The “St. Louis-style” is actually the cracker-thin crust. Provel cheese isn’t actually necessary, but its popularity has made it almost mandatory.
Other St. Louis specialties include toasted (actually deep-fried) ravioli dipped in marinara sauce, and gooey butter cake.
The thing I will mention in this post is not a local food. It’s a group (not quite a chain) of stores selling a food type that you may have never heard of. There are many (perhaps hundreds) of stores in the U.S. and Canada selling many different flavors of pickles. These stores are called names like the Dutch Country Farmer’s Market. (They also do other food items.) Most of them have employees who, to judge by their clothes, are Amish. These stores are most common in the areas where the Amish live. The one of these closest to me has had as many as twenty-five different flavors of pickles, some of which are quite strange.
There’s a large Amish community that we used to drive through on the way to a country cottage up north. I remember their distinctive horse-drawn buggies but I don’t recall any Amish shops or food or produce stands, though there may have been some.
But when it comes to pickles, the Jewish community has it nailed. Strub’s full-sour kosher pickles with fresh garlic FTW! 
So the “food type we may have never heard of” is pickles?
No, it’s pickles with weird flavors you would never guess would be used with pickles.
Examples? Are we talking like Kool-Aid pickles (an actual thing, though I believe Southern), or something else?
Why in the world would you cut a rectangular pizza like a Sicilian in anything but rectangles? I literally have never seen them cut any other way, and wouldn’t make any more sense than cutting a sheet cake into non-rectangular slices.
As to why, they’re handy to make for parties. You just need a sheet pan (or 1/4 sheet is what I typically use), it’s easy to spread out the dough. It’s quite practical. And there are rectangular styles of pizza in Italy, too, and if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.
Flavors like bread and butter pickles (sometimes with onions and peppers), garlic and dill (sometimes with extra spice), dill with jalapeno, lime, habanero, dill with a lot of heat, ginger, and others, which are sometimes combinations of all those. There were such a large number of them that I can’t remember them all. I’d have to take notes the next time I’m there.
Forgot about gooey butter cake! I had some for the first time on our visit last summer, and my goodness was it tasty. Thanks!
You kind of answered your own question. People want rectangular pizzas because they want rectangular slices.
As a total coincidence, we are in fact having pizza tomorrow. I’m bringing my mom over to watch the Seahawks game, and we decided we’re not going to fix dinner, but rather get it delivered.
I may have one of the pizzas (a round one no less) cut into squares in your honor, since they have that option.
I missed this. I grew up with gooey butter cake. My mom always made it. She’s from Ohio. I don’t know how I grew up with it in Washington State if it’s so limited to St Louis. Clearly that thing has legs.
Funny enough, my wife also makes it, and has for her whole adult life, and he has never lived outside of Washington. I think she grew up with it around here too.
Oh, and it’s one of the most delicious desserts I’ve ever had in my life.
I’m in central Illinois…My niece makes them for the holidays.
You forgot Ted Drewes concretes… but frozen yogurt is kind of ubiquitous.
I didn’t mention Ted Drewes because there was an ice cream shop just down the road from my in-laws house in Cleveland that sold exactly the same frozen custard desserts. They called them “cements.” Of course what makes the St. Louis frozen custard in general, and Ted Drewes in particular, so unique is its density. The folks at Ted Drewes literally turn your order upside down when they serve you. If anything falls out of the cup, it means they made it wrong.
It’s widely thought that the Dairy Queen Blizzard was designed by a St. Louis franchisee to compete with the concrete. However, the Blizzard is to Ted Drewes as a scooter is to a Porsche.
Another Wisconsin food to add - Taco Pizza
The Wikipedia page places its birth in Davenport, Iowa and the chain Happy Joe’s, and that’s where I had several childhood birthday parties in North Central Wisconsin in and around 1980.
A classic memory I have was a local grocery store in my hometown did pizza samples all the time and when they had taco pizza, it was a very good day. I live in Texas now, and I imagine the term taco pizza would draw nothing but blank stares.
nevermind
Oh, yes – I’ve had that one at Happy Joe’s in Davenport (at least I was on the Iowa side of the river from what I remember.) I’ve had variations of taco pizza before, but that was the first time I had one with actual crushed tortilla chips and fresh shredded lettuce and tomato on top of it. So you got a two-fer with regional food there: Quad Cities-style pizza, and the birthplace of at least this kind of taco pizza. Their “Happy Joe’s Special” pizza is a bacon and sauerkraut pizza! It’s actually pretty good, but I come from Central/Eastern European stock. I noticed on their website that have a few more locations than I thought, almost all around the states adjoining Iowa, but two locations coming to Arizona, and two in Egypt (?!) Why and how is there not one but two Happy Joe’s in Egypt?
How widely known are boysenberries outside of California these days? Growing up in Orange County, CA, it was the default jelly/jam flavor (although I once met some weirdo in elementary school who had grape jelly on their PB&J). I see a ton of recipes for boysenberry pie online, which is apparently California’s state dessert.
Or olallieberries, for that matter?
I grew up eating Dannon fruit-on-the-bottom boysenberry yogurt (in the Northeast) but haven’t seen it in years.
Young’s Dairy includes Buckeyes in their Buckeye Sundaes. Don’t know who makes the Buckeyes - I expect they make them there.
We have the European cousin here in Switzerland, Bear’s Garlic. During the spring the leaves are served in salads and there’s pasta, cheese, pesto, etc. But the pasta, cheese and pesto are made with the bear’s garlic from the previous year.
When people think of Switzerland, they think of fondue. But in central Switzerland, the Pastetli (puff pastry filled with sausage, mushrooms and sauce) is eaten more often. My company canteen serves it about once month and is quite popular.
When we were in Oregon last, we talked with someone who didn’t know that marionberries are (almost) limited to Oregon. She’d never left the state and didn’t know that marionberries are difficult to find outside of the PNW.
Boysenberries I only know from yogurt. Never even heard of olallieberries!