pizza. Just like in St. Louis, it is cut into squares, not pie slices. What both styles of pizza have in common though, is great Wisconsin mozzerala cheese. That’s right, Chicago owes it’s pizza production to the cheese heads up north. Whenever I make pizza at home, I always make sure to lay down the big bucks for quality cheese, because anything else makes substandard pizza.
I’m not kidding when I say my freinds had to convince me not to take the half eaten Imo’s pizza back for a refund. I was pissed off.
That’s amazing to me. I cook an extensive variety of Caribbean food. It’s some of the most incredibly varied and flavorful food in the world, a perfect combination of French and African spices and absolutely delicious if done anything close to authentically.
Ya know, I try to follow Bourdain’s example and never turn down food that’s offered to me when I’m someone’s guest.
Anyone who would serve that, though, obviously has no consideration or value for their guests; so I think offending them by adamantly declining would just even out.
Well, I do have to live here, and would rather not piss off the entire state just yet. I get the impression that Hot Dish is the official ND State Food.
After all, it’s my own fault I ate it. I was curious, and tried it without duress.
Hot Dish isn’t quite as nasty as a Slim Jim “food” stick, but it’s in the top ten of the Disgusting Foods category.
This is reminding me of some years ago when I was in Changchun, China, near the North Korean border. There was a local restaurant that featured “local” fare. It was all insects and slimy creatures of indeterminate species. I remember the silkworms being absolutely disgusting, but the scorpions were not bad. Kind of buttery. I could imagine kicking back on the couch with a bag of those fried scorpions and watching a movie.
As for Thailand, the rule of thumb is if it involves an insect, it’s northeastern. All of the other Thais tend to look down on northeasterners for eating that stuff. Contrary to what seems to have become a common conception in the West, most Thais would never put an insect in their mouth. My wife is not prone to looking down on anyone herself, but being a Bangkok girl born and bred, just the thought of eating an insect makes her want to puke.
If you want to find bugs in Bangkok, a good place is near the bar areas. There’s a bug cart set up right in the middle of Soi Cowboy. There’s another one always near Nana Plaza. This is because most of the girls working in these farang-oriented bar areas are northeastern girls, since as I said, farangs go for the dark-skinned beauties. The girls buy them up in droves. It always amuses me to sit outside of Sam’s 2000 or Tilac Bar and watch the girls buying up all of these bugs and think of the poor sucker tourist who’s going to be taking her home later that night and deep kissing her, never suspecting what all she’s been chewing up. You won’t find any bug carts near the naughty venues that Thais like to frequent, though, because the girls there are not from Isaan.
Wow, we are total opposites on this matter. I love just about anything fried in black iron with Grease of Pig, but Southern style iced tea --bleeeeuuch! It is tea-colored sugar syrup to me, and I’d almost rather drink chilled dishwater.
I am always mystified by the fact that airlines offer a list of meal options, one of which is ‘bland’. How the hell can something be blander than normal airline food? And why is there never an option for ‘tasty’?
Has anyone mentioned boneless chicken feet yet? If not, they should definitely be added to this list. I tried them on the recommendation of a Chinese girl I was dating at the time (we were in Boston, but she brought me to a place in Chinatown that supposedly had the best Cantonese cuisine for miles).
I don’t know which was worse, the gristly texture, the bizarre gamey taste, or the fact that my girlfriend enjoyed them sooooooooo much. I’d like to think this incident wasn’t responsible for the ultimate demise of the relationship, but thinking back, I’m honestly not quite sure…
I get the impression that Hot Dish is the official ND State Food.