Niagara on the Lake. Our landlady, cuddling one of the brown ones, informed us what happened when they stop laying eggs. Eek!
The Detroit Free Press ran a feature Sunday on some of the more popular Detroit foods. This were the five I associate most with Detroit.
Paczkis (Polish donuts-full of cream or jelly, especially popular on the Tuesday before
Lent begins);A Coney-a hotdog with onions and chili
Vernor's Ginger Ale (very different from what you are used to-medicinal to me)
Buddy's Pizza-very thick, doughy, cheesySander's Hot Fudge Cream Puff Sundaes-my favorite.
and sweetish (not my kind of pizza)
What food items do you associate with your hometown or the town in which you now live?
29 comments:
Wow, tell us more about the Hot Fudge Cream Pie Sundae.
Sounds fantastic!
New York? Bagels, pizza, Nathan's hot dogs, pastrami & corned beef, Junior's cheesecake.
Jeff M.
Two of my favorite pizza places are from Orono, Maine, where I grew up. Pat's Pizza and Lissus Pizza. I can't find anything in New York that compares.
From Detroit: definitely Vernor's (which is indeed an acquired taste); also food from Greektown (the good Greektown, before it became casino-land), especially saganaki Opa!, the soft cheese they set on fire with Metaxa and put out with lemon juice. From Boston: fresh seafood, of course; chocolate-chip and riccota cannoli from the North End; a Boston Creme donut from Dunkin Donuts. Don't know enough about DC yet, although people have raved about the "half smoke(d?)," which's some kind of combination of hot dog and bratwurst.
You know the answer to this one, Patti: PIZZA JUNCTION pizza. And Buffalo chicken wings!
Vernor's Ginger Ale is the evil twin brother of the ginger ale I grew up with -- Chelmsford Ginger Ale (originally bottled in Chelmsford, Massachusetts in stone bottles[!] -- the stone bottles were before my time, though). Chelmsford Ginger has a very sharp taste, sort of a half-way point between ginger beer and pale dry ginger ale. Vernor's is the closest thing to it that I have found, but lacks the character of my hometown stuff. Other foods I miss are real piccalli, lobster, real fried clams (full clams, not those cheesy little clam strips), and hot dog rolls (not buns).
Other things missed from Massahusetts are hot dogs from Elliott's hot dog stand in Lowell (open 24-7, and you will meet an entirely different stratum of society if you drop in at 3:00 a.m.); the 25-cent hot dogs (cooked in beer) from the Old Worthen (again in Lowell, though I'm dating myself with that 25-cent price tag); and banana splits from Kimball's Ice Cream in Westford (the largest and best I have ever seen).
Here in Southern Maryland, I have to go with the crabcakes. For decent Greek food, I have to go to Northen Virginia. As for barbeque, the best place (Ben's Whole Hog Barbeque) closed several years ago. *sob*
I went to school in the Nebraska panhandle where I found a diner with great, deadly chili; you had to dig down a thick layer of grease to get to the chili. (A friend once ordered pancakes from the same diner and got pancakes made with white cake mix! Fine cuisine was an unknown concept there.)
Have you ever tasted a squid sandwich in Madrid?
Here is the recipe: http://na.oceana.org/en/living-blue/recipes/jose-andres-squid-sandwich-with-garlic-mayonnaise
Of course in New York you get the fight over which pizza. Thin crust or not? Coal oven? Sicilian?
Each has its devotees and each type its champions of one place or another.
My wife is a devotee of the Sicilian at L & B Spumoni Gardens, by the way.
Jeff M.
Vernor's has been available from time to time on the East Coast, at least in the north. I like it. I think it's the strongest of the conventional-store-brand ales, though Polar is gingery, too.
The Mediterranean food in the DC/NoVA area is indeed wonderful. The old Giant stores used to, at least, make their own hummus, for example, and the Dale City Giant made the best store-bought/commercially prepared hummus I've yet tasted, among the best ever.
Birch beer is what I love about the mid-Atlantic as a whole, though I still miss New England's white birch beer. And, of course, Drake's Cakes. Cheesestesk is for the birds, sorry, even the vegetarian equivalent.
Nothing reminds me of Kentucky quite like Ale-8-One. Ah, sweltering summers spent sipping a carbonated beverage that's remarkably hard to describe if you've never had it.
Btw, I hope Canada Dry has taken their Green Tea Ginger Ale national by now. I'm about to open my bottle of diet. Good stuff.
Philadelphia...more sweets I shouldn't have...the former Goldenberg's and now Chewet's Peanut Chews.
