Infamous foods of the Great Lakes Megalopolis

Chicago pizza. Possibly Chicago hot dogs although I'll rep for those.
Cincinnati chili. The garbage plate.
Milwaukee macro beer.
Toronto peameal bacon? Poutine?
(What do people eat in Detroit? I've only been once, they did a mashed potato bar at a wedding reception, it was kind of neat tbh)

List other upsetting / polarizing foods and beverages from this region. Is there really a pattern here or is it just because coastholes like to poke fun at freshwater people? Does Jared Diamond have some explanations for this phenomenon?

cleveland - pierogi

sorry they are not upsetting or polarizing though

hotdish

i don't think cleveland can claim a food eaten everywhere east of the vistula

I feel kind of snobby about this stuff tbh, like no, your version of hamburger helper is not a "local food."

St Louis pizza (with Provel)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Boy

^ for some reason this is always the one that induces the ugh god no reaction.

that was an xpost to the provel.

Wife didn't know what hotdish was. Lol, image search.

Detroit - coney dog

Key thread:

Explain hot dish

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_dog

A number of current corn dog vendors claim responsibility for the invention and/or popularization of the corn dog. Carl and Neil Fletcher lay such a claim, having introduced their "Corny Dogs" at the Texas State Fair sometime between 1938 and 1942.[4] The Pronto Pup vendors at the Minnesota State Fair claim to have invented the corn dog in 1941.[4][5]

texas give it up, we need this

cheese curds (fresh and fried varieties)?

(not upsetting though, just wondered at and envied)

Malört?

Oh good one!

Learn something new everyday

i love chicago deep dish but if you are doing it right you eat it once or twice a year. my go-to pizzas when i'm back home are ones you can find at the likes of barnaby's or similar joints, super thin crust cut into squares and ideally topped w/italian sausage.

Detroit Coney Island

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/07/12/484985728/coney-the-hot-dog-that-fueled-detroits-middle-class-dreams

i had a st louisan bring me provel and i liked it

Skyline Chili in Cinci

Upper Peninsula pasties

http://www.history.com/news/hungry-history/miners-delight-the-history-of-the-cornish-pasty

Hey, Cornish miners got to the Iron Range too!

How the hell did I forget pasties?

peameal bacon sandwich is a very disappointing local delicacy

seriously though what is going on with your melting pot, lake people

don't forget hawaiian pizza, invented by a Panopoulos somewhere on that chunk of Canada between Huron and Erie

with the exception of hotdish, this is all bar/street food, right? not home cooking? idk something something gender public men's spaces trash ingredients raised to point of pride etc

from that history.com link

the humble pasty—which, perhaps unfortunately, rhymes with “nasty” rather than “tasty”

not unfortunate at all. what's unfortunate is all the nasty pasties out there which make the rhyme useful

springfield IL -> horseshoe sandwich (not technically GREAT LAKES i guess)
chicago -> italian beef

but I don't think this is really a pattern, pretty much every city/region in the U.S. has its own disgusting unhealthy specialty that they are super prideful about but almost never actually eat

people from Windsor, Ontario are very proud of their pizza which seems to be typified by a medium crust, large amount of shredded pepperoni on top, and canned mushrooms. there are Windsor style pizza places in other Canadian cities. it doesn't sound, or look from GISing it, very good to me, but it's usually literally the first thing you hear about Windsor if you ask someone from there about what is good about Windsor.

Also gets into when/where/how 19th-C immigration patterns happened.

poutine is not from toronto

really like chicago deep dish, it's basically impossible to find in vancouver though

St Louis pizza (with Provel)

― droit au butt (Euler)

Maybe a little outside the region, but the loose meat sandwich of Iowa/Illinois.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maid-Rite

here in indy we have the pork tenderloin sandwich. it's no taylor ham on a bagel, but at least it's not the abomination known as the loose meat sandwich.

and if we're talking st. louis, what about the st. paul sandwich? i sure as hell wouldn't eat it.

