Local food oddities

Not where I live currently, but Korea: roasted silkworm larvae.

Is it good? Some weird things can be very good such as tripe or gelfilte fish lol.

San Antonio really likes its Barbadoa+Big Red Combo. There’s even a Pho restaurant that offers Barbacoa Pho that can be ordered with a side of Big Red bubble tea.

San Antonio also has a thing for incorporating hot Cheetos into a lot of stuff. Hot Cheetos nachos are a staple. I believe there’s a bunch of restaurants that were offering hot Cheeto options too (hot Cheeto crusted sushi, in burgers, etc) but I haven’t been around to notice if that kept going or was a fad that died.
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In Lubbock TX, every Mexican restaurant for whatever reason had to have seasoned salt chips as opposed to regular chips.
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Minneapolis MN has the Juicy Lucy (cheese is prepared inside the patty)
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WI has cheese curds.

How is orange-pineapple ice cream an oddity? Same for cheese curds. Even DQ and Culvers carry them as regular menu items nationally.

I nevet heard of a juicy lucy until I saw one closed and shuttered in Ft. Myers adter moving here. I need to try making that at home.

The oddest thing I can think of down here is conch fritters. Giant fried sea snails. I couldn't choke it down the one time I tried it. In Chicago, it was foie gras, which is animal cruelty and should have remained outlawed. In New Orleans.. crawfish. Mudbugs. A hell of a lot of work for very little food, which tastes like mud and is poisoned by all the toxic discharges drom as far north as Minnesota.

Ski: The silkworm larvae were not bad. In Thailand I saw roasted grasshoppers for sale by street vendors. I couldn't bring myself to try those.

Detroit has its coney dogs. These are coney island hot dogs on a bun with lots of chili and mustard and raw onions.

^often accompanied by either chili fries, cheese fries, or chili cheese fries. For the really hungry.

And most often we serve or eat these Coneys at places called "Coney Islands," which are not actually islands but just casual diners, many with a Greek flair. I worked at a pretty well-known one in the 'burbs when I was a teenager.

I’m a huge fan of the juicy lucy. Plus the years long debate between which of two Minneapolis bars originated it is amusing.

Soggy dogs in Rhode Island; steamed cheeseburgers in Connecticut.

Buckeyes

https://www.buckeyechocolate.com/Milk-Ch…

NC has livermush which i guess is like another weird PA food scrapple, but its a breakfast food of basically left over pork parts and cornmeal. I have no desire to try it, but its around.

Faygo soda pop just brought back Pineapple-Orange flavor soda pop In Detroit we call it pop. Most everywhere else it is soda..

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/life/f…

I will admit that whenever I am in parts of PA I gross out my wife and order scrapple. I like it, its just pork.

During Lent in Downriver Detroit area the eat muskrat.

https://www.hourdetroit.com/community/mu…

"I’m a huge fan of the juicy lucy. Plus the years long debate between which of two Minneapolis bars originated it is amusing."

Haha! A Minnesota based chef on Top Chef made one on there and then I found out about the huge debate over its origin. 😂

I actually must say I prefer a regular cheeseburger, because Juicy Lucy's are so damn messy. But it was inventive. They had trended over here to metro Detroit but the time I learned from Top Chef guy that it was a MN thing.

Oh yeah, and Texas in general has kolaches sold in nearly every doughnut shop. It’s sort of like a pig-in-a-blanket except that it’s better.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/201…

And while I *would* mention BBQ in Texas, I feel like there’s lots of areas where it’s really good too and idk why Texas is especially known for it?

Rochester has a garbage plate I hear about it never had it

Tucson has the Sonoran dog

El Paso has Chico’s tacos

Long Island has All American Burger

Many years ago, Comella's, an italian restaurant around here got the idea of taking all the leftover red sauce dishes at the end of the night; mixing them together; calling them "the mess" and serving it the next day. It became so popular they now do it intentionally as a dish, but the best thing about how it started was that it was different every time and now its just institutional.

Nina, I have to have the appetite going in to have a juicy lucy. But there is something about the cheese melted between the two burgers. Add onion rings, barbecue sauce and the resulting sloppy mess tastes incredible.

I have never had it, but I have heard of something in Maine called a "sacrifice". No shit, you dig a big motherfucking hole in the ground and start a shit ton of coals. Once the coals are good and hot, you throw a slaughtered MOOSE on them and bury it for 1-2 days. A moose is so big, it's only for family reunions and such. Has anyone actually ever seen this shit?

