White Castle. We don’t have it on the west coast. When I travel back east, it’s the first place I go.
Cheese. I just moved to Canada from Holland and there’s only one thing in the food department that I miss: Nice, inexpensive old Dutch cheese, so firm that it crumbles if you try to cut it, and that does not taste like rubber and that you don’t need to melt to make it tasty. That’s it - nothing else.
Mother’s Iced Raisin cookies. My great-grandmother loved those cookies and always had them in her cookie jar. Kellogg bought their recipes after Mother’s went out of business, but they didn’t bring back the Iced Raisin cookies.
This is what I came in to mention and considering the hate it gets in the US I never expected someone else to agree with me. I grew up in Korea and I love all of the different kinds but the best way to enjoy it is cabage kimche on a hamburger. I keep trying kimche at different authentic places and so far they all refuse to make it spicy. I’ve got a friend going to Korea to teach English and I’m going to give him a grand to send me pounds of it.
The only other food I really miss is Togo’s they make the best sandwhich of any chain I’ve been to but the closest one I’ve ever lived to one, outside of a short 6 moth period, was a 2 hour drive and while I consider it on a regular basis it’s not quite good enough for a 240 mile round trip.
Hate? I know not many of us eat it, but I’ve never heard hatred of it.
I guess it’s just the people I know but most people I have talked to who know what kimche is use gross or disgusting in the discription somewhere. I know several who can’t believe I’m even willing to eat it let alone love it.
Those Jack and The Box, Ham and turkey melts.
Also, I used to live in this apartment in the shitty side of town. Sometime in the afternoon some Mexican ladies would knock on my door and sell me a dozen tamales.
Coney Island Hot Dogs from when I used to live in Tulsa.
I have developed an uncanny knack of finding new products that I think are terrific. They then instantly disappear from the shelf. In the last 12 months or so a coffee soy milk, chai oats and single serve packs of stir fry vegetables have all been tried once and then never seen again. Also I managed to enjoy a superb brand of sausage rolls several times. They are no longer available although their drab competitors are.
McDonald’s fries fried in … I don’t know what – God’s tears? Whatever it was, it was what built the empire, not the pablum they serve now. The hot apple pies aren’t the same either.
(For a similar nostalgic kick that you can replicate on your own, get a heavy pot, some coconut oil and some real popping corn. Put on a DVD and enjoy!)
My brother and I used to get fresh honeycombs from the beekeeper who lived down the road from us; they were delicious. Really want one now!
Hough cakes.
There was this little Thai-Japanese casual restaurant near my former work called Mikados. They had Tom Yum Noodle Soup, which was not traditional thai but a mixture of Thai/Japenese influences. Very rich tom yum broth, these heavy rice? noodles, bean sprounts, chicken, and pink & white slices of fish cake along with a lighter noodle and lots of cilantro. To this day it remains my favorite soup ever- but they closed over three years ago and I’ve never found anyone that served anything close to it :(.
There’s a whole bunch of foods I miss because Trader Joe’s discontinued them: Moroccan olives, asparagus soup, and tofu eggrolls, I mourn especially. In fact, if you want your TJ staples to remain on the shelf, don’t get me hooked onto them. I have a terrible track record for loving items that soon get discontinued.
My local TJ’s has a large sign above Customer Service which reads, “Don’t see it? Ask for it!” So I went up to the desk and mentioned the items I missed. In return, I got a blank stare and an apathetic, “Ok.” Well, gee, if you don’t give a rat’s ass, don’t put up a sign encouraging me to speak up!
Coney dogs like they make them in Michigan. God, there was this place on Warren Avenue down in Polish Town that I swear, they must have made their chili from a recipe that came straight down from heaven in a bolt of light or something. Man, and an ice-cold Vernors. And some Better-Made chips on top of the bargain. Or, instead of Vernors, a Faygo Redpop. Oh, yeah.
And man, Trader Joe’s, they used to, I dunno if they do it any more, but they used to have these chocolate truffles that they sold in like, a one-pound bag. This must have been six or seven years ago by now. And they were like little bites of Eden rolled in crack dust, or cocoa powder, or something. I would walk a mile on my knees for a bag of those, yeah.
LVBoPeep’s post reminded me of a now long-defunct Chinese restaurant in my home town that used to serve butterflied shrimp that they made little, I don’t think I’ll communicate this well, but, shrimp rings out of.
They split them from the spine side almost all the way through the head and tail ends, then laid them open, battered them, and fried them, so they arrived looking like beautiful, giant onion rings, only with shrimp!
Pierre’s cinnamon ice cream. They don’t sell Pierre’s here and this ice cream is extra super awesome with apple pie. I’d pick some up during the holiday season when I lived in Ohio. They sadly discontinued it for awhile, but now it’s back and I still can’t have any. 
I’ve got the Edy’s seasonal stuff - the peppermint stick and egg nog flavors - but Pierre’s is what I really want.
I miss those foods that my mom goes to the store to buy ingredients for, cooks and serves to me. You know, the types of foods that require no time or money from me.
For me, Mr Philly & their cheesestakes. In the late 1980s, Mr Philly opened up several outlets in NYC and Long Island, and I had…quite a few over the years. I like it better than ‘real’ cheese steaks (such as Pat’s in Philly…although I understand that in Philly, Pat’s & Geno’s are in fact, not thought of as all that great to begin with) - it was the Mozarella & Butter I suppose, on what was basically Steakums, but still the taste was fantastic. Their wafer fries were also good (no, actually darn great, and if they were piping hot - utterly superb).
Alas, Mr Philly became Mr. Hero in the 1990s, and then closed up shop in the NY area altogether and apparently retreated to Ohio - I guess my heart and stomach are the better for that.
In college when I was broke, I loved me a package of $0.99 pecan spins and a bottle of milk. For $2.10 I had a feast for breakfast.
Course, now I have celiac’s and am allergic to wheat and therefore standard flour and can’t eat them.
But man, those were awesome.
I have no idea who made them, or what they were called. But they were lemon cookies that were covered, in what I assume was powdered sugar. I’ve searched recipes for lemon cookies, but haven’t found one that calls for the powdered sugar.
What a refreshing little morsel of sunshine…