Whoring about the supermarket

[muckefuck]

Here's a question pursuant to kutsuwamushi's latest post, taking Kurlansky to task for denying the existence of local food customs in the USA and elsewhere. What is something that you can find everywhere in your home town that everywhere else you've been (a) is only available from a specialty purveyor or (b) cannot be bought for love or money?

I've already posted about some of mine. Pork steaks, for instance, just don't outside of St. Louis, though I think I could get a butcher up here to slice them for me if I explained the cut and batted my eyes just right. Gooey butter (a.k.a. "sugar lasagne") is easy enough to make on your own, but that didn't stop us from buying it at the store. I was especially surprised not to find it up here since the brand we bought was usually Entenmann's and they're based in Brooklyn for Chrissakes! (At least they were when I was young. Now they're owned by a Canadian company which in some ways is even stranger.)

(Speaking of Brooklyn, I know that e. could easily fill a page with products. Please, don't get her started on the bagel thing again!)

Comments

[off_coloratura]

On my recent trip to Providence, Rhode Island I experienced for the first time a local specialty, weenies (aka "gaggers") and coffee milk. Weenies are fast-food-style hot dogs in steamed buns topped with spiced ground beef and onion. Not quite a chili dog, as I don't think the beef has any tomato in it. They go down incredibly fast. Coffee milk is just milk with coffee syrup in it. Both are a late-night staple in Rhode Island and unknown outside of that area, as far as I'm aware.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I once encountered a gentleman who tried to inform me that the only place in the world where decent bagels are made is --- are you ready for this?

Montreal.

He did not make that mistake twice.

[strongaxe.livejournal.com]

I've heard that Montreal makes good bagels (and this from a Jewish friend who really ought to know about such things).

Perhaps it's just the best place in Canada to get them?

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

You know, I can totally believe that Montreal has very good bagels. Even excellent ones. It's just that no matter how excellent they are, you have to be a special kind of stupid to tell someone from New York that they don't know what good bagels are. Kind of like telling a Parisian that it's too bad they don't have good wine over there and he should come to California to find the real stuff.

[jhvilas.livejournal.com]

This stuff (http://jhv.blogs.com/eatatjoes/2007/06/hot_dog.html) seems to be unavailable outside of Southeastern North Carolina. It has roughly the same distribution as Venus Flytraps.

I've repeatedly heard people from upstate New York talk about a kind of sausage called "Coneys." They're white and spicy. I believe there's also some peculiarity about the bun, but the details escape me at the moment.

[kaynorr.livejournal.com]

From my neck of the woods (Rochester, NY) they're referred to as "white hots". Very peculiar taste, kind of a hybrid between italian sausage and a hot dog, with probably some godawful chemical in there to give it a distinctive flair.

[ladysophis2k8.livejournal.com]

agreed. but nobody else makes 'em. the closet i've seen is a brat at the ballparks, but it isn't the same.

[ladysophis2k8.livejournal.com]

ps - Garbage Plates and Frozen Custard are pretty much a Ro Cha thing.
pps - To be fair, I've not yet been to Culver's.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

What makes their frozen custard distinctive? Versions of it are all over the Midwest, under a variety of names, and regional loyalties are strong. (Just watch how luckymarty's eyes mist over when you whisper "Ted Drewes" to him.)

[ladysophis2k8.livejournal.com]

All I can tell you is that Abbott's only exists in Monroe County, and nothing is better at the lakeshore or after dinner on a lazy summer evening. (Yum!)

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Speaking of Brooklyn, it is widely agreed that Junior's Restaurant is the source of the best cheesecake in the world. I actually am not a cheesecake connoisseur for some reason, so I can't really evaluate that claim, but I've heard it made by many sources who have less reason to believe that Brooklyn is where it comes from.

The other thing is, frankly, pizza. There's something about the pizza they make in New York City. I've had good pizza since I left but never anything quite like a slice from a proper old-style New York pizzeria.