We've done that with a pig, but never a moose. In fact we've only seen about 25 Moose lifetime, excluding the one we hot with the car

NJ Philly area has fried pork roll.

Yeah Hunstman, I'm actually craving one now. Just as you described.

You guys, we've mentioned some local popular stuff, but nothing seems super out there except the foreign stuff that's been mentioned. I mean, there's always Balut... but it's not like that's popular here.

I guess it's cool that Michigan and (metro)Detroit specifically have their own things. I was the Saganaki queen when I worked at the Coney, I switched from night shift to morning shift and all the morning girls were bitches about it --- especially if it was busy. I lit all their saganakis for them. When I started stripping at Bouzouki in Greektown, customers could order saganaki from the neighboring restaurant and the bartenders would be too scared to light it and serve it already lit. The "opa!" lighting is half the appeal, I started volunteering to do it for the bartenders during slow day shifts a couple times. And I did, to perfection, even while drunk. *tips hat*

NYC there's so many to list because everything kind of got exported out and it's just the standard on so many menus across America. Chicken and waffles is one. At Well's supper club in Harlem Jazz musicians would get off too late for dinner and too early for breakfast. To compromise chicken and waffles was born. It's become a southern thing though. It is still hard to find good bagels, pizza, delis outside this area. There exceptions but it's rare.

Nashville has hot chicken. I tried the hottest chicken at Prince's, I had a real hard time with it, I was tearing up hard but it was good. Story was Prince was cheating on his wife and for his wife to get back at him, she put the hottest sauce she could make and snuck in it is chicken. Prince thought it tasted so good the rest was history or so the legend goes.

Then there's the different BBQ styles. Texas, the Carolinas, Memphis, Kansas City etc.

We actually have a local oddity around here that appears to be the only food that still exists, that existed here at the time the pilgrims landed. Johnny cakes. Yes corn type cakes exist other places, but a true Johnny Cake has to be made from "flint corn" which is almost extinct (one ear on each stalk makes it useless as a cash crop) and which is so rock hard that there are only two mills left in the country with the ability to grind it. It exists in southern Rhode island and nowhere else to my knowledge.

Loco moco and spam musubi in Hawaii.

The passing of Jewish delis in NYC is a food crime. They've always sucked in Massachusetts, although to be fair, when I worked in one I learned that wrapping a cloth around a knife, turning on the meat slicer and holding the cloth wrapped knife to it to clean it fast, while you turn the other way and wipe the counter, is and always will be a bad decision.

Skibum has good taste when it comes to regional comfort food. I’m a fan of both scrapple and Johnny cake.

Johnny cakes are big in the Caribbean islands by the way.

Weed brownies. Actually, I hear they're everywhere now.

Walleye shore lunch in the BWCAW is pretty awesome too. Catch a few walleye. Head to shore and start a fire while cleaning the fish on the canoe paddle. Fry in a cast iron skillet with fixins. I’m anxious to get out and do that soon. When blueberries are available later in the summer, I’ll make a crisp to go with that over the campfire.

Never knew that Fuds Ty.

I’m amused that fredo claims to like “exotic foods” like tripe. As a worldly rick I am an epicure that enjoys many foods.

As a lion I hate to see food go to waste. I believe in using all parts of the wildebeest for my enjoyment. ROAR!!!

I love catching my own fish and cooking it. That's the only reason I go fishing, really.

I don't know if these are just local or if they qualify as oddities but, there are some foods I always get in certain locations when I travel.
Denver - green chili
Kansas City - burnt ends
New Orleans - muffaletta, Zaps Cajun Crawtaters
St Petersburg - smoked mullet
Nashville - Hot Chicken, Goo Goo clusters
St Louis - toasted ravioli

A lot of these things have been popularized in other regions, while a lot of people haven't tasted the food at its origin, like Nashville Hot Chicken for example.

Chicago has Italian beef sandwiches--thinly sliced roast beef, seasoned and served au jus with hot peppers on an Italian roll.

Fried whole belly clams. They are nearly impossible to find outside of New England.

I dearly miss fresh jumbo boiled peanuts. There is no taste for them out West unfortunately

Special place Rick? We like the clam box in Ipswich.

Coffee milk Rhode Island specialty. Whole milk and coffee syrup.

