Minnesota, checking in.
We have Spam, made right here in Austin, MN. We also have lutefisk (dried cod preserved in lye. It’s really gross, and not many people like it.), lefse (kind of a flour tortilla-kinda thing), lingonberry stuff, and other Scandinavian foods. Also, cheese curds (the solid part of cheese before it’s aged, I believed. I’ll miss that when I move 
)
Other than that, I haven’t really found anything that’s truly local to Minnesota.
Robin
Hehehe Ramen noodles the food of all college kids. Oh the different ways I’ve eaten them is so bad I shall not get into it for fear of making everyone sick.
Unagi.
Salt-water eels that are typically grilled over an open flame with a slightly sweet sauce, then served on rice. Delicious.
For dessert, Unagi Pie! Sugar cookies made with pulverized Unagi. Oddly, there’s no eel taste to them whatsoever.
–sublight.
Jeannie, am I wrong to think White Castles were a New York thing?
I believe lefse is actually a potato based tortilla. And yes, lutefisk is god awful; we only let my dad cook it once a year, it stinks that bad. Imagine a gray, fermented jello mold…of fish! All my relatives live in northern MN, and I always thought “hot dish”(?) and pot luck were ubiquitous. I’m talking hundreds of ways to make hot dish (just another name for casseroles I think), with any number of ingredients used. And what about pasties, or is that Wisconsin?
I’m a lifelong Marylander, so my home turf has been covered. But the Washington Post ran a contest last year to name the dish that’s truly Washingtonian. The winner: Half-smokes, preferably from Ben’s Chili Bowl down on U Street with a side of cheese fries.
There was a meat store/deli in the small town I used to live in that had Armadillo Eggs. They were not really armadillo eggs (of course), but breaded jalapenos stuffed with seasoned chicken. They are one of my favorite foods in the world, but only that one store has them, and I’m not sure if they have them anymore. Other places have stuffed jalapenos, but it’s usually cheese they are stuffed with, or a mix of cheese and something else. The one place I have found that serves them stuffed with chicken only other than Reames Meat Market stuffed them with bland, seemingly unseasoned chicken.
I’m from Dayton, and I never heard of Cincinnati Chili! Cincy folk are always hiding stuff from us!
Thank you Motorgirl, now I am hungry and homesick again!
Spiedies
Ah, State Fair Spiedies! We can get bottled Spiedie sauce down here, but it’s not quite like getting a REAL live Speidie from the NY State Fair (used to live not far from the fair, so we went everyday and got a spiedie [along with the free baked potato given away in the Horticulture Building]).
Salt Potatoes
People in Florida scoff at salt potatoes. Heathens, I tell you, heathens! Best was the next morning, straight out of the refrigerator cold.
Went back north for a visit last summer and forgot to bring back a bag of Hinterwadel’s Salt Potatoes. Started kicking myself somewhere around lower Pennsylvania, to far to turn around and drive back to New York. Grrrrrr.
** Half Moon Cookies**
Seen these down here but yeah, the frostings isn’t quite the same. (Must be the water). I’ve seen them with both the yellow cookie and chocolate cookie.
Cornell Recipe Chicken
New one on me. Gotta try this.
Gewurztraminers and Rieslings
Finger Lakes Wineries. I was the designated driver, so I got grape juice (just as good). I miss my collection of “Uncork New York” wine glasses, etched with the “UNY” on one side and the winery logo on the other. I had the complete collection for Cayuga Lake and most of Canandaigua Lake.
I must add:
Cornell Apple Cider - straight from the Horticulture Department
Heid’s Hot Dogs and Conies - based in Liverpool, just outside Syracuse - no catsup to be found anywhere on the premises
Dinosaur Bar-B-Que Sauce from a biker bar in Syracuse - “biker tested and approved” - great, especially the honey-garlic sauce (brought a half-dozen bottles of each kind back to Florida)
Headlights - a doughnut (center is still intact) with a cakey frosting like the half-moon’s and a dollop of buttercream frosting on the top
::looks at her toast and coffee in disgust::
Ummm if your from Dayton and haven’t heard of Cincinnati Chili I’d almost venture to say you don’t get out much. Actually I’m only kiddin’ I know alot of people from Ohio that haven’t heard of it but still ya know everyone should have it at least once in their lives. Ok now I’m hungry.
