This. Only I realized it’s not so much the cheese steaks that I miss…it’s the bread. You just can’t beat Amoroso’s rolls.
Hell yes it is the roll.
And if the restaurant calls it a “Philly cheesesteak” or a “Philadelphia cheesesteak” or worse a “Genuine Philly cheesesteak” run like hell!
Nothing wrong with mushrooms on your steak, or peppers, but they are options, not standard…
I moved out of LA more than ten years ago and I still miss:
The burritos from Tito’s Tacos on Washington Blvd.
The al pastor burrito from El Taco Llama.
The chicken burrito from El Indio.
The chicken and veggie burrito with awesome sauce from Los Burritos in Hollywood.
Chicken with chili paste from a Thai restaurant on Fairfax that I don’t remember the name of anymore.
sigh
Oh yeah, and the green goddess salad dressing from the Velvet Turtle.
Exactly. How does the rest of the world live without this stuff? Pure ambrosia.
“Green chile burger, please.” 
“Green chile-cheese fries, please.” :dubious:
“Get that red crap off my plate and bring me something edible!” :mad:
You poor bastards. No wonder everyone is moving here. 
I’d say lamb which judging by various food threads isn’t always as common in other places. I’d also miss the easy availability of the kind of Indian food that has been developed for the British palate. I’m sure that the chicken jalfrezi or madras that I love isn’t in anyway authentic, but they have become staple treats for me and I would miss them terribly.
Ditto. Alabama rather than TN for me, but good pork barbecue and sweet tea. (Note: if it wasn’t cooked over open flame, it ain’t barbecue but at best it is “barbecue flavored”; purists discount that cooked over propane and charcoal briquets as well.)
Pan fried non-fast food fried chicken I’d miss- while they KFC and other chains and fried chicken itself everywhere, it’s a lot different when it’s hand battered and fried in a skillet (which a few mom’n’pop restaurants still do) than just covered in pre-mixed flour and put in a deep fryer.
This will sound gross to some, and I certainly don’t eat it often but I’ll admit I like the taste of once in a while: fried fatback. Not a lot of meat to it, pure cholesterol and fat, but what meat there is am good.
Camp stew (though even here my family counts my grandfather’s recipe* [very thick and NO CORN!] as the only TRUE camp stew and all the others as just commentary). Some restaurants serve Brunswick stew or Mulligan stew and call it camp stew, but there’s a big difference if you’ve ever had the real stuff.
*My grandfather’s recipe includes whole chickens, beef roast, pork butt, onions, potatoes, celery, ketchup, tomato sauce, lemons, sugar- deer meat if you have it- a few spices and ABSOLUTELY NO CORN [corn in camp stew is heresy in my family]! Anyone who’s ever eaten it was absolutely addicted immediately. It’s impossible to make enough for just one meal and it’s so expensive and time consuming to make that it’s only a “once every couple of years” thing now even in the kitchen variety, though the true recipe is made in a cast iron washpot.
Gods, yes! I ordered a “Philly Cheesesteak” in the Cleveland area once. It was a kaiser roll with a couple of slices of roast beef smothered in swiss cheese, with onions and peppers. When it was placed in fornt of me, I questioned the waitress, and she assured me that it was, in fact, what they served as a the Philly cheesesteak.
I don’t think I ever laughed so hard in the middle of a restaurant.
Having moved from NYC 10 years ago, what I miss most is knishes (specifically round potato knishes, and more specifically Knish Nosh brand), followed closely by chicken francese.
I’d put NY pizza on this list, but Flying Pizza (there’s one north of Cincinnati and several in the Dayton area) is just as good as typical NY pizza. The closest one is still 20 miles from work, which is both bad and good (I’d be well over 200 lbs. if I could have it every day, because I would).
I concur with the person above who mentioned the awesomeness that is Graeter’s ice cream - that would be my #1 missed item from this area.
fresh seafood in general, and proper Maryland crab cakes in particular.
I do not order anything called Maryland Crab Cakes outside the state of Maryland.
Having lived in Albuquerque, I still to this day seriously miss the unique Mexican cuisine in northern New Mexico.
Sampiro, I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to get an unqualified “Amen” from a fellow Southerner. You Nawtheners just don’t know from Southern BBQ. Smoky, tender, and delicious… and yes, NO charcoal briquets, wood burning ovens only. I’d also say that I would miss cornbread, but I finally got the hang of making that myself.
I’ve drafted the preliminary blueprints and plan to start construction on the perfect coconut cake later this month. I’m looking forward to perfecting that skill, as I have previously had to depend on independent contractors (mainly, crabby old church ladies) to fill that need.
West Viginia pepperoni rolls, a fresh baked small loaf of bread stuffed with cheese and pepperoni, tradionally used as a coal miners lunch, it would stay warm in the bucket.
Yecch; they provided me with two of the worst slices I’ve ever had.
You’re joking??
I haven’t eaten there in about 5 years (was in the Central Valley), but I’ve had nothing but great slices there. The best I’ve had here - not exactly NJ/NY quality, but in the ballpark.
Hmmm… I’ll have to try 'em again.
Joe
Holland?
Denmark.
I came into this thread to post almost exactly what NAF1138 said in the OP, but I have a few more that are (fairly) specific to San Diego:
Fish tacos. Good fish tacos dripping white chipotle sauce with hot salsa roja for a dollar each and a cup of horchata. I recently spent a week and a half in Minnesota and nearly went insane from fish taco withdrawal.
…And then I read in the magazine on the plane that you can get fresh fish tacos at a park in Minneapolis. I nearly died.
And the other thing I would miss is that Korean/Vietnamese/Hawaiian ball of hot dough with warm shredded pork inside. Mmmmmm. I wish there were somewhere open at this hour where I could get one…
I don’t know what musubi, malasadas, cone sushi, melona, aku, Portuguese sausage or calrose are, but I’ve had all the rest here in San Diego. Granted, the chicken adobo was served by my Filipino friend’s mom, but still…
BTW, San Diego has a big Portuguese-speaking population and if Portuguese sausage is actually Portuguese it should be pretty easy to find here.
Ostrich is easy to find in Arizona if you know where to look, and here in San Diego, I live about two miles from a place that serves ostrich burgers.
I miss Hawaiian food all the time (moved to the mainland for college when I was 18). In Chicago, we have Aloha Grill which serves a good plate lunch and delivers Spam musubi right to the door (my husband complains that there’s not enough nori on them), but I would kill for lau lau.
I came in here to mention this one, although the traditional pepperoni roll doesn’t have cheese. Just good, greasy pepperoni. I always wondered why you can’t get these outside of North Central West Virginia. Here, they’re sold in every supermarket and convenience store.