What’s your favorite food that is unique to or that originates in your area (or the area where you grew up)? And who does the best job serving it up?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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My hometown is famous for its Mikesell’s potato chips. “They Are Delicious” is their slogan and they really are. We also have a great local candy maker who started here years ago: Esther Price’s chocolates. Esther started by making candy for church bazaars and proceeded to make her candy into a local favorite.
I believe you can order both online. They actually collaborated a while ago to make chocolate covered potato chips, and they’re big sellers. When my family comes home for a visit, we stock them up on both Mikesell’s and Esther Price’s goodies.
If you’re from where I think, then how can you possibly leave out Young’s Jersey Dairy….best ice cream around… or the Rock Candy from Clifton Mill….
miss those stops on childhood country drives….. Where I am now, there may be Scharffen Berger’s Chocolate factory, or picking your passion in The City, “but it doesn’t come up to home in my eyes”….
You’re right, Justadood. Believe it or not, we never went to Young’s when I was a kid. We had a dairy store about a mile from where we lived and we got homemade ice cream there. Now it’s a package and shipping store…
I did finally make it to Young’s a couple of years ago and you’re right, the ice cream is fabulous.
I’ve been to Young’s many times, and oddly, was just thinking about it today, though I’m thousands of miles away.
For Ohio food, I liked the chocolate covered pretzels at Germantown in Columbus.
Well, other than the utter ridiculousness of your question, I’ll play along.
I’d say my mother’s grilled cheese sandwiches, made with Velveeta, using a round fold-over grill pan on the top of a gas stove. Cheese just oozed out once you bit. Bet grilled cheese sandwich I’ve ever had.
Did she originate it? I doubt it.
How old are you anyway? It’s clear to me you never worked in a corporation in your life. But I’m really beginning to think you are stupid, not ignorant (which you are), but stupid.
And don’t do the ad hominem defense. There is no excuse for such a blinkered question.
All work and no play makes BooMan a dull boy.
Don’t waste your time with pithy comments, take the time for “community moderation”
Who peed in your Wheaties?
Linguica… a Portuguese sausage which is available in New England and impossible to get in West Virginia. What a shame.
Whenever we visit family in Connecticut we bring back 20 or 30 pounds of it.
Under The Lobsterscope
Spicy beef sausage made in Stearns County, Minnesota by German Catholic butchers. One meal will get you through a winter.
I am a sausage freak.
Do you have the name(s) of the butcher(s) where you can get this sausage?
Thanks,
CR
Wild sockeye salmon tamales …to die for. I discovered these after moving out here and try to hit the farmer’s market on a regular basis.
http://www.mollystamales.net/
those sound heavenly
I miss the kringle pastries from my folks’ home: http://www.ohdanishbakery.com/kringle.htm
Pecan is the best!
Those look really good!
One of the reasons I like to frequent the “Pond” is that the serious political entries are sprinkled with some more personal perhaps even frivolous items. The Photos and the Dogs and questions about sports and food and local culture liven up the place and make it seem more like a community, at least in my view.
I can’t think of any particular dish that has originated in S.E. Michigan. We tend to take the best from other regions and perhaps put our own twist on those imports. If you are ever in Ann Arbor and looking for a good N.Y. Deli sandwich, you cannot beat Zingerman’s (just a bit North of Downtown).
In recent years Michigan has become home to several excellent microbreweries. Founder’s (Grand Rapids), Bell’s (Kalamazoo)and Michigan Brewing Co. (Webberville) are some of the better known.
“Pond”? Forgive my ignorance, but I’m unfamiliar with that term. Booman’s particular realm?
We’re all pond scum here. Now you are too.
You know, I really must apologize to Booman.
Look at the examples:
All of them originating in their respective areas, if the area is not the United States.
Surely we have some fried Jazz, CDO en croute, or butterflied CDS.
Kudos on playing the role of asshole so well.
My pleasure. As my psychiatrist wife always says “everybody’s got to be something.”
And as your boy Booman says, why play the ad hominem game rather than refuting my statements.
Fajitas.