i'd never heard of that, whoa

the origin of the tenderloin (flattened pork loin breaded and served on a bun that's much smaller than the loin) is a point of contention iirc

the concept of a Juicy Lucy is upsetting to me

that sounds like it's a mitch hedberg bit

xp well that too

i will go to minnie just to eat a juicy lucy

pretty much every city/region in the U.S. has its own disgusting unhealthy specialty that they are super prideful about but almost never actually eat

I can attest that people in Wisconsin, myself included, eat fried curds on the regular.

uh lots of people eat cheeseburgers/burgers with cheese in la

Btw i invented "coastholes" right here, you can thank me later, when I run for presidetn

Overlapping, Anthony Bourdain No Reservations did an episode called "Rust Belt (Buffalo/Baltimore/Detroit)"

typical fast food of Sarnia, Ontario is, incredibly prosaically, French fries sold from food trucks http://www.whattravelwriterssay.com/brennansarniaontario1.html

Since the garbage plate has been mentioned in the OP (and is really king as far as Western NY is concerned IMO):
https://www.google.com/?ion=1&espv=2#q=beef%20on%20weck%20buffalo

I mean, Buffalo wings are probably king but they are no longer regional. Also, WindZ0r pizza = classic. Go here.

Poutine is definitely not a Torontonian thing and does not belong here imo, no more than the Montreal smoked meat sandwich. All the good poutine I've had has been in Quebec or Ottawa.

This Syracuse place is spectacular for pierogi and Polish beer or at least it was between 2009 and 2011.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_(roll)

thunder bay, ontario delicacy

http://www.post-gazette.com/food/2006/11/03/Buffalo-stuffs-Pittsburgh-in-pierogies-competition/stories/200611030174

Huh, I never heard of that Persian roll thing. I didn't know Thunder Bay had delicacies.

porketta/porchetta sandwiches

Upper Peninsula pasties

http://www.history.com/news/hungry-history/miners-delight-the-history-of-the-cornish-pasty

― Sentient animated cat gif (kingfish), Wednesday, September 7, 2016 1:08 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if we're counting this, can we count other UP/regional import foods such as juustoa, nisu, pannukakku, trenary toast, hot smoked fish, and thimbleberry jam

haha ya that's kind of crazy

was googling food origins and just found out that peanut butter was invented in montreal

xp

Woah

http://www.freep.com/story/news/columnists/john-carlisle/2015/12/20/trenary-toast-upper-peninsula-yum/77506890/

I remember googling Provel out of curiosity once and the awe and horror in descriptions of it make me want to try it, in a masochistic kinda way.

All the aforementioned Detroit and UP food for sure, plus cudighi in the UP, Wisconsin fish fries, Detroit style pizza, Mackinac island fudge, Vernors, and possibly blue moon and superman ice cream.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_(roll)

thunder bay, ontario delicacy

I always saw these in bakeries when I was growing up in Upper Michigan which was weird because Thunder Bay was only 90 miles away over Lake superior and we got their CBC station on channel 2, it's a 400 mile drive and I never knew anyone who actually went there.

Vernors, of course

Juustoa is common all the way down here in Wisconsin but it's called juustoleippa here (sp?)

Again, porchetta and beefetta sandwiches also feature in Minnesota's Iron Range.

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2017/03/minnesotas-food-crimes

https://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2017/03/hotdish-2017-most-important-hotdish-ever

Franken, in taking stock of which members were present, noted that Rep. Erik Paulsen was absent — his Ways and Means Committee was, at that time, considering the GOP’s Obamacare repeal and replacement bill.

“Erik Paulsen can’t be here today because he has a markup on the wonderful health care bill,” Franken said. Lewis, a vocal critic of Obamacare, chimed in, to laughs: “Glad to have you on board, Al.”

A topic of bipartisan agreement, though, was the growth of the Hotdish Competition into a bonafide expression of culinary creativity and Minnesota culture.

“We’ve never had so many amusing and interesting names,” Klobuchar said, lauding the entries’ “spectacular presentations.”