And speaking of pizza, stuffed pizza is even more idiosyncratic -- AFAICT you can't get that anywhere outside of Chicago.

And I expect e. has even more things to say about Arthur Avenue than Brooklyn :-) :-)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Enough Chicagoans vacation in (or have relocated to) the eastern shore of Lake Michigan that you can now find stuffed pizza there. I wonder if it might not be available in southern Wisconsin for the same reason.

Pizza has to be the ultimate home town food. I still get cravings for the bizarre St. Louis variant in the same way that I still get a hankering for sliders once in a blue moon. But what separates me from a lot of New Yawkers is that I make no claims for the superiority of this guilty pleasure. I really don't understand why anyone not from St. Louis would want to eat our pizza and I'm equally baffled as to why anyone who wasn't raised on New York-style pizza would touch the stuff. The universal appeal of stuffed pizza, by constrast, is easy to grok.

[princeofcairo.livejournal.com]

You can get Giordano's in Milwaukee, or you could in 2002. I'm convinced the New York pizza takes its distinctive flavor from the calcium-saturated water in the reservoir.

But speaking of Brooklyn, try to get an egg cream anywhere but there or two delis in L.A. (Jerry's and Cantor's).

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

I work at a coffeeshop in Missouri, and I have a customer who always orders an egg cream. The first time she ordered it I thought she was talking about some kind of pastry. I'd never even heard of it.

She had to teach me how to make one.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I used to be able to get that at a NY-style deli in Chicago and there was another in St. Louis (the Posh Nosh, IIRC) that had in on the menu. (I never ordered it when I was younger because I didn't like the idea of an egg in my soda.)

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Provel cheese made in Wisconsin exclusively for the St. Louis market??!

Now I am consumed with a burning need to try this stuff just so I know. THANKS A LOT.

Loquats!!!

[monshu.livejournal.com]

I have never seen loquats for sale anywhere outside California and they used to be hard to find there. A yummy fruit, but thin skinned, so wouldn't ship well I suppose. Baby artichokes may now be available--but I've never seen them. They are so small we used to get 40 for $1. You can eat the whole thing since the "choke" has really developed that much when they are that young.

Re: Loquats!!!

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

Fairway, on 74th and Broadway, Manhattan, often has loquats. And the other supermarket 2 blocks up, the name of which escapes me now, is the only place I've ever seen acceptable taramasalata in the US (granted, I've never gone shopping in Astoria: they must have it there).

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

Depends what you mean by home town. Here in the small towns of upstate NY? If it exists, I haven't come across it yet. There's local wine production, but they don't have licenses to sell outside the state, so I'm not sure if it counts, quite. Back where I grew up? Ohhhhhh, plenty. Pasties, saffron buns, yellow clotted cream, stargazey pie (strictly for the tourists), hog's pudding, real scones, sprats in beer,

But that's not in the US.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Ahem, "local food customs in the USA and elsewhere". You've lived in more than one place in Britain, haven't you? How many of the things you just mentioned could be found easily in London, for instance?

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

ahem: perhaps at a "specialty purveyor" - but London happens to be one of the richest sources in the world for those. Pasties have undergone a revolution, and you can now get something that purports to be a pasty in lots of places across Britain - but they're like those crescents in a can; related only by name to the original. Clotted cream likewise: tends not to be the yellow, sticky-as-tar stuff elsewhere. Ditto real scones: hard to source anywhere outside West Penwith or the Lizard: the essential difference is crystal clear as soon as you encounter the original.

Saffron buns, stargazey pie, hog's pudding and sprats in beer - as far as I know - almost impossible to encounter even in London.

[ladysophis2k8.livejournal.com]

. the best thing about living in london is cadbury cream eggs. year round. none of your mamby-pamby eastertime only nonsense. when i lived there i could by them in machines in the underground for 10p.

also, it's hard to get caffrey's irish ale on tap in the US, although i succeed every now and then.

