I don’t think I’ve ever had it. What is it?
I did leave out beignets and coffee with chicory. You can’t go to N’awlins or have a perfect N’awlins culinary experience without those. Mmm, to be at Cafe Du Monde right now…
Check out Boudin Blanc rightcher, mon ami. We had us some Cajun friends from Mamou who had a little place in Nashville for a year or so. They had some fine Louisiana dishes in their little “Cajun Deli” (yeah, the name sorta sucked) but their specialty was Boudin.
Another never-to-be-forgotten item was deep fried Cornish game hens.
They had a mystery dish called “Road Kill something” that I’m having trouble remembering. It wasn’t courtbouilion (sp?) or etouffe (sp?) but one similar to that. Any clues? Implies lots of added extras.
It seems to me that the pure geographic directional categories aren’t really adequate. Perhaps something more like –
New England
New York Delicatessan (Jewish and German)
Chesapeake
San Francisco
Pacific Northwest
New Orleans Creole and Louisiana Cajun
Southwestern
Southern
Regional roundup - Philly cheese steaks, Chicago sausages and pizza, New York sausages and pizza, Florida seafood
General American – Corn on the cob, casseroles
Indiana:
Deep-fried pork tenderloin (the size of a dinner plate) served on a bun with mustard, onions and pickles
Corn on the cob
There you go - pork and corn!
Found it, Big Bad Voodoo Lou! It’s Sauce Piquante!
They substituted “meat du jour.”
I had wonderful food when I went to Charleston, South Carolina last year to be in a wedding. They have their own unique cuisine out there too, “Low Country” food, which blends traditional Southern cooking with lots of regional seafood, especially shellfish. I had shrimp and grits (yes, it’s one dish), mussels marinated in white wine sauce, life-changing crabcakes, fried clams and oysters, softshell crabs, and fried cornbread, among other wonderful things.
This is definitely more realistic, but I suspect those regional pockets are even more generalized than they ought to be for the real distinctive styles. For instance “Southern” is way too general when you consider the Soul Food end as compared with the genteel dishes found in Southern Living.
I’d love to see people from specific areas break down their own region better.
Can’t forget something with Maple in it, representing the ‘other’ Northeast (Vermont, upstate NY, etc etc).
Of course categories can be broken down more, but our mission was to come up with food court menus, with four entries. I might argue for five entries, with the fifth being ‘Best of Cities’ or something (cheese steaks, pizza, pastrami on rye…)
South: There are a lot, but narrowing it down to a single fast-food menu gives:
Fried catfish, hush puppies (can’t get them nowhere else but the South), boiled greens, pecan pie or key lime pie; or
Fried chicken or BBQ, cornbread (not sweet), boiled greens, sweet potato pie or fried peach pie.
Ice tea (sweet). Moon pies sold at the ‘Americana’ gift shop.
Of course a breakfast menu of biscuits, gravy, grits, eggs and sausage would fit, too.
Northeast: I don’t have a full menu yet, but it includes lobster rolls, clam chowder (and not that disgusting stuff from Manhattan, either) or corn chowder, Boston Cream Pie, and perhaps blueberry muffins. Dried sweet cranberries and New York wine for sale in the gift shop.
While I believe New Haven is properly the center of the pizza universe, it’s hard to do it right fast food style.
Crab cakes could be slotted into NE or South.
I suppose it’s just too obvious to have been mentioned yet, but the Midwest will have apple pie, won’t it?
To get really Southern specific, instead of greens you could offer a bowl of “pot likker” which is the juice of greens with a slice of cornbread (real southern cornbread, not that sweet, cakey stuff) to be crumbled up inside it. You then eat the “pot likker” with a spoon. It’s amazingly tasty if done right.
Also, IIRC poke salet is actually just a salad made from wild collard greens. If you like collard greens, you should be fine with poke salet.
"Poke salad Annie
The gators got your grannie
Everybody said it was a shame
That your momma was a workin’ on a chain gang …
I’ve never heard of poke sallet in particular, but the pokeberry plant can be eaten in the very young shoot stage (the berries are very poisonous).
Yeah, I saw a movie where one of the characters was trying to defend the Southern way of life, complaining that “One day our children will be having cornbread that 's sweet, and ice tea that 's not, and thinking that’s the way it’s supposed to be!”
**Avarie537 ** beat me to breaded tenderloin sandwich, I’ve never had one outside Hoosierland that I didn’t make myself. There’s also the grilled tenderloin sandwich, which I prefer(usually smaller pieces than the breaded).
- á la mode* (mode in this case being homemade ice cream)
Dammit, now I’m hungry!
OMG - are those the actual lyrics? Man was I way off!
Anyway - for more foods from “the other Northeast” - specifically from the Finger Lakes - Spiedies & salt potatoes. I miss those.
West - bison burgers
Well, that’s the way I heard 'em.
Nobody has mentioned turkey with bread stuffing? And cranberry sauce? You don’t get much more American.
And how about kailua pig and poi?
Yankee pot roast?
Southeast
Fried catfish, hushpuppies, coleslaw and red velvet cake or lemon icebox pie washed down with lots of Iced Tea (I prefer unsweet myself)
Chicken and dumplings, blackeyed peas, cornbread, cucumber salad, and a relish tray followed by blackberry cobbler or carrot cake, more iced tea.
Crawfish etoufee, chicken and sausage gumbo or red beans and rice, bread pudding and pralines with Dixie beer
Shrimp and grits, crab bisque, bread pudding with hard sauce
and of course breakfast, beignets and coffee or biscuits with sorgham, more buiscuits with either sausage gravy or red-eye gravy, country ham, grits, aigs (eggs to the rest of y’all) of course southern folks are as likely to eat fried porkchops and steak for breakfast. Warm Banana bread with butter.
Ok I am hungry now.
I’d say all of the Midwest – they’re popular in Iowa.
It’s hard to fill in too many Midwestern foods, isn’t it? Deep fried candy bars… corn on the cob… Jell-O? Little smokies in barbeque sauce…
What, acsenray, if it doesn’t touch an ocean you don’t count it? Let’s make a category for the half of the country you left out, and include things like:
- Oklahoma biscuits & gravy
- A good thick Montana ribeye steak
- An authentic Wyoming buffalo burger
- Wild game (elk, venison, etc.) from anywhere in the West
- Indian fry bread from the Great Plains
- Rocky Mountain oysters
- Sliced watermelon