Dissenting, Rep. Betty McCollum (a one-time winner herself) lamented the trend toward gratuitous cheese and the use of tater tots as the base for nearly every entry.

Ornstein, a judge, disagreed. “I was afraid there’d be a lot of just heavy starch, but there’s some real tasty stuff here.”

http://i.imgur.com/OqDp8KY.png

HADDONFIELD, N.J. — The woman who created a Thanksgiving staple enjoyed by millions — the green bean casserole — has died at age 92.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/woman-who-created-green-bean-casserole-dies-at-92/2018/10/24/5b30cedc-d798-11e8-8384-bcc5492fef49_story.html

What the actual fuck

Veggie pizza on the lake! Mmmmmm! pic.twitter.com/iSiILxwibs

— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) July 6, 2019

I feel likeChicken Paprikash is all over that region. I kind of love it when it's cold out of the fridge.

I don't think I ever encountered this, but apparently it's a real thing:
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/16756/vegetable-pizza-i/

Yup, I've seen that. Typically purchased from supermarket deli sections. Cream cheese with veggies on top of dough.

(obviously he's still a monster)

In Detroit, ordered buffalo wings. Wings came out okay, but were plated with julienned carrots and slices of pickled red onion. What?

No mention of goetta yet? Had this a couple years ago and it's not bad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goetta

The Detroit pizza I had in, ahem, Telluride was really really good. One of best I've ever had.

I've had wings with carrots, didn't think it was a great lakes thing.

SHREDDED carrots with wings is bizarre, tho

Detroit pizza is good!

Chicago's got Shrimp DeJonghe (kind of a casserole) and the jibarito sandwich (served between two squashed plantains in lieu of bread), neither mentioned this far in the thread.

Driving down from Milwaukee today I stopped in for some stuff at the Mars Cheese Castle. I did have some fried cheese curds, but I have no doubt there is a ton of unfamiliar regional stuff lurking in their coolers. Though I was bummed (but not surprised) that the gift shop was not selling at Drink Wisconsibly shirts in anything smaller than large. Plenty of New Glarus, though, which might suit the thread!

I had what I fear is representative of Buffalo-style pizza (?) while passing throughlast week—a slurry of cheese and oddly sweet sauce sort of pooled in the center of a structurally unsound crust...I ended up eating only the outer crust which was unexpectedly the best part.

As a one-time Michigander who has a lot of family spanning the bottom of the hand, I have not yet run into a coherent pizza "style" or many pies that I've really liked....

i regularly have fond thoughts of eating fried whitefish while road tripping through the upper peninsula a few years ago.

That's what I missed! We were up at Sleeping Bear, Charlevoix, Boyne etc. and I somehow failed to pull the trigger on this several times.

Ate lots of good cherries though.

shoutout to timber charlies in newberry

I love beef on weck, I'm guessing that is that only a Buffalo thing

the salted kummelweck roll with caraway seeds makes it great, also the horseradish

shout out to cream cheese wontons

I was bummed (but not surprised) that the gift shop was not selling at Drink Wisconsibly shirts in anything smaller than large.

If you can fit into a medium you are not Drinking Wisconsibly my friend!

The XL looked like the shirt version of Kevin Smith's jorts. I could prop it open and camp in it.

i regularly have fond thoughts of eating fried whitefish while road tripping through the upper peninsula a few years ago.

Also there seem to be wild strawberries along the camp road now and my competes with the deer to see who can eat more. And the camp is totally covered in blueberry bushes so in a week or two we’re going to be eating pie a lot.

<3 <3 <3 <3

shout out to cream cheese wontons

― gbx, Wednesday, July 17, 2019 3:57 AM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

aka crab rangoons! Best at First Wok in Grand Rapids.

Have devoured a jibarito with La Lechera in Chicago and would do again 100x.

Chinese-style, like with a soy and sesame sauce and julienned ginger and scallion and flashed with hot peanut oil.

Not relevant to this thread but DAMN.

