"These are homemade Hot Pockets. They are homemade Hot Pockets, and they are what pass for regional culture in Nebraska."
Obviously the writer of this article never had a Decent Runza...
Very Tasty!
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.
I do not want to live in a world in which chicken-fried steak (Wyoming), lobster rolls (Maine), fried okra (Oklahoma), Texas-style barbecue brisket (Texas), Kansas City-style ribs (Missouri), Memphis-style ribs (Tennessee), Pulled pork barbecue (North Carolina), and Bratwurst (Wisconsin) are not among the Top 12. Begone Illinois, South Carolina, California, Georgia, Florida, Oregon, Rhode Island, Kentucky.
I love Chicago. I lived there briefly as a small child. I visit Chicago, alone or with my family, frequently - it’s the headquarters of the AMA, the American Hospital Association, the American Health Lawyers Association, and the now-defunct American Academy of Hospital Attorneys. I’ve eaten enough deep-dish pizza to feed Michelle Obama for a year. When I’m in Chicago and nobody else is paying for my meal at Mike Ditka’s Restaurant, I eat Filipino. Chicago has a large Filipino population. Filipino food? Think a fusion of Asian, French, and Spanish cuisine. A. Mazing.
I wholeheartedly endorse placing Cincinnati chili (Ohio) at #52, behind Nevada’s empty plate and #51, Getting Hit by a Car, based on four client-initiated meals at Skyline Chili.
“Lobster roll” is only “good”?
You’ve got to have a real lobster roll.
Something great in Maryland ping..
Yes, Maryland crab cakes are great! I’ve had a lobster roll in Maine.. fabulous. Parents were from PA.. so I adore scrapple (yeah, I know what’s in it.. I still love it). Thanks for posting, Scoutmaster.
I had one in Maine, Fido.. I’d eat it every day if I could.
Ridiculous to say hawaii’s contribution is spam eggs and rice.
They could have picked poke, kalua pig, lau lau, mochi ice cream, shaved ice, haupia, macadamia nut cream pie, all sorts of things.
"These are homemade Hot Pockets. They are homemade Hot Pockets, and they are what pass for regional culture in Nebraska."
Obviously the writer of this article never had a Decent Runza...
Very Tasty!
I have no idea how they matched WV with a slaw dog. I’ve never seen that. Hot dogs here are plain vanilla. Generally it’s a bland, to my taste, chilli, onions and mustard and ketchup as preferred.
The real WV originated food is the pepperoni roll. Those were invented here and the good ones are something to write home about. Ramps, in season, aren’t limited to WV. They are still the centerpiece of community get togethers and the bane of school teachers when a student shows up the next day after partaking. Locomotive breath is milder.
In New Hampshire, we have "poutine", a French Canadian dish consisting of french fries topped with a light brown gravy-like sauce and cheese curds.
It tastes almost as good as it sounds.
All things considered, I'd rather eat in Texas.
Maryland crab cakes, crab soup, steamed shrimp, and steamed crabs, are about as good as it gets. But like everything else on this list, you need to know the right place to go to get them.
oh i forgot malasadas. Yeah it’s portuguese, but lot of these on list are foreign origin.
Michigan Pasties are good but I would say the Coney dog is a far better known Michigan native and would rank much higher.
In Panama we called that an empanada!
YUM!
Obviously never been to any of the fine Basque eateries in NV (not in LV).
I had to read the list twice before I was going off on the author for listing “lobster roll” as “good”. But the other like-minded Freepers got there first, thank God.
Mississippi Mud? I don’t recall ever having Missippi Mud growing up. I once had something that resembled it at a restaurant in Tuscaloosa when I was in college. But my mother never made it. I mean, when I think of mud in Missippi, it isn’t the color of a brownie. It is red clay. I am not sure what food I associate with Missippi, but it has to be fried and have gravy involved. Hmm.
I don’t see moon pies on the list.
Precisely! And think of how much fun the writer could have had with the proper name, “Runza”...
How could Wyoming get chicken fried steak? That is a Texas dish!
How come no body got fried chicken? Too universal?
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