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How about poi? I don't think anyone else in the worlds eats that stuff. Spam musubi? I hear HI is the largest per-capita consumer of Spam in the world.
Hawaii has gourmet Spam recipes and world renowned chefs preparing them! Great now I'm hungry!
While at a festival in the Azores, I was introduced to barnacles. Yes the barnacles that are scraped off of ships. They are actually good and they were the first thing I would look for at any festival.
Haven't eaten barnacles yet... where do I find them? I'm in Texas. There has got to be a barnacle distributor somewhere in the world.
From Newfoundland - cod cheeks and seal flipper pie.
Cod tongues, too. And Turr, which is a sea bird (actually Murre, but misnamed by Newfoundlanders). And Caplin, a small Smelt-like fish that you can catch by scooping them off the beach in buckets. . Smelt is a fresh-water version, that is abundant in Upper Michigan during a couple of weeks each year when they run.
In Newfoudland, a friend of mine was running for a bye-election in a vacant legislature seat for a Labrador district, and had to go up there in winter to campaign on a snowmobile. He told me how he was looking forward to eating all the great caribou and moose and salmon up there as he campaigned around. When he got back, I asked how it went. "Terrible. I was a guest of honor, and everybody got out their last can of Spam to cook for me."
Has anybody mentioned Scones in Idaho? Shapeless chunks of deep fried bread with sugar or syrup on them.
Lamprey, it's a NW SPain/N Portugal delicacy. Probably the oldest fish in the world (it even lacks jaws), they are fished from rivers in that region. They are kept alive and then have their throats slit in the stove because they are cooked in their own blood. Kinda gross but delicious
Seven pages and no one from south Louisiana. We eat crawfish when in season. Once cooked and peeled they look like shrimp meat. The next two dishes are harder to find and I've only eaten them once and they were good. The first is stuffed pig's stomach. They wash out the stomach, sew shut one side, stuff the otherside (ground pork, rice, peppers, and other seasonings), sew it shut, and bake it in the oven. I didn't like the stomach liner since it was kind of rubbery. They cut it in slices that are round and flat like a hamburger so I removed the liner and slapped it between some bread for a seasoned ground pork burger. The other meal I was tricked into eating. My uncle lived near a swamp and trapped some nutria rat and decided to cook them. He invited us over for dinner and said he was cooking a roast. We asked why was the meat so small and he said he cut it up to cook faster. It wasn't until after we ate that he told us it was nutria rat. It was actually very good. Don't let the "rat" in the name fool you. This is a water rodent that eats plants and animals in the wetlands. It's actually a very clean animal with good fur. They're not native to Louisiana but someone brought them here sometime in the past and now we're stuck with them. They multiply so much that there's a bounty on killing them.
We also eat boudin which is ground pork and rice stuffed in a sausage casing. You eat it like a push pop. Squeeze the bottom of the link and eat what comes out.
Ok, so I'm from Jersey. The end all and be all of weird foods from Jersey has got to be pork roll. Who knows what's in it? Moreover who actually WANTS to know what's in it. But yeah, I think it tastes pretty great. It's like the bastard cousin of bologna or something, but it has to be cooked, and if you grill it... Yum.
A close friend who is a middle-aged Jewish woman from Long Island (so had limited experience with pork, let alone pork roll) loves to tell the story of days into her marriage to her non-Jewish husband she decided to make him a sandwich. Because pork roll strongly resembled bologna, she simply slapped it on some sliced bread raw with a little mayo and served it to him, only to be met with absolute horror. Because really, the thought of eating raw pork roll is not to be contemplated.
And I don't know if it's regional, but my cousin's husband makes something that is perfectly horrendous that he calls "Chili Mac" - kraft mac n cheese and Hormel chili mixed together. When you're really drunk (emphasis on the "really" part), it actually seems pretty awesome.
But my housemate is from Ohio. I am constantly being confronted with casseroles involving things like cans of soup and mayonaise and tuna. Is this an Ohio thing? A broader regional Midwestern thing? The tater tot casserole had its charms, I will give you that, but the tuna stuffed shells covered in a mayonnaise-based sauce TOTALLY grossed me out.
And this weekend she's bent on making something that she refers to as "slum gulley." Should I be alarmed?
In any case, what are the regional dishes that have freaked you out when you encountered them and how did you encounter them?
The casseroles involving cans of soup and mayo are not specific to Ohio. I think they are more specific to the post war period - 50s 60s and 70s.
Like tuna noodle casserole and green bean casserole. People on Long Island, where I grew up, still eat those occasionally. Especially on the green bean casserole on holidays.
Since moving to Ohio, I think I have noticed that other casseroles are eaten more frequently than in the NY metro area. But I noticed that in PA also.
Ohio foods that are not weird but specific to Ohio (my region of NE Ohio, anyway) include - Hot peppers in oil - these can be put on almost anything from a sandwich to eggs. When we first stayed at a hotel out here, I noticed them on the table along with salt and black peppers.
Now they are in my refrigerator at all times. Love them!
Candy called a "Buckeye". Ohio is the Buckeye state and these are popular here. Taste like a Reeses peanut butter cups, but better.
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Weird Regional Foods