Hadrian as a subject matter expert I can confirm that what you had is not representative of Buffalo style pizza. Although it generally is in the cheesier and messier Midwest style, it sounds like someone might have just served you lasagna and called it pizza

I have a question about UP pasties: how big are they, generally speaking? I came across a place in Madison WI selling them but they were the size of calzone pizzas and being sold by the "whole pie" or "half pie" IIRC. Would that be common?

In my experience pasties are always 4" x 8" or so, oval shaped, and weigh like 8-16 ounces. The only time "pie" ever gets used is when people get lazy and make them at home, in the form of "pasty pie" meaning you put the fillings in a 9x13 pan and put a layer of crust over the top, to be cut and served in small squares like brownies or something.

The best regularly available ones in my neck of the woods come from a place called Connie's Kitchen, though others are fan's of Toni's Country Kitchen. The former dices the vegetables, while the latter are sliced and people have opinions either way. The elite, secret-club ones come from a church where a bunch of old women make them as a fundraiser once a year, or the ones that only show up one day a week at a "party store" (to use the Michigan term) called the Mohawk Superette which is a crazy last chance food stop on the way up to the tip of the Keweenaw. You have to get there at the right time on the right day to get one of these ones.

I have incredibly strong and inflexible beliefs about pasties - not in terms of carrots vs. rutabegas or cubed vs. sliced - but in terms of condiments. You eat them with butter and ketchup, that's it. Gravy is absolutely unacceptable and the mark of a heathen, akin to putting ketchup on a nice steak. And there should never, ever be cheese or green vegetables in them - those are not pasties.

OK, size-wise that's the same as we'd have here in the UK, roughly. One more question: what of the meat? Minced beef? Chunks of beef? Something else?

I would be interested in these semi-mythic Brigadoon pasties.

Re fried fish, my mom loves a fried perch dinner and will go out of her way to get it, which even if I could eat the flour-based batter, I wouldn't understand. I like fried things, I like fish, but the combination doesn't do THAT much for me.

SMOKED fish, now...that's different. Travels through Northern Michigan are all about the smoked whitefish (well, maybe from like Manistee and up).

(xp OMG when you say gravy do you mean the white-ish gooey "biscuit and gravy" gravy? People put that on pasties?)

Jucy Lucys and loose-meat sandwiches both eminently (lake) superior to regular cheeseburgers.

I'm going camping at Noordhouse Dunes in August and I'm already planning how much Kowalski sausage and smoked fish I can bring back.

smoked fish is amazing

also pickled herring

huh i had never heard of Shrimp DeJonghe in 15 years of living in chicago

Meat in pasties is usually a 50/50 mix of coarse ground beef and pork. Lots of grocery stores around here have it shrink wrapped and just labeled "pasty meat". As for gravy, it seems to be brown beef gravy, definitely not biscuits and gravy style.

Some old MI cooking show was in the UP once and talked to a pasty shop owner along US 2 who said "tourists eat them with gravy, connoisseurs eat them with ketchup, but people who grew up eating them eat them with butter and ketchup".

Smoked fish is a big deal; I don't love it but my wife will buy slabs of trout and whitefish and eat it with anything. The fish market where we get it used to have trout and whitefish roe that was fucking amazing but all if it now gets shipped elsewhere because yoopers don't want to eat goddamn fish eggs. My wife's uncle and stepfather were cleaning fish last year with blood and shit and and guts all over themselves and were nauseated at the idea that I wanted to salt and eat the roe that came out of one of the trout.

Thanks, that's interesting - fwiw actual Cornish Pasties are supposed to have chunks of beef in them, Devonshire pasties have ground beef but no-one's ever heard of Devonshire pasties. I once saw a shop assistant in Devon admonish an American tourist for asking for a Cornish pasty.

my wife's fam (from GR) has vacationed on the Keweenaw for like 80 years (not kidding) and I've been enough times to have enjoyed a fat pasty at the Shoreline in Eagle Harbor (RIP). we moved far away so we don't go anymore but I miss the smoked fish there for sure.

aka crab rangoons! Best at First Wok in Grand Rapids.

