Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Location: Miami (prev. NY, Atlanta, SF, OC and San Diego)
7,409 posts, read 6,545,347 times
Reputation: 6682
Advertisements
If you visit or live(d) in SF, it’s hard to miss restaurants or bakeries (Boudin) that serve it, just as I cannot recall other cities I’ve traveled to and seen sourdough offered. SF might not have originated too many food items, but it sure as hell puts out good food. Not sure about Super Bowl food and I’ve not been to the 49’ers new stadium but the Giants AT&T ballpark has some of the best stadium food I’ve ever had.
I am not sure how far the association of sourdough with SF really extends. Growing up in LA, the association was pretty real to the point where I thought sourdough was invented in SF, but then I later found in traveling and moving away from the West Coast that the association didn’t hold elsewhere, and of course, SF did not invent sourdough. That being said, the association definitely extends past just the Bay Area at least.
Last edited by elchevere; 01-25-2020 at 06:36 PM..
If you visit or live(d) in SF, it’s hard to miss restaurants or bakeries (Boudin’s) that serve it, just as I cannot recall other cities I’ve traveled to and seen sourdough offered. SF might not have originated too many food items, but it sure as hell puts out good food. Not sure about Super Bowl food and I’ve not been to the 49’ers new stadium but the Giants AT&T ballpark has some of the best stadium food I’ve ever had.
The Mission Burrito is an SF creation and is insanely delicious.
The problem in particular with places like NYC, LA or SF, is that all the multiculturalism has made it hard to really discern what is "local" or what is a pure immigrant import. For smaller cities like KC or Memphis, they're more or less defined by a few items rather than a general "it has everything".
For SF, lets be real - we've all had a mission burrito before (especially at places like Chipotle or Qdoba) but how many of us associate that with SF? Or chop suey? For LA, the French Dip was invented there but how many of us associate the French Dip with LA? With NYC, they have done a good job of having a certain kind of pizza that we can say is NY, but what about a NY style bagel? We've all had them, but do we really associate that with NY?
Just my two cents on it.
Cioppino is really good though. Probably one of my favorite fish stews.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MarketStEl
My vote just put Kansas City ahead in the contest.
Of course, I'm a Q fiend - and I generally smoke my own because even though there are now several decent Q joints in Philly, the city and region as a whole remains a barbecue desert.
Or, for that matter, pork in vinegar sauce, pork in a tomato sauce, beef and sausages with no sauce at all or chicken in a mayonnaise sauce. All of these can be found in one barbecue hotbed or another (pork in vinegar sauce: eastern North Carolina - it's in South Carolina that they use a mustard sauce; pork in tomato sauce - Kansas City, which also contributes burnt ends to the list of barbecue delicacies; unsauced beef and sausages - the Texas barbecue belt; chicken in mayonnaise sauce - northeast Alabama).
And one Sunday from now, I will be screaming my head off with several hundred Chiefs fans at Big Charlie's Saloon. The last time the Chiefs were in the Super Bowl, I still lived in Kansas City. Fifty years is indeed long enough to wait.
The Chiefs are 1.5-point favorites over the Niners in the Supe. The over-under is 54.5. According to CBS Sports, the Chiefs are 8-0 against the spread in their last eight games, while the 49ers have covered it only once in their last five meetups vs. the Chiefs.
I like those odds. Go Chiefs!
I'll see your Anchor Steam and raise you Boulevard - "Kansas City's Hometown Beer since 1989." They produce a wide variety of craft beers in just about every style imaginable, all of them good, some of them now legendary (esp. Tank 7). I see they have a bet going with 21st Amendment in San Fran.
As for other local foods created in Kansas City, the one thing that comes to my mind is the Mario's grinder - a sandwich made by cutting the end off an Italian roll, hollowing out the roll, filling it with meatballs, sauce and cheese, then plugging it with the cut-off end. I've never seen it anywhere else. I see that Mario's closed in 2017, but the sandwich lives on in the shop longtime employee Sheila Shields opened at Mario's 204 Westport Road location, Sheila's Grinder Shop. And according to this 2018 article on the opening, Mario's daughter is also serving up grinders at her Prairie Village (Kan.) cafe and food market.
