Posted on 04/22/2014 7:05:03 AM PDT by Scoutmaster
What are the United States' best regional foodstuffs? Its worst? [W]e have ranked them. Rigorously scientific (not), ardently researched (nope), and scrupulously fair (not even a little bit): this is the Great American Menu!
"Man is mortal. He frolics upon the grass of life for but a short season, and then is snatched back to the inanimate dirt of his origin. The Chicago-style deep-dish pizza, America's greatest regional foodstuff—all those toppings, so much cheese and meat, I can hear my heartbeat, this can't be right, it sounds like a chainsaw, can that be right?—will greatly hasten that day's arrival, but it will also fill at least a little part of at least one of those days with a transcendent, mind-boggling, outrageously indulgent sensory experience. This is the best thing any food can do, and certainly far beyond the capabilities of [stares daggers at New York] a sheet of soggy cardboard with a flap of waxy melted cheese stretched across it."
2. Shrimp and grits (South Carolina)
3. Mission-style burrito (California)
4. Crab cake (Maryland)
5. Peach pie/cobbler (Georgia)
6. Gumbo (Louisiana)
7. Key lime pie (Florida)
"But what about the Cuban sandwich?!?!?!?! First of all, there's some controversy about the Cuban sandwich's origins: Either it is from Cuba, in which case it is Cuba's sandwich and not Florida's, or it is from Tampa, in which case it is not a Cuban sandwich and has a dumb name, in which case it [stinks] because things from Tampa [stink] because Tampa [stinks]. In any case it is not as definitively Floridian as Key lime pie, which originated in Florida and is made with ingredients—Key limes—that are native to Florida and nowhere else."
8. Fried green tomatoes (Alabama)
10. Marionberry pie (Oregon)"The 'Marion' cultivar (Rubus L. subgenus Rubus) or Marion blackberry, marketed as marionberry, is an indigenous blackberry developed by the USDA ARS breeding program in cooperation with Oregon State University. It is a cross between the 'Chehalem' and 'Olallie' blackberries. The marionberry is currently the most common blackberry cultivar, accounting for over half of all blackberries produced in Oregon. Source."
11. Hot wieners (Rhode Island)
12. Burgoo (Kentucky)
"Kentucky's signature food, a whatever-you-got stew that never tastes the same twice, gets a million imaginary bonus points for its wonderful communal nature: People just bring whatever ingredients they can, and everybody puts what they've got into the stew, and out comes burgoo, and that is just . . . beautiful, even though in reality probably 78 percent of its ingredients were scraped off I-64 with a snow shovel."
13. Pulled pork barbecue (North Carolina)
"Pulled pork is more reliably tasty than burgoo—that is to say, there's virtually zero chance of it containing a fistful of raccoon fur—but a lot less wonderful. Science."
14. New England clam chowder (Massachusetts)>
T-15. Kansas City-style ribs (Missouri)
T-15. Memphis-style ribs (Tennessee)
"For real, they're the same [thing]. But hey, let's fight about it!"
17. West Virginia slaw dog (West Virginia)
"This is a hot dog with a chili-like meat sauce, mustard, and coleslaw on it. (Sometimes it has chopped onions on it, too.) Which, yeah, you can get variations of that pretty much anywhere, but West Virginians are serious about the coleslaw part. It's tasty."
18. Chimichanga (Arizona)
19. Frozen custard (Delaware)"Suggested advertising language for your frozen custard shop: Frozen custard! It's just like ice cream, only not particularly significantly unlike it, and only preferable if you grew up with it!"
20. Texas-style barbecue brisket (Texas)
"Beyond the smoky tastiness of all barbecue, the virtues of the Texas-style barbecue brisket are as follows: It is very large. The end."
