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I now live in Northeastern Ohio, although I am from the NYC metro area, where the food customs are fairly well known.
Hot Hungarian Peppers and Oil - these are served at many non-chain restaurants when the bread and butter are brought out to the table. Locals spread butter of their bread and add the hot peppers to put on top. It's really very good. Another way they are eaten is with breakfast on eggs and toast. I like that too. Now I keep a jar in the fridge at all times.
Pirogi are EVERYWHERE! Often served as a side dish. These are NOT "Mrs. Ts" frozen pirogis. They are delicious with varied fillings - some from The Old Country and others with a modern, American twist. Either way, they are delicious and accessible. Pirogi bakes or casseroles are also popular - especially in potlucks.
Sauerkraut Balls and craft sauerkraut. I'm especially fond of Cleveland Kraut brand. Healthy too. Full of probiotics.
Perch and Walleye - sandwiches and served alone. I'm a fan. I really never had these types of fish until moving to NE Ohio.
Buckeyes - these are a chocolate candy filled with peanut butter. They are really delicious and MUCH better than Reece's Peanut Butter cups.
Vegetable Pizza made with Ranch Dressing. Not a fan. Also Ranch is the default dressing in these parts. I love Ranch when it's made with buttermilk or sour cream - or both. Not a fan of bottled ranch - but then, I don't like many bottled dressings.
Italian Cream Cake. Very good. Never had this in NY.
Johnny Marzetti - this is more served in people's homes - it's a bake or casserole with elbow noodles, ground beef, American Cheese and stewed tomatoes or tomato sauce - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Marzetti
We moved from California to western Wyoming. Two regional food oddities are 1) Fry sauce
Fry sauce is served at every restaurant that serves french fries on the menu. It's a dipping sauce made out of ketchup, mayonnaise, and pickle juice. It originated from a fast food place called Artic Circle and it's big in Utah, East Idaho, and Western Wyoming. You leave this pocket and no one has fry sauce or even knows what you're talking about, but here fry sauce is everything.
2) Scones
California scones are a breakfast pastry that are usually served with coffee or tea and they can be dry and crumbly. Scones in Utah, Eastern Idaho, and Western Wyoming are pillows of dough that are deep fried, much like beignets, and they are served with honey butter and/or raspberry jam. These are so stinking good. Get them and enjoy every morsel.
St. Mary's county Maryland has a regional delight called stuffed ham. Spicy kale & onions put into a corned ham. It makes a great sandwich. It's a lot of work to make, so often it is done by a group of people/
I had tamales in Vicksburg, Mississippi. It's a thing there. Places that just sell tamales.
Conch fritters in Key West, Florida. Over rated regional item.
Boudin in Scott/Lafayette, Louisiana. The locals were buying them like I by dunkin donuts, by the dozen.
Chickory coffee in New Orleans, Louisiana. A perfectly good waste of chickory.
Minorcan clam chowder in St Augustine, FL. Never seen it offered anywhere else but here. They make a several day festival to this seafood soup.
Lobster pizza in Newport, Rhode Island. It was a nice flavor blend with the pizza. It gave it a bit of a sweet taste.
Cofffee cabinet in Newport, Rhode Island. I'm not a coffee drinker, but this drink is the bomb.
Salt potatoes in Watertown, New York. The grocery store sells the potatoes together with the salt. I guess it's a special potato they use. Nothing special in my opinion.
Taylor ham, egg & cheese on a kaiser roll. Just about any place in northern New Jersey serving breakfast.
Soft pretzel in Philadelphia. Get them fresh out of the oven, there's nothing like it.
Shoofly pie in Lancaster County, PA. I never got it but saw it offered for sale.
Lobster reuben in Marathon Key, Florida. It tastes way better than it sounds.
Chislic in Rapid City, South Dakota. Fried meat cubes. Somewhat bland. I might have to give them another try.
Looking at my list, I've eaten a bunch of stuff over the years. 1 of the benefits of traveling around this great country.
It means steak-like slabs of meat cooked like fried chicken. Banquet makes such a frozen meal; it's flavorless crap, like you'd expect Banquet meals to be. You gotta add salt and black pepper to make it taste passably good. But at least its components---the meat passing for a steak, the breading on it, and the gravy---are all there.
And let's not even go near the "chicken-fried steak" vs. "country-fried steak" confusion. To my knowledge, "chicken-fried" is deep-fried in oil and served with white gravy, while "country-fried" is pan-fried in bacon grease and served with brown gravy. Both are coated in breading the same way.
That said, I think chicken-fried steak is more of a Southern thing. Texas is more likely to have country-fried steak. If you think about it, it was easier for migratory Texas cowboys to put a skillet on a campfire, than to set up a deep-fryer like stationary Southern farmers would.
We don’t do country-fried steak in Texas. It’s chicken-fried steak, and I believe it comes from the German settlers who came to Texas in the 19th Century using the beef instead of pork for Wiener schnitzel since beef was easier to come by here.
Fried chicken and macaroni and cheese and collard greens are served at every gathering. I never heard of macaroni and cheese on thanksgiving and Christmas until I moved to the south.
Texas has several regional food items that have made their way into other areas. There is Ted-Mex, which is a genuine regional cuisine like Cajun cuisine is to Louisiana.
We have fajitas, smoked brisket, chili with no beans (I prefer mine with beans), pecan pie, pickled okra, fried okra, kolaches, chili con queso, chicken-fried steak with cream gravy, etc. I’m not sure of the origins of some of it, probably a fusion of food from Europe made with local ingredients, and some probably came from southern cooking. Some things from indigenous people and some from Spanish-Mesoamerican traditions.
Fajitas comes from skirt steak, which the ranchers would give to the ranch hands in South Texas. I forgot to mention pinto beans and corn bread.
Another custom/quirk is the Midwestern Bloody Marys. In most US regions, a Bloody Mary is vodka-laced tomato juice, garnished with a celery stalk, and maybe a skewer of green olives if you're lucky. Not in the Midwest! In these parts, a well-garnished Bloody Mary can serve as a heavy snack easily. It can contain cheese cubes, sausage pieces, Slim Jims, shrimp, a burger slider, chunks of grilled chicken, etc. Not to mention the amazing mixer flavors like black pepper, horseradish, Sriracha, etc. In Wisconsin especially, a Bloody Mary often includes a 5-oz beer chaser too, allegedly meant to wash down the intense flavors of the "foods" served. When I told people outside the Midwest about all this, their reaction was "Wow, really?".
I grew up in NE Missouri eating "tenderloins". When I was in Ohio for grad school I looked for them in grocery store meat depts. and finally tried going to butcher shops. They kept trying to sell me beef tenderloin (filet mignon) but were aghast when I tried to explain they needed to be tenderized. They didn't get that I was basically talking about boneless pork chops that had been tenderized to the point of being less than a 1/4" thick and the size of a dinner plate!
They didn't get that I was basically talking about boneless pork chops that had been tenderized to the point of being less than a 1/4" thick and the size of a dinner plate!
That sounds similar to pork chop sandwiches. The breaded pork chop is always much bigger than the bun it comes in. The sandwich is usually pretty spartan---nothing like those over-the-top burgers; a few pickle slices, a little bit of onion, and barbecue sauce are all that gets added.
The sandwich's "home base" is Indiana, but you can get it in most of the Midwest, with people knowing what you're talking about. That, or anywhere that has a Culver's.
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