Champlin's Seafood Deck in Narraganset. RI is great.

Tony's Clam Box in Quincy used to be great too best place on Quincy Shore Drive. I imagine it still is, but i haven't been there in a long time.

I have to have a Cincinnati Chili Three-Way at least once a week and it drives me insane that I can't get it anywhere outside of this area when I travel. It gets a bad rap outside of Cincinnati because it should have been called something other than "chili" because it is nothing like a traditional chili but it is the best sauce you can ever put on spaghetti, hot dogs or fries.

Whenever I feel like cooking up a good breakfast I fry up some Goetta which is similar to Scrapple but made with pinhead oats instead of cornmeal.

===> "Special place Rick? We like the clam box in Ipswich."

Several, including Tony's, which ime mentioned. It was fun grabbing a box of whole fried clams and then munching while walking on the boardwalk. But where I grew up they were widely available in every restaurant that served seafood (which was a lot of them), including dive bars near the water. Shit we even had whole in the wall breakfast/lunch places that used to put them on the specials board about once a week.

Honorable mentions to two Connecticut restaurants, Westfair Fish & Chips in Westport and the USS Chowder Pot in Branford. Best two New England seafood joints in the state hands down. Unlike MA, CT is much more limited in its whole belly clam offerings, but both places do them and lots of other good seafood.

Pastrami burgers in L.A.

a rare fuddruckers burger with bacon, cheese and mushrooms.

IME - Tony Clambox is still in full operation!

Deli in New England - S&S Deli and Restaurant in Inman Sq, Cambridge MA. Now this is Ski's topic and something tells me Cambridge is dead to Ski!

Best Cheesesteak in New England (IMO) is offered by Victoria's Sub Shop (Hingham MA).

Best pizza of my youth was offered by Christo's (Brockton), which closed about 4 years ago.77

Another fave from was an my youth A&W Drive Up for a Rootbeer Float.




Cheesesteak -Victoria's (Hingham, MA)

S&S is awesome. Frank's steakhouse too. Don't like Cambridge politics, but no one asks yours when you're a customer. Used to work in Hingham and went to Court in Brockton 1500 or so times, so Christo's was lunch and their burger with Feta rocked and made me a Feta lover for life!! Best cheesesteak in New England is the basic philly cheesesteak at Phillies in Norwich CT. Since we found it we haven't had a steak n cheese anywhere else. Old time fondness for a D'Angelos #9 pocket though.

D'Angelos we used to go there all the time after school. The one went to was a combination D'Angelo's / Papa Gino's my buddy was this skinny guy who would order a large steak n cheese, large soda, bag a chips and two or three pieces of pizza and never gained a pound. For a chain Papa Gino's was way better than pizza hut, dominos, or any of the big national chains.

The people talking about fried clams are giving me a new craving.

Christo's is closed? Shoot, the food was damned good there. For those of you lucky enough to still dine at restaurants in MA, people who have never been there have no idea how good the food is in that state.

Even small hole in the wall pizza joints take great pride in the quality of their food. Then there are the bar pizzas served by so many places that are out of this world. Don't even get me started on places like Denneno's in Stoughton.

Then there are the breakfast restaurants that make the food served in most diners and chain joints look like the dogshit that it is. Joesph's Too in Waltham is just one example of many.

Then there are the mega Chinese restaurants that take the cuisine to a whole new level, from Chinatown in Boston to huge Americanized restaurants in the burbs with night time lounge entertainment.

And the seafood, good Lord. There is a reason why one won't find a Red Lobster anywhere in MA - they just can't compete with the good stuff served out of every luncheonette, bar and shack anywhere near the water, along with the shit ton of nicer seafood restaurants, many of which cook it up the day it is caught.

Man I could go on. There is a shit ton I hate about MA, but the culinary scene cannot be beaten anywhere. I have criss-crossed the country countless times and lived in several regions for long stretches, but I am lucky if I can find anything even remotely close to as good in any of those categories.

Papa Ginos was great. Many years ago my wife managed one; free pizza. Ipswich clams are allegedly the best. Clam Box is unique, because they still have one window to order and one window to pick up. Standing in line for an hour outside in the sun before you order is routine on nice days. This is to pay $70.00 for 2 people to eat lunch on a picnic table, Batter is breading is exceptional; never falls off It wouldn't be Massachusetts without some kind of inane tradition left over from 1938: Oil change. At some point in the afternoon, every day, they will decide that the oil sucks; close; empty; refill; reheat; reopen. 35 minutes. Nothing beats seeing the window shut when you're next.
Unique Cape Cod/Outer Cape experience: The Beachcomber at Cahoon Hollow beach. Great beach, food, music, vibe; still essentially the exact same as it was 45 years ago. Wellfleet is still old time Cape.

