Am from Syracuse and was at a liquor store here in Denver with my wife picking up some wine and saw a lonely six pack of Genny Cream sitting in the cooler. Did, like, a triple take. I didn’t buy it as Genny is pretty awful when it is somewhat fresh. I can’t imagine how old it was there.
Also, Heid’s is a pretty popular Upstate New York food attraction for snappies and franks with your Byrne Dairy chocolate milk. No ketchup!
Ha, my blood pressure was rising reading your post until I got to the ETA. The Chicago-style hot dog is, in my view, an absolutely perfect masterpiece of takeaway food.
Surprised you left off the Maxwell Street Polish sausage, which is a spicy polish sausage served either on French bread or a hot dug bun, slathered with grilled onions and yellow mustard.
Another Chicago street food thing are elotes, which is sweetcorn covered in mayonaise, lime juice, chili powder, and cotilla cheese (which is a Mexican hard goat cheese). Absolutely delicious. It comes from Mexico originally, but I’ve heard there’s only a few places in the US where it’s easily available, and it’s downright ubiquitious in Chicago.
Yeah, I was thinking of including it, but wasn’t sure if it was different enough to warrant inclusion. It probably is.
I didn’t think about that one. Ubiquitous here, definitely. I guess it’s just one of those things I assumed are popular everywhere where there’s a decent Mexican population, so I don’t really think of it as a “Chicagoan” tradition or a “Mexican-Chicagoan” tradition, but a more general one.
St. Louis has quite a few local food oddities: frozen custard (yum), pork steak (meh), St. Louis cut spareribs, slingers (eggs, hasbrowns, & meat, covered in chili, cheese, & onions), provel cheese and the godawful abomination that is St. Louis style pizza (Imo’s). Plus local producers like Vess soda.
There’s even scarcer weirdness, like St. Paul sandwiches which I’ve seen a few times, or fried brain sandwiches which I’m not sure are even served anywhere anymore after mad cow disease.
… it’s not exactly healthy cuisine.
How about snoots?
Oh, yeah. I used to work with a PhD chemist who loved coming back to St. Louis for the pig snouts in various forms. He particularly liked crispy deep-fried and… hairy. shudder
That’s pretty normal in the rest of the South, in my experience. Mustard may or may not be on the table.
You guys just call ice cream by a different name. A lot of what is served in the US is based on a custard recipe.
I have had frozen custard in both St. Louis and Milwaukee, and it’s different from regular custard-based ice cream. The consistency is lighter and eggier.
My wife’s parents are from Chambersburg, and she has some Mennonite ancestry, so we had pig’s stomach often when we lived in NJ. But you can’t get a whole stomach here - the ones you can buy in the Housewife’s Market in Oakland are full of holes. Lebanon bologna might slowly be spreading.
I lived in SW Louisiana before cajun food became a fad, and we ate boudin and lots of crawfish dishes. Cajun and creole food are totally different.
When I was growing up we had “appetizing” Sunday mornings - bagels of course, and lox, but also whitefish and sable, things you don’t see anyplace else. However the deli in the Trump Plaza in Atlantic City had at one time really good whitefish salad, which is all the good stuff I’m ever going to say about the Donald.
Well, there you go. I’ve only had it once and thought it was similar to most premium ice creams.
I’m afraid Saint Frankie (Sinatra) would disagree, as he used to send his driver to New Haven to get pizza.
Anyway, Boston/New England has Boston baked beans and Boston brown bread. Is broiled scrod too generic to be regional? Plus it has frappes and jimmies (if you say milkshakes and sprinkles are the same thing, I’m going to ignore you). Are NECCO wafers countrywide? (New England Confectionary COmpany wafers, you know).
Lots of southern food hasn’t been mentioned yet, I don’ think: hush puppies, fried catfish, boiled-to-death greens, proper cornbread that’s not sweetened up to dessert levels, fried okra (heck, any other kind of okra too, I guess), grits, pork rinds, moon pies, fried pies (the small, fried, pie-dough around fruit filling; most people have only seen the Hostess version, but the real version is worth trying some time). Are chess pie and pecan pie common in the midwest? (they’re really southern imports to the northeast, I know). Key lime pie, too, now that I think about it.
I would definitely call Alton Brown’s recipe frozen custard, but I’m fine with “ice cream” including both custard-based and non-custard based frozen dairy desserts.
I never knew that (and can’t say I’ve ever noticed it, but I’m usually on the hunt for other foods when I’m in the South), but it is true that chili-slaw-mustard is very strongly associated with West Virginia. I’ve never had that dog myself, but I know that it’s a West Virginia dog.
ETA: Actually, here’s a Wikipedia article with regional hot dog variations, and West Virginia is its own category.
In NC, it’s chili, slaw and onions. Mustard is served on the side.
ETA: I just saw your link:
I could see that being popular in NC. Is it a creamy slaw or a vinegary slaw?
Ummm…in between, maybe? It might have a little mayo, but it usually isn’t creamy. Probably more on the vinegar side.
I was always more of a chili and cheese guy, so I’m having a hard time recalling the slaw.
In Tampa we have a “Cuban” cuisine which, I discovered from living in Miami-Dade County for a year, is rather different from Miami “Cuban” cuisine. Miami Cuban sandwiches are made with some kinda sugary Wonder-bread in bun-form (the bread for a Tampa Cuban is much crustier and chewier), and the Miamians seem never to have heard of garbanzo-bean soup or arroz con pollo. (Tampa’s Cuban community is 60 or 70 years older than Miami’s, BTW.)
Of course, not counting Indian cuisine, Tampa’s real indigenous cuisine is Florida Cracker cuisine. New restaurant opening here.
Don’t delve too deep, Mr. Baker. My Mom used to tell me how my Grandpa would drink clabber . . . would drink collard-greens potliquor . . . the family actually ate possum whenever Grandpa shot one (greasy stuff, she remembered) . . . and, yes, chitlins . . . (and we’re white, you understand).
Bump this because I just remembered a wonderful book I read a few years ago that’ll be of interest to some folks here: The Food of a Younger Land: The WPA’s Portrait of Food in Pre-World War II America. It’s a collection of essays, menus, interviews, and recipes from all over the US during the 1930s or thereabout, everything from what’s served at the Waldorf to a Kansas beef barbecue (IIRC; I may be getting a couple of details wrong, but that’s the general idea). Definitely worth checking out!
Also:
Bad pimento (not “pimiento,” most of the time) cheese is nasty, and most pimento cheese is bad pimento cheese. But good pimento cheese is wonderful. My food processor recipe:
-1 clove garlic and some cumin and paprika and cayenne all blended together.
-Add some sharp chedder and chop fine.
-Add a chunk of cream cheese and a big old spoonful of mayo and blend.
-Add a tiny jar of pimentos and blend just a bit.
The spices and the sharp cheese make a world of difference, turning the nasty bland mayo blend into an attention-grabber that goes great with beer.