Motorgirl (and screech owl):
Quote:
Spiedies - chunks of meat marinated in vinegar-based, heavy-on-the-salt marinades, skewered and grilled, then eaten in sub rolls. The trick is to hold the roll in one hand, the skewered meat in the other, then lay the skewer right in the roll, wrap the roll around and pull the skewer out without popping chunks of meat across the table at Aunt Bea. I think there is an annual Spiedie fesitval in Binghamton. Most families have their own special secret Spiedie recipe.
I lived in upstate New York for several years, but only briefly in Binghamton. I still miss spiedies (spelled various ways – Speedys, speidies, speedies, etc.), which seem to be a VERY localized regional delicacy. They didn’t have them in Rochester, N.Y. Most of the people there don’t even know what they are. Whenever I go through the Finger Lakes I pick up Spiedie sauce (I have two gallon jugs of it under my sink right now).
When I lived in Binghamton you could get three varieties – Pork spiedies were sold by street vendors, Beef spiedies were my favorite, the ones you got at the Char pits. But the traditional spiedie seems to have been Lamb. Since the spiedie is grill on a kabob before being slipped onto a kaiser bun, and since the olive oil-and-vinegar marinade is traditional, this makes me suspect that spiedies are Greek in origin, although I have no idea how or why.
Another regional delicacy – Rochester Hot Chicken. The kind you get at Country Sweet Chicken and Ribs, or Sal’s Birdland, or at the now-departed Smitty’s. You can get the hot sauce at area supermarkets (like Wegman’s) under various brand names, but I’ve never seen it outside the upstate New York area. I stress that this is NOT “Buffalo wings”. The sauce is totally unlike the butter-and-tabasco sauce that you usually find in bars and restaurants. This sauce is a sweet and hot sauce. You’re hit with the sweet first, followed after a delay by a nuclear heat.
I’m the first Springfield preson to contribute to this thread, so everybody be quiet while I praise…
The Horseshoe You take a big piece of fresh sourdough bread and put it on a plate. Upon the plate you place a meat of some kind: the best restaurants will offer you ham, turkey, a hamburger patty, bacon, pork tenderloin, or chicken breast. Some will offer shrimp; let’s not go there :rolleyes:. Upon the meat you pile some french fries. Upon the french fries you pour Welsh Rarebit Sauce (which is a fancy, local way of saying “cheese sauce”). It’s like a big pile o’ Heaven on a plate. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
The best ones are at D’Arcy’s Pint in the Town & Country Shopping Center, 2500-something South MacArthur. The ones at The Spot are an abomination unto all that is holy.
And all you out-of-towners who come here for a Dopefest: do not say “It’s basically just an inside-out cheeseburger.” Them’s fightin’ words :mad:!
I’m from Holland. you probably think this is some weird stuff, but I assure you, it’s delicious:
Raw herring with raw unions. On or off a white bun, but I prefer just the herring. The trick is to eat it with your head in your neck and lifting the herring by the tail so it can go down in one smooth action. Ofcourse you’ll be left with a lot of unions in your collar.
Filet Americain, although I have no idea what so ‘American’ is about it. Apparrently, no one in America has ever heard of it. It is raw ground beef with some herbs through it. Excellent on bread.
Hagelslag. 'Nuff said.
Broodje kroket. Also not translatable, or ColdFire might know it. I have no idea, but it is delicious.