21. Fried okra (Oklahoma)
22. New York-style pizza (New York)
"By rough estimate, there are 900 trillion pizza joints per person in New York City. Somehow, within this competitive environment, not a one of the purveyors of "New York Pizza" has yet considered the wild and crazy idea of maybe trying to do something—anything!—interesting with its pizza. Here is a comically large, thin wedge of dough with some indifferent, rubbery cheese smeared across it, and maybe a few greasy F-grade variants of the same . . . toppings you can get on your lousy DiGiorno back in . . .Topeka. Oooh, it's so New Yorky! In that it is overpriced and happy to coast along on a long-since-hollowed-out myth of Big Apple authenticity, just like everything else in this giant, bad-smelling amusement park for rich white people! New York pizza isn't even a genuine pizza genre. It's just lousy . . . pizza. Papa John's with a chip on its shoulder."
23. Hot Hawaiian breakfast (Hawaii)"This is Spam, eggs, and rice. Tastes like authentic cargo cult!"
24. Lobster roll (Maine)
25. Bull testicles (Montana)
26. Fried catfish (Arkansas)
27. Maple syrup (Vermont)
28. Scrapple (Pennsylvania)
"[But the Philly cheesesteak!] Shut it. The famous grease-and-garbage sandwich belongs to the city of Philadelphia, which A) is the worst place on Earth, and B) doesn't come close to representing the entire state of Pennsylvania. In a given day, 500 times as many Pennsylvanians are scraping possums off the motorway to add volume to their scrapple as are standing in line with the tourists [to have a Philly cheesesteak].
29. Corndog (Iowa)
30. Cedar-plank salmon (Washington)
31. Cowboy cookies (Colorado)
"The cowboy cookie is a chocolate-chip cookie to which someone wisely added rolled oats and shredded coconut, and to which someone else very stupidly added chopped pecans . . .. Neither pecans nor coconuts nor oats come from Colorado. Nor does chocolate. Nor do cowboys, really. You know what does come from Colorado? Confused looks and shrugged shoulders when you ask people what their state's signature foodstuff is. This is because, at any given time, 102 percent of the people in Colorado are vacationing Californians in bubble-vests and hiking boots."
32. Mud pie (Mississippi)
"This is essentially a pile of brownie dough floating in a gallon of chocolate syrup. It is delicious. Let's take this moment to remember that Mississippi leads the nation in adult diabetes."
33. Bratwurst (Wisconsin)
34. Virginia ham (Virginia)
36. Half-smoke (District of Columbia)
"For those not familiar with the culture of our nation's capital, the half-smoke is a hot dog. Yes, it is. Sometimes it can be half beef and half pork; sometimes it can be smoked. Most often it is a steamed beef frank with some very lousy chili slopped over it."
37. Chicken-fried steak (Wyoming)
38. Finger steaks (Idaho)
39. Hamburger casserole (Kansas)
40. Hotdish (Minnesota)
41. Michigan pasty (Michigan)
42. Chislic (South Dakota)
"Picture a kebab. Can you picture a kebab? Meat, veggies, skewer, maybe some cucumber dressing and tasty pita bread or naan on the side? Fresh and flavorful and varied and exciting? Got it? OK. Now, eradicate that appetizing image from your mind, and replace it with a bunch of small cubes of greasy, chewy beef on toothpicks, sitting on a sad plate next to some plastic-wrapped packets of saltines. Congratulations. You have now pictured chislic."
43. Green Jell-O with *&%#!@*# carrots in it (Utah)
44. Lutefisk (North Dakota)
45. Salt water taffy (New Jersey)
46. Handheld meat pies (Nebraska)
"These are homemade Hot Pockets. They are homemade Hot Pockets, and they are what pass for regional culture in Nebraska."
47. Akutaq (Alaska)
"Alaska's putrid mixture of whipped fat (usually vegetable shortening; traditionally blubber) and berries."
48. Boiled dinner (New Hampshire)
49. Not having any authentic local culture to speak of (Nevada)
50. A *&%#!@*# steamed *&%#!@*# cheeseburger (Connecticut)
The source for this Tuesday List is Deadspin: The Great American Menu: Foods Of The States, Ranked And Mapped. Deadspin and its related sites frequently contain interesting articles, but some language of writers and commenters, and the topics of some articles on related sites, are often NSFW or simply not recommended for a significant percentage of FReepers. However, Deadspin is one of many excellent sources of lists and a unique source of out-of-the-ordinary sports news.