(As if you didn’t know,) this is skirt steak cut into small strips, marinated, and grilled over a hot fire along with peppers and onions. Served on tortillas, usually with pico de gallo and guacamole, and some other stuff.
What we call “skirt steak” used to be thrown into the offal that went into dog food, because it’s too tough and fibrous to go into hamburger. Back in the fifties or sixties, some ranch cook down in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas decided that stew meat for chili and carne guisada was too expensive, and he decided to try this stuff on his Mexican cowboys.
He came up with a great recipe, and now the cut they used to feed to the dogs costs as much as a T-bone.
Every Tex-Mex restaurant now serves fajitas, but the best ones are found at any big-ass South Texas Latino party. If you see someone carrying an accordion into a public park, follow him.
It’s not Mexican food, and it’s not a traditional dish, but it’s a true regional delicacy.
I really miss the Pioneer Bakery’s sourdough. They had a great bakery in Santa Monica for years. Gone now.
For favorite food – you cannot beat the Chicken Tikka Masala at this little hole in the mini-mall called “LA Express.” Looks like a cheap cafe, but it has THE best Indian food I’ve ever had anywhere. When I finish losing my 100 pounds, that’s my first stop. (I’m down 80 so far…)
LA Express– it’s on Pico or maybe Washington– somewhere near Culver City right? I haven’t lived in Venice for a long time but I loved that place if it’s the one I’m thinking of.
I see no one has mentioned South Carolina Pit-cooked, vinegar-based, pulled pork Barbeque. Done right, this is the sweetest meat I’ve ever tasted and I’ve eaten all over the world. The best place for me is Ward’s Barbeque in Sumter for world’s best hush puppies and hash, but it’s hard to beat Brown’s Barbeque on Highway 52 in Kingstree or McCord’s in Manning for the pork.
Melt in your mouth… mmmmmm good.
Hmmm . . . there are several foods that either originated or were popularized up here in the upper left-hand corner of the map.
Alder-smoked salmon (back when the Quillayutes and Duwamish were doing it)
Fried clam strips (Ivar Haglund and his “Acres of Clams”)
Aplets & Cotlets (a Northwest variation on Turkish Delight)
and of course overpriced boutique coffee 🙂
I’m sure there’s more but that will do to start.
Aaah. Aplets and cotlets. I still have family items stored in those boxes. Father’s family from the PNW. We always got these as gifts, along with filbert nuts and dried salmon. Yum.
I love Ethiopian food. Hold on now…it’s southern, in a way. Lots of collards and squash and peas, just like back home for Sunday dinner. Only we didn’t serve it with yummy injera bread; we used forks.
So far my favorite is in Rome, but there was also a restaurant in Denver that was very good.
Well, I was born and live in Lyon, the capital of French gastronomy, so I don’t know where to start…;-)
Salade lyonnaise
Quenelle de brochet sauce Nantua
Soupe aux truffes
Gratinée aux oignons
Salade de lentilles
Saucisson chaud au Beaujolais
Cardons à la moelle
Sabodet à la vigneronne
Salade de cervelas
Poulet au vinaigre
Tablier de Sapeur
Gras-double
Cervelle de Canut
Poularde demi-deuil
Gateau de foies de volaille
Gratin dauphinois
Blanquette de veau
…
OMG–show off! :<) You had me at Salade lyonnaise and Salade de lentilles. Yum…!!!
I propose that the next meetup be at your place.
I’ll gladly welcome you!
A completely Iraqi dish called masgoof which is a particular species of fish from the Tigris, butterflied and grilled in front of a fire made from a very specific type of wood, best eaten accompanied by a good Iraqi arak, or Farida beer in one of the numerous restaurants along Abu Nuwas Street in Baghdad, nearly all of which were forced out of business by the American occupation. Masgouf was also ordered by Iraqis of all kinds for special occasions such as weddings. You can’t duplicate it outside of Iraq no matter how hard you try.
I grew up with spiedies. Upstate NY/PA. Amazing grilled bits of flesh marinaded in goddess knows what. I forget the best spiedie shack, but I don’t forget the flavor.
Fun question. I’m not entirely sure what foods here are unique to Taiwan, but two picks stand out.