[kaynorr.livejournal.com]

One thing no one has ever heard of outside home is salt potatoes. Which are basically just small red potatoes (about the size of a golf ball, usually) boiled in salt water, then split down the middle and drizzled with butter and more salt.

It's caranival/street fair food, but I can't locate it anywhere in the Midwest.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Sounds much like good old-fashioned Butterkartoffeln, a staple of German cooking, except they're always served peeled.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

Now that's one thing we can get at the supermarket in upstate NY: packaged as "salt potatoes" with a big plastic bag of salt in the pack.
...are you 'round here, too?

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

oh, right. You said. Sorry about that. Wegmans, of course.

[ladysophis2k8.livejournal.com]

Salt potatoes are white. And they are sold in bulk. (i might call stanley's to see if they carry them.)

[bunj.livejournal.com]

Both pork steaks and the mojo criollo you mention in comments to kutsuwamushi's post are available at Family Fruit Market (on Cicero just north of Irving Park - tell 'em bunj sent you). But you already know that it's a mystic nexus where all sorts of obscure local foods fall out of the ether. I haven't looked for gooey butter, but that's always possible.

It doesn't have chow-chow, though, which I encountered in North Carolina. I'll have to find something else to eat with my pulled pork.

[jhvilas.livejournal.com]

[slaps himself] Criminy -- barbecue! It's different every place I've ever been. Everyone has a regional specialty that's different a hundred miles away. The Eastern North Carolina variant is made by slowly grilling an entire hog, then chopping up the meat, and dousing it with a sauce made of apple cider vinegar and peppers. As you start drifting westward, the barbecue starts containing the Heresy of Tomato. If you go south into South Carolina, you encounter the Heresy of Mustard. Then of course there are those heretical places that don't use pork. ;) There are also those places where the word "barbecue" is a verb rather than a noun.

[princeofcairo.livejournal.com]

I don't recall any specific foods local to Oklahoma City, but the Tex-Mex there is vastly different from the Tex-Mex in Austin or Dallas (which differ from each other, but not as much). More Mexican, oddly enough.

And of course you simply can't get Tex-Mex food anywhere north of I-40. It's hard enough to get good Mexican food.

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

Is cherry lime-aid an Oklahoma thing, or a Braums thing? (Although I seem to recall getting some at Sonic once too ...)

[ladysophis2k8.livejournal.com]

Minute Maid (nee Coca-Cola) makes cherry lime aid en masse, and is low-cal.

[ladysophis2k8.livejournal.com]

and what about burgers made in grease that's hung around since 1920?

[princeofcairo.livejournal.com]

That's in Memphis, and I don't think it counts as a "local delicacy" so much as a single restaurant's bizarre eccentricity. That said, I haven't seen deep-fried hamburgers anywhere else.

[strongaxe.livejournal.com]

What? you don't have Taco Bell there?

(Oh wait - you said MEXICAN food...)

[stephe.livejournal.com]

I can't think of anything for myself (I have things to say about real maple syrup, but you can find stuff from my home state of Vermont in many places across this great land of ours), but I do have friends exiled from Pennsylvania who speak longingly of scrapple and Tastee Cakes.

Ooh Wegmans' is a place on earth!

[ladysophis2k8.livejournal.com]

Also, what I can't stand about supermarkets other than the blissful piece of heaven that is found in my hometown(aka Wegmans'):

a) they are not open 24 hours a day
b) they ROTATE product so frequently, that i have to shop around continuously to find my favorite schtuff.
c) the mantra is: 'Management is always right until the customer prostrates himself underfoot btw management and the wad of gum the homeless man spit out in the dirty store.'
Learn this please: "The CUSTOMER is ALWAYS right."
d) fresh good diverse produce is expensive and difficult to find

I miss rainbow layer cookies and soy crisps, but thanks to luckymarty's sister I now at least have a recipe for the former.

The good news is, the local Jewel has experienced a metamorphosis since I moved here and are loading in more and more product by the day - even their produce section has expanded, plus the layout of the store has been updated for the better.