Do Russell Stover chocolates count? The company was founded in Denver but moved to Kansas City in the 1950s when the family who made its boxes bought it. Like Boulevard, it's now owned by a European firm (Swiss chocolatier Lindt in Russell Stover's case, Belgian craft brewery conglomerate Duvel in Boulevard's), but both companies are still based in and run out of Kansas City. (A member of the family that owned it was a classmate of mine in high school.)
And while I'm not sure I want to claim it, the casual-dining chain Houlihan's was founded in Kansas City and is headquartered in the Johnson County (Kan). suburb of Lenexa. The original opened in 1972 in the former location of the Tom Houlihan menswear shop on the Country Club Plaza; local restaurateurs Joe Gilbert and Paul Robinson, who created it, dubbed it "Houlihan's Old Place." The company also owns the more upscale Devon Seafood Grill chain.
What an awesome sypnosis of KC's culinary scene. Mario's grinder sounds freaking amazing! I wish we had something like that out here in DC.
The problem in particular with places like NYC, LA or SF, is that all the multiculturalism has made it hard to really discern what is "local" or what is a pure immigrant import. For smaller cities like KC or Memphis, they're more or less defined by a few items rather than a general "it has everything".
For SF, lets be real - we've all had a mission burrito before (especially at places like Chipotle or Qdoba) but how many of us associate that with SF? Or chop suey? For LA, the French Dip was invented there but how many of us associate the French Dip with LA? With NYC, they have done a good job of having a certain kind of pizza that we can say is NY, but what about a NY style bagel? We've all had them, but do we really associate that with NY?
Just my two cents on it.
Cioppino is really good though. Probably one of my favorite fish stews.
Youre question was what is local cuisine, right? Not how associated each city is with certain foods. We tell you what local consider regional food and suddenly the goal posts change--now it's "we've all had mission burritos" .
Well, we've all had barbecue as well yet we still allow KC to claim it even though most people in the country couldnt tell the difference btwn bbq there and other places, to most people its all the same.
And you cant dismiss multiculturalism because SF was multicultural before CA even became a state. Lol.
This is a very valid point. KC Style BBQ can be directly traced to Memphis.
Indeed. Specifically, to a gentleman named Henry Perry, an African-American pit cook who migrated from Memphis to Kansas City and opened the latter city's first barbecue stand in 1921. Both of the old established legends of KC BBQ - Bryant's and Gates' - trace their origins to Perry's stand.
(Bryant's and Gates' are to KC Q what Pat's and Geno's are to Philadelphia cheesesteaks - the two places everyone knows, but neither of which are the best in town [though both are good]. As Vince Staten and Greg Johnson wrote about Bryant's in their 1988 tour guide-***-recipe book "Real Barbecue," in the section on KC ("Barbecue Central"): "What other city has a restaurant that's been called "the single best restaurant in the world" - and it's not even the best in town?" The person who called Bryant's that, btw, is native Kansas Citian and New Yorker contributor Calvin Trillin. Like me, Trillin makes his undying affection for his forever hometown plain; it's my observation that Kansas Citians take the place with them in their minds no matter where they may live now.)
I should note that there are some subtle differences between Memphis and KC Q, though. While pork spareribs feature prominently in both cities, Memphians like to baste their ribs with a thin, vinegar-based "mop sauce" while they're cooking, while Kansas Citians don't. Kansas City-style rubs have a touch of sweetness in them that their Memphis counterparts (when used) lack, and - thanks in no small part to local dentist Rich Davis, the creator of KC Masterpiece barbecue sauce - the tomato-based sauces there often incorporate molasses as a key ingredient. ('Twasn't always the case: my favorite KC sauce, Gates', is known more for its smokiness and pepperiness, and it only added a "Sweet & Mild" version after KC Masterpiece swept the country.) And there are also "burnt ends," KC's unique contribution to the barbecue menu. These are little crusty chunks of brisket cut off the point, which tends to cook quicker than the rest of the slab. They are a real treat, and one of the city's fancier barbecue establishments, Fiorello's Jack Stack, serves Bloody Marys with a burnt end stuffed in the olive. My brother complains, and rightly so, that because demand for these has become so great, many KC Q joints pass off mere brisket cubes as burnt ends.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 18Montclair
Well, we've all had barbecue as well yet we still allow KC to claim it even though most people in the country couldnt tell the difference btwn bbq there and other places, to most people its all the same.