Have devoured a jibarito with La Lechera in Chicago and would do again 100x.

― There's more Italy than necessary. (in orbit), Wednesday, July 17, 2019 6:06 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

they're not crab rangoons, though! cuz, like, no crab. a pal of mine had ~thoughts~ about this: http://www.citypages.com/restaurants/is-the-cream-cheese-wonton-minnesotas-true-hometown-food/512486951

Cool! Thanks for that knowledge & article--did not know there was an *official* non-crab version, as opposed to some places just being too cheap to put any imitation crab in there.

The ones at First Wok are the 4-lobed dumpling style, appear to contain both crab and scallions/chives, and use really light wonton papers for a delicate result. Can't recommend enough. Have never had them as good anywhere else.

xp that's awesome, I was swimming with my kid in front of the Shoreline on Saturday which is still there as a motel but no longer a restaurant. Someday I will realize my dream of encountering Iggy Pop visiting his parents who (used to? still?) have a house in Eagle Harbor.

I'd assumed that City Pages article was what spurred this latest revive tbh.

When the first bite of a wonton hits, the tongue is overwhelmed by the tastes, both richly fatty and somehow bland—the twin arch flavors of Midwestern food. Quality cream cheese wontons have flavor to their filling, but one that isn’t aggressive, just an enhancement to the richness.

Having returned from Scotland only a fortnight ago I have newfound respect for smoking fish and stretching the usefulness of a dead animal by mixing its offal with grain, but I see no reason to get excited about wrapping dense dairy fat in fried dough, and probably never will. To each their own.

I didn't know about the Iggy Pop / Eagle Harbor connection! I too have gone swimming in front of the Shoreline with my kids. The resto was nothing too special, but pasties were frequently available there.

This thread is a vegan nightmare, but when I used to eat animals, the only fish I would consume was boiled whitefish slathered in butter...to this day, it's the only thing that makes me think twice about cheating. In Wisconsin they dump the fish in a gigantic pot about eight feet in diameter, and then it comes out all flaky and then they dump butter all over it. I just could never eat any fish that wasn't local. I think I indulged in lake perch once in a while, too.

I remember when growing up in Michigan lake perch was everywhere - people would go out and bring in them in by the dozens. Then the 90's hit and they were done. Apparently they've been making a comeback.

Chicago's got Shrimp DeJonghe (kind of a casserole) and the jibarito sandwich (served between two squashed plantains in lieu of bread), neither mentioned this far in the thread.

chicken vesuvio too!

just wanna say to anybody that is on the fence about provel: try that shit, provel slaps

imo's is the place to go in STL

sidenote, i have met two people who have an imo's tattoo. which should be taken to indicate that the pizza is, in fact, gas

Does “cheddar cheese on apple pie” belong on this thread?

1. Not sure if it is a great lakes megalopolis dish
2. Not sure if it is a food crime

there are non-US takes on cheddar and apple pie

I read many years ago that eating cheddar with an apple was a transcendent experience, and after scoffing (US meaning) I tried it, and god damn it was good.

Never had it on a pie, but why wouldn't it be good too?

not on top of but with. I'm from the eastern great lakes, it was appreciated in my family, wasn't aware of it being something regional

and it is a good combination I think

"I can attest that people in Wisconsin, myself included, eat fried curds on the regular."

I'd been in Wisconsin a few days, had been eating pretty unhealthy stuff. Went to a brewery, ordered a mixed salad. Part of the mix was…cheese curds. The non-fried version tho so I guess that counts as healthy in WI.

never heard of fried curds

Fried cheese curds are the best fried food.

Had fried curds, with gluten free breading (wife is Celiac), on the way thru Wisconsin yesterday. They were great!

am interested, but hard to imagine it. it sounds as fantastical as fried snickers bars

Surely you've had mozzarella sticks?

yes, what does that have to do with fried cheese curds

Fried cheese curds are like fried mozzarella sticks cut to the size of tater tots that squeak when you bite them. They rule.