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

I can get pork steaks! But I'm also in Missouri, and they're an item that's sometimes on the shelf, sometimes not.

I really can't think of anything that I can get here but not elsewhere. If there is some local specialty, I'm not aware of it being local. (My own blind spot!)

[strongaxe.livejournal.com]

I had never heard of jicama (a sweet white tuber that can be eaten raw, and is often found sliced in salad bars) before moving to Phoenix.

As far as prepared foods go, apparently quesadillas (cheese crisps) are very common in Phoenix, but if you ask for them at a Mexican restaurant in the east, they give you strange looks.

There is also this vile concoction called Poutine (french fries slathered with molten cheese curds and gravy) that originated in Quebec and seemed unknown elsewhere, although when I moved back to Toronto in 2000, apparently Ontario had become infected with it. In fact, almost anywhere that serves fries (including places like McDonalds) serves it. I've still never heard of it anywhere in the US.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

You found a Mexican restaurant on the east coast that doesn't serve quesadillas?

In New England even Friendly's serves 'em.

[strongaxe.livejournal.com]

Well, that particular bit was related to me by my hubby singerbear who is a Phoenix native, and was always waxing nosalgic for them, but was totally unable to find them anywhere he looked in Ohio. (I do have this vague recollection of seeing them at Denny's some years back, but maybe it's only Mexican restaurants that don't make them, which would be quite odd).

[ladysophis2k8.livejournal.com]

On this topic, I LIKE the idea of there being regional food - foods you can only get in one place. Really gives meaning to the phrase "local flavor." So, raising a glass of Fox Run Reserve Chardonnay (it's so good), and toasting Chicago-stuffed pizza, pork steaks, and frozen custard from Abbott's: "FOOD ROCKS!" (Disney, tm 1997)

[zompist.livejournal.com]

Stuffed pizza has already been mentioned— there are Uno's restaurants out here (Boston), though I miss the variety from back home. (I also miss having good Mexican restaurants. Not enough Hispanics out here, I guess.)

Now that Marshall Field's has been bought by Macy's, can the original Frango mints still be found? (This name caused some cognitive dissonance in learning Portuguese, where frango means chicken.)

There's a distinctive Chicago hot dog, featuring celery salt and abjuring ketchup.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I know it makes no real sense to be a hot dog snob, but I pretty much won't go back to any place where I say "Maxwell style" and get a blank look instead of mustard and grilled onion.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Does Uno's do stuffed pizza now? They always bragged about having "Chicago deep-dish pizza," which sort of struck me as the worst of both worlds. All the crust and none of the insane gooey cheese orgy that you get from a real stuffed pizza.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

I don't have a hometown, so I'll just answer for regions I'm familiar with:

Frito pie (central Texas).

Sopaipillas (southern Arizona and New Mexico).

Tablet (Scotland).

Lobster rolls (coastal New England).

Chicago-style hot dogs.

Others have already mentioned stuffed pizza (Chicago and environs) and coffee milk (Rhode Island). Another Rho Disland specialty is Del's frozen lemonade, which I don't quite see the appeal of, but jacflash misses in exile, a whole hour north of his home town :}

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I know this is a dead thread, but I was kicking myself here for not thinking of the most glaringly obvious town I'm associated with that has metric tons of stuff you can't get in the US, and a few things it's hard to get even in other towns nearby: Rio de Janeiro.

Brazil in general is my poster-thing for regional diversity and limited connectivity: there are fruits, even edible animals that you can only get in one region, or one town in Brazil. One of the favourite games Brazilians like to play is "my local fruit's more obscure than yours:" this game has lead me to try Jambo, Jabuticaba and a load of other things I can't remember the names of. Rio is mostly a clearing house for regional produce of the rest of Brazil, but one thing that's not familiar in Sao Paolo (I hear) is Chopp - a supercooled draught lager that requires some kind of special plumbing, and is consequently only available at bars that take their beer temperature and experience extremely seriously.