The first is called Jiang Mu Ya, literally “ginger mother duck.” There are two types of ginger commonly available, a younger sort that’s a bit soft and almost white in color, and an older sort with a very deep orangish color when sliced open. “Ginger mother” is what they call the older sort, and they fry lots of this in sesame oil with duck to make a delicious soup base.
Then you have various things you order a la carte to dump into the soup, which is served in a big clay pot over a charcoal fire (the restaurants tend to be open-air). My favorite additives are duck hearts, livers and intestines, congealed duck blood, rice cakes made with duck blood (“mi xie”), cabbage, straw mushrooms, leng dong dofu (tofu that’s been sliced into cubes and frozen–gives it a spongy texture when thawed and cooked) and dou pi, which is the skin that forms on top of a batch of tofu. They cut this up and deep-fry it until it’s about the consistency of a softish fried pork rind. Oh, and mi jiu, which is a white alcohol made from millet, faintly similar to sake but only cooking grade.
I’m sure some of that sounds perfectly awful but after a few years here I acquired a taste for several things that used to make me shudder–and haven’t looked back since.
The other dish is Bei Ping Kao Ya (Beijing-style roast duck), which is probably what they call Peking Duck, only I think their serving style here is a little different: they carve off slices of skin with some of the meat underneath, roll them up in little pancakes with scallions and some kind of sauce. It resembles the mu shu pork I used to get at the Chinese places back in the States. They take the rest of the meat and bones and cut it into cubes, and stew it in various sauces. The result is a somewhat messy finger-food but very tasty.
The soup has as many varieties as there are places that serve it, and while there are chains of restaurants that make it, the vast majority is done on a mom-and-pop level. I have yet to find one that wasn’t delicious. It’s somewhat harder to find a decent roast duck place, but when you find a good one, it’s heavenly.
In Philly, we talk about eating the whole pig. Sounds like Taiwan says the same for the duck.
When I was growing up in Oklahoma, we had a similar saying about cows, “everything but the moo,” not eating the whole thing exactly, more about utilizing everything in some way.
You find as you travel that most cultures tend to discard less than we do in the States. A big local treat here that I can’t get into is cooked chicken feet. My wife also tells me that they dig pig ears here. I thought that was funny bc I used to see bins of dried pig ears in the US at the hardware store, for people to buy as dog treats.
Ipswich clams, whole. There are lots of places to get clams on the North Shore and now that McIntyre’s is gone it’s The Clam Box. Cappy’s at Salem Willows is a close second followed by Kelly’s.
I don’t know if there is any specific food that originated on the Jersey Shore. My dad used to make stuffed grape leaves and hummus but our family had no ethnic connection to the Eastern Mediterranean. We used to have fried blowfish which used to be plentiful in the Atlantic and in Barnegat Bay, but they didn’t have the toxin in the meat that the fugu in the Pacific does which makes you slightly high. I guess I loved the tomatoes we grew there. I rarely taste tomatoes as good.
I was at my sisters house last summer after a long-time in the Midwest. I Yelled out oh my god! in the kitchen after biting into a tomato.
She comes running into the kitchen what’s wrong, what’s wrong?
Me: I’ve forgotten what a real tomato tastes like!
Scrapple. I don’t really like the way it’s made in most restaurants and diners (too thick and mushy and not spicy enough), so I guess for my purposes I do the best job of serving it up. I grew up eating Habbersett scrapple and I’ve never had a reason to switch.
Chicago:
Chicago Dogs and Italian Beef Sandwiches (Mild or Hot Peppers) They both are ubiquitous in Chicago but I usually go to Portillo’s… corner of Ontario and Clark.
Or, when in Milwaukee: Barbierre’s (I grew up eating their pizza… tastes like no other… sausage, Mushrooms and onions please). On Bluemound Road… 59th or 60th or thereabouts. After your done with pizza head West on Bluemound Road to 75th and get some Gillies Custard on a cone. It’s the best custard (yes… better than Copp’s)
Best place for it: Seabreeze Deli on Route 71 in Spring Lake Heights NJ.
#2: Bagels!