I was thinking of baked cheese sticks, basically bread with a cheese flavor

I've never had fried mozzarella sticks or fried cheese curds

as much as I hate to give Wisconsin credit, curds are the bomb

Fried cheese curds are great, but only for about 17 seconds after they're fried.

We do have them here in WI for sure, but I've always understood that the non-fried ones were more essentially Wisconsin, and that the fried version is more of a MN thing?

I really prefer squeaky non-fried curds.

don't really understand the squeaky aspect

I love cheese, and I spent a lot of time at my godparents’ dairy farm in upstate new york growing up, but have never heard of cheese curds

I love cheese, and I spent a lot of time at my godparents’ dairy farm in upstate new york growing up, but have never heard of cheese curds

i grew up in st lawrence county and i most definitely heard of cheese curds

there are some really weird hyperlocal ones in that part of NY - croghan bologna and glazier hot dogs immediately come to mind

there's one food truck in the portland metro area that makes poutine but i don't like their poutine, the gravy is too oniony. near where i'm at there's a bar that has fried cheese curds on the menu, which we get on the regular. the grocery stores out here usually have at least one brand of local cheese curds - the most prevalent are the facerock. the most-promoted are the garlic "vampire killer" brand but you can get regular as well, which we do to make our own poutine. sometimes we can find beecher's as well, which i do tend to like better than facerock, but it's hit and miss. finding local giardiniera around here is extremely difficult. there are a couple pac nw brands, but they're generally not great. either the chop is too rough or too fine or they're too spicy or too bland... you can't just get a nice simple medium giardiniera locally made. getting one from the big chicago brand is probably the best you can do.

the last time i went back to indiana i had poutine from three different restaurants in three days and they were all good. it was basically the major reason i went back there and unfortunately as good as poutine is it isn't enough to make indiana tolerable for me anymore.

Re: squeakiness, if you know you know. I think it just has to be experienced.

On No Reservations, Bourdain was taken around Cleveland eateries (started to write "arteries," those too) by Harvey Pekar and comrades; can't find the ep online so far, but here's an excerpt from the comic book they did together:
https://anthonybourdain.tumblr.com/post/26934473398/heres-a-joint-comic-i-did-with-harvey-pekar-and
Trying to remember Louisville's special dishes, when I lived there long ago: several involving mostly locally known whiskies, I know that.

Hot Brown

hot browns are so fucking great

benedictine spread otoh is massively overrated

beef on weck is the only dish that I grew up knowing for sure was only a western new york state thing

benedictine is one of my favorite things in the whole world

Louisville? I think we’re getting off topic.

yeah i thought so too but i needed to stand up for benedictine

"beef on weck" was so alien to my cultural life experience it required Google Translate to figure it out

Michigan pasties were mentioned upthread. My friend just got back from the Upper Peninsula, which has its own variants of Cornish pasties. I know other great lake states have pasties, too, and their own stories to go with them, but this is the backstory of the UP pasty (from wiki):

The Upper Peninsula of Michigan: In some areas, pasties are a significant tourist attraction, including an annual Pasty Fest in Calumet, Michigan in mid August. Pasties in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan have a particularly unusual history. Many ethnic groups adopted the pasty for use in the Copper Country copper mines; the Finnish immigrants to the region mistook it for the traditional piiraat and kuuko pastries. The pasty has become strongly associated with all cultures in this area, and in the similar Iron Range in northern Minnesota.

In fact, one recipe I saw when I was googling actually calls them Cornish Finnish Michigan Pasties. Anyway, my friend said the pasties where he was tasted like shit and were in dire need of hot sauce.

Has there been a mention of Merkts cheese spread in Wisconsin yet?

the joke growing up in the UP was that the cornish invented the pasty but the finns made them edible

I was just up there for three weeks and for the first time since moving away ages ago I didn't have a pasty, mostly because Connie's is closed on weekends. And Covid.