Where Deadspin comments have been used, many have been edited.
Been to Star Hotel but not to the Dinnerhouse. I really like the JT Bar and Overland Hotel in Gardnerville.
Good. It reflects the opinions of a complete, gibbering, drooling, cross-eyed sub-moron.
My parents were from PA so we had scrapple every weekend. I don’t know if it is something you need to grow up on or what but I love it. I fry it. I know some people add a bit of maple syrup but I guess I prefer it the natural way. Nothing goes better with eggs or grits (to me) than scrapple. Hugs BW... I found another scrapple lover!
I’ve never been to the place in Gardnerville but I’ve heard good things about it. The Star is the best in Elko except for the sweetbreads are better at the NDH. The soup and salad dressing at the Star were especially good.
No ranking. They're too different to compare. So, in no particular order:
New Mexico: Enchiladas (or anything else) with the green chiles that only grow right in New Mexico.
Maryland: Crab cakes (crab soup close second). Crab cakes do not contain bread crumbs.
Missouri: KC Burnt Ends.
North Carolina: Pulled Pork. (VA does this well also.)
Ohio: Skyline Chili. Not Gold Star. No way.
Louisiana: Gumbo. Or maybe a shrimp po' boy.
California: Sushi. Or fish tacos.
Colorado: STEAK. Seriously: best steaks I have ever had in the United States were at family-owned, one-off places in (mostly) western CO.
Virginia: Salt cured Smithfield ham, and anything derived therefrom.
Wisconsin: Johnsonville ... brats, etc. Cornbread battered walleye.
Some things like BBQ and fried chicken are regional, and can't really be associated with one State.
Oh I have had Chesapeake blue fresh from the water.... and I have had dungeness fresh from the water (and that is the key to both of them).
Dungeness has plenty of flavor but one must eat it in the proper manner which is to say a bath in the pot of water and then to the plate. Blue crab is better in a crab cake of some such mixture ( to my taste). I will take a pan seared soft shell over just she crab any day of the week
I can't go to New Orleans without a debris po'boy from Mother's and Creole bread pudding soufflé from Commander's Palace.
"Ever picked the shavings off a freshly carved roast? When a customer asked Simon Landry to add the bits of roast beef that had fallen into the gravy while he was carving it to his sandwich, he replied “you mean some of the debris?” And just like that, another definitive Mother’s term was coined."
Manchester area. There are still quite a number of old Quebecois here, and they are getting older, but you can still find a few eateries that offer poutine and other French-Canadian specialties..
Most people around here root for the Boston Bruins (including me), but there are still a few holdouts (largely on the West Side) who still root for Les Habitants de Quebec. As for me, I speak French, so I can insult hockey fans in two languages. ;-)
I was on the Seacoast. Certainly some folks of French-Canadian descent, but no poutine on any menus that I recall.
Yes it is rather expensive. Though here we can get Spanish Basque, Woolgrowers, or French Basque, Benji’s. Their menus are slightly different.
That reminds me of going to Fiji and finding Mexican food. Well, it looked Mexican in the pictures. And I'm sure the Indians (as in, descendants from people from India) who made it based their recipes on pictures. It tasted nothing like Mexican food.
Fiji is a completely awesome place to visit, and the lamb sausage is heavenly. But avoid any "Mexican" food there.
I’m surprised they found seven things worse than lutefisk.
I live in upper east Tennessee. I am closer to New York City than to Memphis. We eat ribs but I have no idea about Memphis style. Our best bbq is thin sliced pork from Ridgewood.
http://www.roadfood.com/Restaurant/Overview/446/ridgewood-barbecue
Trust me, the Walleye is a lot better than the Lutefisk.
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