Around the nation in 51 dishes

[muckefuck]

The List

My Annotations:

#1: As my reflux worsened, pizza went from favourite food to a rare treat. Even if I could go back to it, it wouldn't be to Chicago-style. It's too much of the "more is more" school which represents the worst tendencies in contemporary US cuisine. I remember when all those ads for fast food piled with meat and cheese would make my mouth water; now they just disgust me--and not just on account of the aftereffects, but because the very experience of having a mouth stuffed full of those ingredients doesn't appeal as it once did.

All in all, the best trend in Chicago pizza is the one away from Chicago-style deep dish and towards traditional Italian style: thin, crisp-chewy crust with a modest amount of extremely flavourful toppings rather than a drippy calorie bomb of mediocre mozzarella and gummy dough.

#4: Just because you can do something doesn't mean anyone does. There is no intrinsic obstacle to getting a good crabcake outside of Maryland: Old Bay and lump blue crab meat are easy enough to get in most of the country. The barrier is purely psychological, yet it is real enough; I have learned that the words "Maryland(-style) crabcake" on a menu are always a lie; if it's really Maryland-style, you don't have to point this out because you're already in Maryland. (Not that you can't get terrible crabcakes there, too, but your chances go way down.)

#11: I'm calling shenanigans on this one given that they bag on the Half-smoke (#36) for being just a hot dog variant.

#15: I don't really have an opinion on this since, as far as I can see, there aren't really any "Missouri foods", there are only KC foods, St Louis foods, critters (or whatever they eat in the Ozarks), and generic Midwestern whitebread cuisine. I associate St Louis with ribs in the same way that I associate Manahattan with reasonably-priced food, i.e. not at all. Our barbecue is pork steaks. So, fine, ribs, whatever.

#22: YES! YES! YES! My hometown has a shitty local variety of pizza, too, but unlike New Yorkers, I'm not about to claim it's anything more than that.

#23: I would've gone for musubi myself. Still just spam and rice, but with bonus points for culinary syncretism.

#26: +1. Why anyone eats catfish when there are alternatives available is beyond me.

#33: "Be honest: Would you rather have another boring bratwurst, or a hot Italian sausage with sautéed peppers and onions?" Neither: I'd rather have an interesting bratwurst. If you're eating a boring one, well, that's your own goddamn fault.

#37: Wyoming, what? Someone is badly geographically confused.

Comments

[tyrannio.livejournal.com]

In at least part of the Arkansas Ozarks, they eat bitter melon and hollow-stem vegetable.

[anicca-anicca2.livejournal.com]

Yes, to several of your points but especially to 26/catfish and 33/bratwurst.

[danthered.livejournal.com]

#51 FTW. OTOH, #31 WTF; I lived in Denver for twenty-some years and never saw or heard of a "cowboy cookie". We did, however, have Beau Jo's Mountain Style Pizza, which is a piled-high variety but everything's of very high quality and nothing's gummy and there's honey provided for the crust.

They also left off spicy hot Louisiana baked chicken tenders (No, Kitty!)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Someone could do an interesting map of just regional varieties of pizza. How far does the Chicago deep-dish zone extend these days? At least to southern Michigan, with outliers in Ohio. On the other hand, St Louis-style pizza barely covers St Louis any more.

[danthered.livejournal.com]

Yeah, yeah, fine, fine, now get to the good part: where is it said to be "ˈgrē-sē", and where is it said to be "ˈgrē-zē"?

[wiped.livejournal.com]

#3 set off my bullshit detector. i'm totally OK with claiming the burrito as a signature californian food but doing so and then singling out the mission burrito is one step removed from this as far as i'm concerned. (and yeah, the 'new york slice' is rightly lampooned below, but you get the idea).