As I and at least one other person have already noted, there are real regional distinctions in barbecue styles and signature dishes, so with all due respect, I'd like to respond by saying "most people" should school themselves. It's not difficult to do - you can have meat shipped to you from at least one place in all four of the country's barbecue capitals, and I imagine there's also a place in Alabama that will gladly ship you their unique contribution to American Q, chicken in mayonnaise sauce, as well as one in South Carolina from which you can obtain the mustard-based sauce used there.
(Worth noting in this regard: Barbecue in general in this country can trace its origins to the Caribbean and to the enslaved Africans who prepared it on these shores. Texas Q is unique in that it originates with the Germans who settled in the central part of the state, near Austin; because this is the case, you'll find sausages on the menu at many Texas Q joints.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by dtran103
What is KC local cuisine other than BBQ?
Besides the items I mentioned, there are these things:
--The cut of strip steak most people in the Northeast associate with New York is also (and Kansas Citians maintain more properly) known as the "Kansas City strip." The city's steakhouse tradition has atrophied, however, along with the stockyards in the West Bottoms that supplied the cattle from whence the steak comes.
--One of the seminal places that put "New American cuisine" on the map was the American Restaurant in Crown Center, the snazziest (and classiest) restaurant in the city from its opening in 1975 until its closing in 2016 (its space remains available for special functions); the restaurant's design won a James Beard Award for its influence, and its food was similarly noteworthy. I ate there exactly once. (KC's non-barbecue restaurant scene has come into its own relatively recently; the knock on the place when I was a lad was that "the best meals out are served in the dining rooms of people's homes.")
--While not known for it, the city has a heritage of Mexican cooking as well, thanks to the Mexicans who came there in order to work in the big railroad yards; KC ranks second to Chicago as a rail center. One of the best Mexican meals I've ever had was served at an anonymous hole-in-the-wall, long gone, on KCMo's historically Hispanic West Side, whose main thoroughfare, West 23rd Street, was renamed for California farmworkers' rights activist Cesar Chavez about 15 years ago. Most of the Mexican restaurants I knew growing up served what's known as "Tex-Mex" fare, or "cucina frontera," rather than the dishes served in Mexico's interior, though.
Kansas City has a surprisingly good Mexican restaurant scene, or at least it did a few years ago. A lot of it was Tex-Mex, but there were a few more authentic ones as well.
Like a lot of people, I never connected sourdough or Mission burritos with San Francisco, so outside of the west coast and those who know it better, the word doesn't seem to travel well.
I've never been to that town, but if asked, I would have guessed it to be known more for seafood or something. That, or Rice-a-roni.
Even though I'm more likely to eat burritos than BBQ, I still gotta go with KC.
As I and at least one other person have already noted, there are real regional distinctions in barbecue styles and signature dishes, so with all due respect, I'd like to respond by saying "most people" should school themselves.
Why? People eat food because it's delicious, not because they must be compelled to know the various styles of certain cuisines.
That said, nobody is questioning what KC locals say but otoh, what we have a burden of proof because everyone has had mission burritos(and Ive had chipotle twice and I hated it both times), oh and sourdough bread is apparently attributed to cave men, I mean really, why r people trying to be combative?
Why? People eat food because it's delicious, not because they must be compelled to know the various styles of certain cuisines.
That said, nobody is questioning what KC locals say but otoh, what we have a burden of proof because everyone has had mission burritos(and Ive had chipotle twice and I hated it both times), oh and sourdough bread is apparently attributed to cave men, I mean really, why r people trying to be combative?
I guess what got to me about that is this:
If you've eaten around, not all barbecue should "be the same." You should be able to tell pulled pork in vinegar sauce from the same in tomato sauce, or sweet sauce from savory, or brisket from burnt ends, and so on.
Is all Mexican food the same? Most diners can distinguish Tex-Mex from Mexican, right?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