Carne asada fries are big here in socal relatively.

Bosco sticks in Michigan. It’s breadstick stuffed w cheese. I actually don’t think it’s anything worth writing home about. But, I Once saw a dancer eating one at a club, and it looked like she was deepthroating a dildo, so I thought worth a mention

Most of those mentioned key on local rather than odd. I was thinking more along the lines of Rocky Mountain oysters (Denver), deep fried crickets (Mexican American) and sannakji (Koreatown).

"Bosco sticks in Michigan"

I'm a Michigander and YESSSS. They used to be available as a lunch option when I was in high school (we had like 4 to 5 different lunch options every day) ate them every day my junior year. Still was in perfect shape lol.

Yeah I was wanted to try that chocolate chili they talk about in Cincinnati.

I know Jersey has disco fries named after John Travolta wannabes stumblin into diners after clubbing in the 70’s. Cheese Fries with chicken gravy.

New Mexico has a green chili obsession they put it on like everything.

I have to admit that green chillies rock.

Rick - I second your praise for Denenno's. Great great place. So many people looking for pizza in Stoughton flock to Town Spa, but give me Denenno's any day of the week.

And those of you saying Tony's Clam Box, you are mixing two different places on Wollaston Beach together, Tony's Clam SHOP and the Clam Box. You should specify which one you are talking about as many people are particularly partial to one over the other.

I had haggis in Scotland. It sounds gross, sheep's guts, oatmeal, and spice boiled in it's stomach, but it tastes like the world's best sausage.

@rickdugan
I gotta agree with you 100% about seafood in MA. When I was a kid my parents used to take us on vacation every year to Cape Cod and/or Martha's Vineyard. Throughout my life I've been to Boston maybe a dozen times. Holy shit the seafood joints are off the hook. It's like you can't make a bad decision with restaurant choice. Maryland has some pretty good spots too, but no comparison to MA. By the way (as you know) Manhattan chowder is like taking a can of Campbell's tomato soup and throwing some dishwater and chopped clams in it. Bleahhhhh.

History of clams - Created at Woodman's in Essex in 1928; Clam Box in Ipswich is the second clam shack. Both still open.

New Haven style pizza called “apizza” I’ve been meaning to try. I’ve only heard good things.

To crosscheck's earlier distinctive pointcheck, Tony's Clamshack and The Clambox remain in full operation. My preference is Tony's (broiled offerings), but The Clambox is a better bang for the buck.

**Oh yeah, and Texas in general has kolaches sold in nearly every doughnut shop. It’s sort of like a pig-in-a-blanket except that it’s better.**

kolachi - that's the Czech version
kolachi - Slovak version here: https://buttermaidbakery.com/

Butter Maid Bakery is a 5th generation small family owned and operated bakery. Our products have been handmade the old-fashioned way with simple ingredients - just like Mom & Grandma baked - for over 150 years. Our history dates back to our first bakery in Ohio in 1903, and our 1800s bakery in the old country. We've been shipping kolachi and other baked goods to all 50 states & Military addresses since 2006, from our bakery right here in Youngstown, Ohio. When you order from our kitchen, we're going to treat you like you're here for Sunday dinner.

Same region - Old Frothingslosh - the pale stale ale with the foam on the bottom

Fresh baked bagels and caraway rye bread plus lean corned beef. Add mustard and a kosher dill slice, a meal. Disappearing Jewish delis a crime.

Reins deli in Vernon CT is all that's left (good) in New England and they aren't kosher.

I guess the California burrito...french fries carne asada cheese salsa guacamole. Or carne asada fries. Like nachos but with fries instead of chips. And pastrami burgers. I don't see those much elsewhere

Weirdest thing I ever sampled was at a "Liars' Club" party, where everyone brought something. Deal was, two people would lie about each item and one would tell the truth.

One item got us all. It looked like brown excelsior, that stuff you use to line Easter baskets, and that was the lie we all believed. Turned out one of our number had brought it back from a trip to Hong Kong. It was pork floss, an edible used to flavor broths.