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

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.