I’m from California…I have to say that the number one delicacy would have to be FRESH strawberries. Big juicy ones that have just been picked that day. Nothing better. I’ve been going to school in DC for the past 2.5 years, and no one here would know a good strawberry if it did the hustle in front of him. Also, fish tacos are great, too.
Blasphemer! Pasties are an Upper Peninsula of Michigan creation, brought in by Cornish miners to the iron/copper fields of the UP. 40 lashes for you!
That being said, Michigan checking in here:
Pasties: basically a big meat turnover made with shredded beef, potatoes, onions, and rutabagas. The best ones are from the UP, but I found a place here in Mason (Hometown Pizza) that makes a pretty good one. Delish! Miners carried them because they were easy to carry into the mines and very filling.
Wines: Michigan has a couple very good wine areas in the state. Don’t ask me which wines are good cause I don’t know - I’m not that good on them yet. I had some Cherry Port last year that should have been illegal, it was so good!
Apples: /snooty voice/ All the cogniscenti know that the best apples come from Michigan./snooty voice/ We have a number of nurseries that that produce vintage apples too. Cool!
Cherries: Michigan is the top cherry producing state in the US (last time I heard - I ain’t doin’ no search due to an extreme case of laziness). Dried cherries…yum! Sweet, healthy, and addictive.
Morel mushrooms: Better than truffles and almost as expensive.
Smoked whitefish or smoked lake perch: An upper Michigan and Upper Peninsula treat. Truly divine. And if you can get it honey-smoked, well then, the gods have smiled upon you. Just don’t get your hands too close to my mouth when I’m eating it - you might pull back a stump.
Pinconning and Frankenmuth Cheese: Two famous cheddar-like cheeses from MI.
Mackinaw Island Fudge: You’ve heard the term. This is where is started. Thick, rich, and chocolaty to an extreme degree.
Someone from Holland (MI, that is) and Detroit will have to check in because I know they have large Dutch and Polish populations, respectively, that have unique and yummy foods.
I don’t know if it’s a Michigan thing or just a thing from my family, but we eat a lot of pickled herring with onions. I’ll take that for lunch anytime.
OK, I forgot to respond to this in my previous post, but I’ve tried Chinese/Vietnamese/Thai food that NYC has to offer…come to Southern California and see what Vietnamese food is really about.
And definitely cheaper than in NYC, 5 bucks for a rather large plate full of shredded pork, fried rice, noodles, pork patties…nothing beats it.
No, not pickled, fresh. Catch it, gut it, eat it. That’s the way to eat herring.
St. Louis here.
My absolute local favorite is something called Gooey Butter Cake. Sounds vaguely unpalatable, but it’s really good.
From the undercooked to the overcooked, try Toasted Ravioli, which is actually deep fried.
Sliced Pork Butt is the all-time local backyard barbecue favorite, although I personally don’t care for it. Mrs. Kunilou slices it up for stir-fry.
Speaking of pork butt, you have to have St. Louis-style barbecue sauce with it, which tends to be both smoky and sweet.
St. Louis-style pizza – you love it or you hate it. A very thin crust (if you don’t bake it just right, you have a burnt crust) heavy on the provel cheese. Real St. Louis pizza has an interesting type of sausage with a particular blend of spices I can’t really describe.
The Concrete – I know they exist in other cities, as cements, blizzards and other names. But there is something about the consistency and sweetness of the St. Louis style frozen custard that I haven’t had anywhere else.
Okay, now I’m hungry.
What’s a vintage apple?
And a cheese question for BunnyGirl and other Michigan Dopers: my Grandpa grew up in Michigan and I still have family there, although we don’t keep in touch. Grandpa had a special love for “leyden” (or is it “lyden?”) cheese, which is impossible to find in the part of New York (Mid-Hudson Valley) my family lives in now. Anybody familiar with the stuff? My mom ordered an entire wheel of it for Grandpa from a Michigan cheese shop a couple years before he died. We were all in leyden heaven. I adore that stuff. I want some now, damnit.