On my trip back to the lower peninsula I decided that I need to get a gap filler tattoo of the smoked fish sign along US2 before the bridge (I've never stopped there as my wife always buys smoked fish at Peterson's on quincy hill):

https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/09/bf/a4/4c/gustafson-s-smoked-fish.jpg

Hahaha awesome

That reminds me that I learned that someone used the DEER SKULL BOILING sign as the basis for a homemade typeface.

holy fucking shit please let it be called DEER SKULL BOILING.otf

i think the same guy has a sign about rentals of some sort down the road a bit.

was it you or someone else where we were talking about setting up the artisanal skull boiling operation nearby?

Hey side note, I'm a lifelong WI resident but planning my very first trip to the UP for next month. I'd like to talk to someone with experience if someone wouldn't mind emailing?

Indiana and Iowa argue over who owns the breaded pork tenderloin, which is pretty similar to German Jagerschnitzel as a sandwich. Some bars in Indiana go for having the 'biggest one in town'. There used to be a bar in Bloomington had one that was literally as big as a pie pan.

https://food.fnr.sndimg.com/content/dam/images/food/fullset/2010/3/25/4/FNM_100211A-0069-72dpi_s4x3.jpg.rend.hgtvcom.826.620.suffix/1382545799829.jpeg

Hmmm, Indiana just barely squeaks in as a 'Great Lakes' state and Iowa can gtfo.

Burgoo is a Kentucky stew that is also associated with the derby, but bunches of people like to make it with 'deer' meat.

This recipe looks pretty right, but it is one of those things like Chili that people make quite a few different ways.

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/221096/traditional-kentucky-burgoo/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Megalopolis does (generously) include Iowa and Kentucky fwiw

Jordan I'd be happy to help especially if you're talking western UP

was it you or someone else where we were talking about setting up the artisanal skull boiling operation nearby?

― joygoat, Thursday, August 6, 2020 6:13 PM (fifty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm down with that too

Btw if you want to see a handful of yooplxors talk to one another more than a decade ago

Waaah christ dere eh, pard? A 906 thread.

I tell you the Kentucky river is some weird geological sxxt. Those mountains are like the oldest mountains on earth like from back in your Miles Davis Pangaea days. It and the Ohio all run to the Mississippi and it all used to be smushed together, which kinda blows my mind to try to grasp. But hey, we like the fried food too...

Jordan feel free to email me - I’ll happily evangelize a small portion of the western UP (a lot of which will overlap with what dan has to say) and offer advice or basic interpretations of other spots

Thanks! I will be dming both of you.

When I was a kid visiting the UP every summer, my family would invariably take a trip to Riverside Pizza in Iron River. It is reportedly the best pizza in the UP. I didn't eat pizza back then and haven't been up there since the late 90s, so I don't have an opinion, but my folks and relatives still eat there when they are in town. That is the extent of my UP food knowledge, other than rutabaga pasties.

Jordan I think I emailed you directly at the correct address, my ilx mail doesn't work anymore.

Nothing yooper to add but I just miss Northern Midwestern baked goods, like coffeecake and bear claws and kringle. Italian pastries are so far inferior afaic--you can have all the cannoli in the world, keep them over there by you. Bring me the kringle!

They even sell kringle at our local Trader Joe's.

The blueberries were crazy this year and my wife has made two blueberry pies and four blueberry coffee cakes in the last month. I just had a piece of the final one with coffee as I type this.

And I remember being disappointed by Italian pastries as a kid and especially by Mexican pastries more recently, like those gloriously colorful frosted swirly rolls that taste like day old hamburger buns.

agreed on Mexican pastries. I barely know Italian pastries.

this is the first time in like 70 years that my father-in-law won't be up on the Keeweenaw. The rona's finally too much.

Mexican pastries, like Indian desserts imo, are just gross sugar bombs, which I can only theorize evolved as a companion to such flavorful cooking.

This is one I didn't learn about until moving to Minnesota. (I grew up in Michigan and lived in Chicago too.) I have heard them called pickle dogs, too.

just had to explain "lutheran sushi", also known as "pickle roll ups" to my coastal girlfriend and somehow it made me miss the Midwest even more pic.twitter.com/gXhEELu1ZK

— Kari Paul (@kari_paul) November 25, 2020

What the fuck

It is lunch meat (roast beef in my experience) wrapped around a pickle with cream cheese.