There's a shocking lack of good pizza in a city/area as Italian as Philadelphia.
For you devotees of ginger beer like Vernor's, you might try GOYA GINGER BEER available in most larger grocery stores and online. When Art Scott sampled it last summer, he almost passed out! The stuff is strong. But good!
I found Birch Beer recently at Zingerman's in Ann Arbor-but not the same as draft.
Let me tell you, they don't make real bagels here. Soft ones only and they toast them and put butter and jelly on them. Yikes!
Fresh seafood-people on the east coast are so lucky. Crab in Baltimore. Ginger Ale really seems to get made differently.
Maine as the pizza capital of the world. I thought the restaurants in Portland were exceptional.
Jose I had squid pasta in Italy but not a sandwich. I am sure it would be great with garlic and crusty bread-something hard to find in the midwest where crusty bread is regarded as stale.
Thin crust pizza for me.
Philly has more than its share of great food. I will look for that tea.
Ale 8 one and Goya, huh? Look for that too.
Goya is the Monster conglomerate of Mexican/Hispanic foods in US supermarkets. Shouldn't be too hard to find.
Philadelphia is a great restaurant city...but everyone thinks cheesesteak and only a few places make a better than acceptable pizza, the latter croggling me. When California Pizza Kitchen is one of your better options, things are just Not Right, paisani.
I wonder if we can get fresh squid here? It sounds wonderful.
Patti - I'm now officially hungry! Hmmm....well, I lived most of my adult life in Philadelphia before moving to the West Coast, so I'd say the cheese steak. I mean a real one, too, not a Steak-Ummm sandwich. Terrible, terrible, terrible for one's health, but decadent if you like them.
I lived in Philly for 18 years and I still crave cheesesteaks.
Southern California is such a mix, it's hard to say. There are, of course, a lot of really, really great burger places, including the In-n-Out Burger chain. There's Tommy's for chili burgers and chili dogs, and Pinks in Hollywood for dogs too. Then there is the "Mexican" food: burritos, chimichangas, tacos. This is usually best from the small taquerias, as opposed to the chains or full-on restaurants.
Pizza is not a strength of this area, there are a lot of pizza joints, but the food isn't any better than Costco or Pappa Johns. I'd sure like to try some REAL Chicago deep dish sometime.
Yum, Tommy's.
My sister took us there when we first visited LA in the 70's for a greasy, yummy chili burger. I loved it so much that when my sister visited NY a couple of years later she brought me one!
Jeff M.
Looking forward to trying California's fare next January. It's more a state of mind, I think.
Halo Burger and Big John's Steak And Onion are favorites in the Flint metro area but the Grand Poobah is still Angelo's Coney Island. The first location, on Davison and Franklin, used to be a late night "neutral zone" for old cops, young thugs, half-drunks and cheating spouses to get a burger or hot dog and think things over in the wee small hours. The second location is on Dort Highway, it's across the street and down a little from the Sunoco station that got firebombed last year. Anthony Bourdain would love it.
John McAuley
Yup...Steak-Ummm and Cheeze Whiz remain the industry standard. I will admit I was a vegetarian before I was within shouting distance of Pat's or Geno's.
I think I could almost do it with portabella mushrooms.
Just returned from Maryland's 7th district where Quade's is known for it's crabcakes and the district is known for it's residents shooting off elaborate fireworks. My hometown of Sheboygan, WI is known world wide for it's brats.
Rocky Mountain oysters.
I think that's one type of oysters I may pass on.
Here on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain (which, as of this morning, has oil in it, alas), we love our seafood (double-alas). My favorite is an oyster po-boy fully-dressed--that is, fried oysters on a roll with mayo, lettuce, tomato, and pickle.
But we have so many unique foods and flavors in Louisiana, it's hard to choose between jumbalaya, red beans and rice, gumbo, crawfish, Popeye's Fried Chicken...the list goes on...
I am so sorry for your continuing troubles, Deb. And that's the kind oyster I like best.
Perhaps the oyster po'boy sitch helped make me choose OR ALL THE SEAS WITH OYSTERS for FFB...
Foods from home: Alberta - Saskatoon berries that do not grow in Ontario. They are like blueberries. Ukranian food: cabbage rolls with sour cream. Palm Dairies in Edmonton used to have its main store open on Sundays in the late 50s in the afternoon to allow people to purchase whatever flavour ice cream they wanted in a cone. A time when they used real cream in the ice cream. It was such a treat to go for a Sunday drive and end up there.
Post a Comment