What some of you have described as Half Moon Cookies are in fact available here in New York as “Black & Whites.” Most bakeries have them (especially Italian ones) usually with the slick, shiny icing though an old friend of mine knows of a Danish bakery that makes them with a rich, fluffy frosting.
Checking in for my hometown of Buffalo, NY …
Chicken Wings Of course, so good that the rest of the country calls them “Buffalo Wings.”
Sponge Candy Spun molasses covered in chocolate. People either love this or hate it. It’s a candy that inspires very strong feelings.
Beef on Weck To me, this is obviously the food of the gods (must be an error in translation). Thin sliced roast beef covered in horseradish, on a salty roll.
Weber’s Mustard Spicy, horseradish mustard … it used to be produced by a local company, but it was bought up by a national brand (Heinz??).
Butter Lambs Do other places have butter lambs? I have no idea. It’s butter molded into the shape of a lamb, and you have to go down to the Broadway Market to get one for Easter dinner. Every so often, someone forgets to do this, and then the whole family harps on about it forever, about how so-and-so forgot to get the butter lamb, and now Easter is ruined, and if the Second Coming was tomorrow, the entire family will no doubt be black-listed due to the lack of a butter lamb. The quaint thing about them is that as soon as one person takes some butter, it stops looking cute and starts looking like a slaughtered lamb.
Mighty Taco So vile, it’s good. Picture a local chain of fast food, a little like Taco Bell, but weirder. Virtually unidentifiable food in a taco shell. But really, it’s good.
Observing the battle between Chicago style and New York style pizza enthusiasts, Buffalonians sit back and enjoy a Bocce Club pizza … excuse me, I have to clean up the drool from my keyboard now.
Piffle. Californians put ketchup on their Chinese food. (According to ex-northern-Californian Aline Kominsky-Crumb, bride of R. Crumb, who once wrote a comic book story about it.)
New York City regional specialties DO tend to be products of the floods of immigrants, rather than true local creations. Within a ten-block radius of my place in Brooklyn, I can eat
Jamaican Meat Pies. A sort of Caribbean empanada, with a flaky, yellow crust wrapped and crimped around a ladleful of red HOT spicy ground beef.
Cuban Sandwiches. I think these are better around here than the ones down in South Florida, which are usually made with machine-sliced meat. On Flatbush Avenue they whack great hunks of pork off a joint of roasted meat, lay them on a hero roll with sliced ham, swiss cheese, and sliced dill pickles, then press the whole thing in a hot iron until it’s flattened, hot through, and succulent.
Gyros, Souvlakis, Falafels. And other delicious things stuffed into pitas and dripping with tahini, yoghurt, and hot sauce.
Jerk pork and/or chicken. Another dash of paradise from Jamaica. And chicken or goat roti, from Trinidad…stewed meat and onions wrapped in a flatbread, eaten with a fork, along with peas and rice.
Italian heroes. Some of you call them submarines, some of you call them grinders, some of you call them hoagies. Here they’re Heroes, constructed by guys named Vito or Vinnie, and the absolute best ones are comprised of nothing but ham capicola, Genoa salami, mortadella, Provolone, onions, tomatoes, marinated red peppers, iol and vinegar seasoned with oregano. On fresh, chewy Italian hero loaves.
The best pizza outside Naples and possibly Palermo, and by the slice, too.
From North Carolina, you get:
-Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. Soft and gooey, lightly glazed. Get 'em fresh and hot (people will line up to wait for a fresh batch) and they will literally melt in your mouth.
-North Carolina Barbeque. While some people (generally those with no taste whatsoever…) will decry it as ‘not real’ barbeque, it really can’t be beaten. Shreaded pork with a mildly spicy oil/vinegar sauce over it. Add some hush puppies and coleslaw, and I could eat it by the truckload…
I forgot to eat dinner last night, and now I’m getting really hungry. Why didn’t anybody warn me not to read this tread so long before lunch time???