Tbh sounds tasty.

For parties I often use flatbread and cream cheese with some smoked salmon and roll them up into little bites like that. They're fucking great, go fast and run out first.

I've seen Minnesotans use lefse for the same type of concoction.

I've never seen this, but my wife's family (Lutherans from Iowa and Minnesota) likes to eat Little Smokies in lefse. She calls it "warmeposa," but googling turns up no such word, so maybe her grandma made it up.

— Michael St. John (@frightwigwam) November 25, 2020

Considering that Toronto's ubiquitous meal is roti, I don't know if it fits in with the rest of these Great Lakes delicacies

The hot dago discussion on the 'is this racist?' thread reminded of the 'dago beef' sandwich that dan m has probably made a bunch of at the restaurant where he worked and both of these reminded me of the horror of the pizza burger:

https://milwaukeerecord.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/SupremePizzaBurgers3.jpg

which apparently came somewhere out of wisconsin but I remember there being store brand versions around when I was a kid.

I remember getting sick once and associating it with eating these so 35 years later they still gross me out to think about

Pizza Hut besmirching Detroit's good name:
https://i.redd.it/kbjan13pe6e61.jpg

Yes I made a lot of those beef sandwiches, which were really just a french dip with marinara on top. Also, I liked pizza burgers as a kid.

Probably too far afield from the Great Lakes but I discovered chislic this week.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chislic

It’s interesting to compare Chicago Italian beef sandwiches, which are in the news right now because of The Bear and originated in the early 1900s, and Beef on Weck, a German invention popularized in Buffalo in the 1800s. They are similar except that the Chicago version includes bell peppers, giardiniera and a french roll and the Buffalo version features only sliced beef and horseradish on a kimmelweck roll (an amazing baked good). They are both served au jus

I have had many of both and ime, the weck is not drenched in jus to the same extent as the Chicago beef.

The Chicago ingredients on a kimmelweck roll would be the ultimate imo

Upper Peninsula pasties

Oh, man, this makes me miss my grandmother, whose parents emigrated to the UP from Finland. When I was a kid, I thought of pasties as a Finnish food, because she made them, but I reckon the Finnish miners learned to make them from the "Cousin Jacks" with whom they worked. This is a dead ringer for her pasties:

https://www.daringgourmet.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Cornish-Pasty-6-final-scaled.jpg

I have been to Chicago, Detroit and Toronto and had delicious food in all of them. What asshole started this thread?!?

Great thread imo

delicious food you say? that's a target as big as the side of a barn.

TIL about Ricobene’s Chicken Vesuvio and their breaded steak sandwich and I want both:

https://ricobenespizza.com/chicago-bridgeport-ricobene-s-food-menu

Living in Bridgeport was so bad for my diet

Ricobene's is so beloved that there are four or five different items that are legitimately vying for best thing on the menu.

Also four or five copycats in the neighborhood that are also pretty good

Not to mention all the Chinese, Mexican, Polish-Korean, hotdogs, etc places

the photography on that menu is ace! jeez louise

gotta say i'm skeptical of a place that does both pizza & bbq, one of those has to be bad

and wings and sandwiches

they all do look great, though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUseb8XEL6U

My (Ohio) grandmother made something like this. She called them cheesy potatoes. No funeral overtones but there were definitely hash browns and corn flakes included.

I thought of another one in the country boy sandwich, which is pretty much a hamburger made with fresh pork sausage instead of a beef patty. Mostly they were served with just pickle and onion and mustard.

I know I had them at the Converse Cafe in Indiana as a kid and they were also a staple you could find some diners in Ohio as that part of corn country they had hogs and fresh sausage. Bob Evans being the big brand that came out of the restaurant and their pork sausage.

Thank you to alerting me to monstrosity that is the Windsor pizza.