Cincinnati also has goetta.
Louisville, Kentucky, has the Hot Brown sandwich. Yum!
Across Ohio you can get buckeyes – peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate.
Indiana? the tenderloin.
Come to Akron and eat sauerkraut balls.
It has gone national, but the best fish tacos are still served at little shacks in SoCal or Baja.
Michigan has pickled bologna. I didn’t realize it was a regional thing until the day I remembered loving the stuff as a kid, and tried to find some where I live now. Turns out that you can pretty much only get it in Michigan and maybe surrounding states.
I grew up in central western Ohio and my favorite food was the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_tenderloin_sandwich. I had no idea it was strictly a regional thing until I moved to DC and no one had even heard of it. I’m now back in Ohio but, alas, it seems to be slowly disappearing as national chains take over. There are a few local restaurants that still produce a tenderloin worthy of the name but it’s getting harder and harder to find them.
Coddies
http://recipecircus.com/recipes/Stella/FISHandSEAFOOD/Baltimore_Coddies.html
They sound awful but they are so good and I haven’t had one in ages.
NJ has really good pizza, the Italian hot dog, diners and something calledtaylor ham. I have never eaten it so I can’t tell you how it tastes. I can recommend a few local great pizza places and some utterly fabulous diners.
If we’re going to talk up local pizzas, then I’m going to have to mention Dayton-style thin pizza – Marion’s Piazza, Cassano’s Pizza King, etc. – and also Jerry’s in Chillicothe, which makes a kind of pizza I’ve never had anywhere else.
There’s also pit beef (with a Natty Boh!).
One of my favorites, especially when eaten in the lobby of the Brown Hotel.
In the South Jersey/Philly area you had good old scrapple, Taylor pork roll, Lebanon bologna, sticky buns, and a regional drink called Tak-A-Boost. I’ve seen the pork roll and bologna at delis all over, but not scrapple, and certainly not Tak-A-Boost (pronounced Take-A-Boost - a highly caffeinated, flat Pepsi tasting drink that you mixed from a syrup. Everyone had a pitcher of it in their refrigerator. Probably why people from that part of Jersey are…different).
I don’t think those are regional. We have them here in Ohio too.
Cleveland has its own variation on cassata cake. We also have stadium mustard, which I found at Trader Joe’s a while back (as Trader Joe’s Brown Mustard) so no doubt it’s nationwide now.
There’s also Trail Bologna out in Amish country. Not sure how widespread it is even in Ohio, but it is unique!
Along California’s “Central Coast” barbecues are common and Tri-Tip (i.e. Santa Maria Tri-Tip) is the local specialty. This area also boasts of being the birthplace of Baja Fresh (Mexi-salads?) and The Habit (Santa Barbara Coast; beach themed(?) burger shack turned fast-food restaurant).
When I was in Sandy Eggo, burritos from Roberto’s was for some reason all-the-rage. But then it was discovered that many of the tiny shacks calling themselves “Roberto’s” were just using the name. The family sued and forced the others to change, thus “Hidelberto’s”, “Gilberto’s”, “Adalberto’s”, and several other X+“berto’s” shops were born. I’m not sure, but I think Rubio’s Fish Tacos started down there, too.
—G!
Eat to live.
Don’t live to eat.
Here in Alabama, specifically North Alabama, we have White BBQ Sauce.
Chicago’s got a few, although some may just be seen as variations of similar traditions.
We have two kinds of deep dish pizza (one a single-crusted pan pizza as invented by Pizzeria Uno, another as a double crusted stuffed pizza as invented by Nancy’s.) We also have a thin crust style that is primarily associated with the Midwest and cut into squares (party cut) instead of pie slices. The crust is quite thin, no ridge, cracker-like at times, with a tomato sauce flavored with oregano (and sometimes edges into sweet territory, although not always.) reasonable amount of cheese, and the standard meat topping is chunks of fresh Italian sausage. Here’s a representative sample.
The jibarito – this is basically a Puerto Rican cheesesteak type of sandwich, with lettuce, tomato, and a garlic kick. Instead of bread, two deep fried sliced plantains form the “bun.” See here.
The mother-in-law. This is usually a local corn roll tamale (a machine-extruded tamale made with corn meal, not masa) on a bun with chili poured over it, and often onions and hot peppers. Add cheese and you have a sandwich called a “humdinger.” Sometimes, a bowl of chili (which comes with beans here) with a corn roll tamale dumped into it is also called a “mother-in-law,” although that also goes under the name “chili tamale.”
There’s also bone-in pork chop sandwiches. See pictures here. Usually served with copious amounts of griddled onions and mustard.
The Italian beef sandwich. Thin slices of roasted top sirloin/top round/or bottom round, dunked in a beefy broth/gravy, served on an Italian roll (which is often dunked into the jus itself), topped with hot and/or sweet peppers. Speaking of the hot peppers, that’s also kind of a Chicago take on an Italian salad called giardiniera. I’ve never seen that type of giardiniera anywhere but Chicago: it’s an oily and vinegary mix of hot peppers, celery, carrots, onions, garlic, and perhaps a bit of cauliflower. There is also the “combo” with is an Italian beef with an Italian sausage added to it. Also, there is the “pepper & egg” sandwich that a lot of Italian beef joints served during Fridays to accommodate the Catholics that couldn’t eat meat.
African American Chicago barbecue is focused on spare ribs, rib tips, and hot links, with the “tips & links combo” being a typical order. While hot links exist in other places, Chicago style hot links are a spicy fresh sausage, reminiscent of a sage breakfast sausage, usually, that is hot smoked in an aquarium smoker (a type of smoker nearly unique to Chicago. The only other place I’ve ever seen with a similar smoker is Cozy Corner in Memphis.) It sometimes is also run through the deep fry to crisp it up some extra.
That’s the first few off the top of my head. There’s also shrimp de jonghe, various weird sandwiches (including the “jim shoo”-- a sub combining roast beef, corned beef, and gyros meat all together), an alcoholic drink called “malort” (basically, a very bitter concoction of wormwood in grain alcohol), and some others that are slipping my mind at the moment.
ETA: Oh, duh. The Chicago-style hot dog, of course, is an obvious one I’m missing.
[QUOTE=Paintcharge;16552362…
Upstate New York has [speedies]
(Spiedie - Wikipedia).
…
[/QUOTE]
YUM.
YUM.
YUM.
YUM.
NJ has the best pizza in the country. NYC gets the cred, but Jersey is much better. Taylor Pork Roll “Taylor Ham” is an integral part of the best breakfast sandwich known to man.
Scrapple has such a bad reputation, and it’s so delicious when prepared right.
Chef Daughter’s forty and she loves it. But it has to be prepared by someone who knows what they are doing or it’s nasty.
Up in the Black Hills of South Dakota near Lead they eat pasties also. Miner’s food. Took them down in the mines with them for lunch.
Only they eat them the MN way - with rutabagas instead of turnips.
Southern MN and northern Iowans love their fried bullheads. In northeastern MN it’s smelt. (You can also smell the fried bullheads and lutefisk.)
And don’t forget wild rice from MN lakes and sweet corn from farm fields.