For those of you who grew up in places that have distinctive regional cuisines...

[xiphias]

Some foods are place-bound. There's no reason that a Cincinnati Chili couldn't be made outside of Cincinnati, or that there could be a Garbage Plate somewhere other than Rochester, NY. But they're not. And some are a bit less place-bound, but still place-bound -- try getting Moxie outside of New England. Is there a region somewhere down South where they drink it, too? But not most places.

So, for those of you who grew up with such a cuisine, how old were you when you realized that other places just don't have it?

For me, I was just thinking about Whoopie Pies. And the age that I realized that they're not ubiquitous outside of New England was 40 2/3.

Yeah. Okay, I'm slow sometimes.

Oddly, I think I've got almost all the ingredients I'd need to make them in my kitchen right now. The only thing I'm missing is ... eggs. I've never made them before; it didn't occur to me until half an hour ago when Lis asked me that they were a thing that you actually COULD make. But they don't look all that difficult. It's just basically chocolate cake and buttercream frosting, really.

Well, one of the variations we found includes a buttercream/marshmallow combination frosting. Dunno how that would be.

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

It took a while to realize that you can't get bagels or pastrami outside of New York...

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

You're saying that deliberately, aren't you?

I'll point out that there are Montrealers who read my LJ...

Honestly, it is revelatory to have a Montreal bagel in one hand and a New York bagel in the other. I refuse to say that one is better than the other (c'mon, guys, if I take a position on that, SOMEONE among my friends is going to shank me). I WILL say that they are both extremely good and very different.

And I can point you to places around me who make good pastrami, and places that make good bagels. At least one of the sausage makers makes a pastrami (not kosher, but good), and there's a place on Rte 1 that I drive past taking Lis to work that does nothing but bagels, with a proper kettle and all.

Am I going to say that this pastrami is as good as Katz's? Maybe, maybe not, but if you had it, you would definitely admit that it actually IS pastrami, not just some sort of fake pastrami-ish sliced lunch meat.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Saying it deliberately: Yeah, I have a troll icon for just such occasions. ;)

But I hear you; this is different. I honestly thought pastrami was something you could get everywhere growing up, and it really isn't. But places do _call_ what they serve pastrami, and you can see that's clearly their intent, so that's different than what you're talking about in the original post. And as you point out, there are a few bagel hotspots around the world, even if the bagels in my hometown are the best in the world. (No, really, as voted one time by Food Network!)

For me the food that was really local was Mallomars, which were of strictly regional distribution when I first moved away from their epicenter. I think nowadays you can get them in other places, though.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I have almost never seen a lardy-cake since I left Oxford; it took me embarrassingly long to understand that it was barely known outside a few southern counties. On the other hand, I picked up fairly quickly that it was entirely unknown in the US. I keep promising myself to rectify that deficiency...

(In other news, Cincinnati chili, you say? This was new to me. I have now read Wiki on the subject, and recipes beside. Hmm. My poor friends: I fear they are doomed to my experimentation...)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

... I'm not sure how you'll react to the concept of Cincinnati chili once you look into it. Let's just start by saying that the chili in question must come from a can...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Nooo. Noooo...!

(Happily I have a recipe that starts where it ought to, with ground beef and spices. And cocoa. I don't care how authentic that is, it is the Way of Good Food and I can go there. Though I will soak and cook my own beans, where even the Saveur recipe takes them from a can.)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Aw, c'mon, aren't you overthinking this? Hormel-brand canned chili poured on top of cheap spaghetti, with grated cheap mass-produced cheddar-like cheese on top! What could go wrong?

Okay, fine, apparently there are people who make this out of actual food instead. But it sort of seems like that misses the point. Some foods aren't actually SUPPOSED to be made out of recognizable food.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

The original must have been made of actual food, though, surely? And I have been known to add chillies to my regular spaghetti sauce, so it ain't that far different, just a little more specialised in the spicing...

This is the recipe I'm looking at, and, y'know? That sounds rather good.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Of course, I'm certainly being unfair here.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

seek out the episode of No Reservations where Bourdain goes to Cleveland to see Ruhlman, and forces Ruhlman to go to a Skyline Chili locations (Cincinnati chili chain) and eat the 'Skyline 3-Way'. It's funny as hell.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard of a lardy cake, but looking them up, they look somewhat similar to bobka, except, well, for the basic thing that's in the name. Bobka are make with butter, which is kind of a major difference...

The lardy cake sounds nifty, though.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Lardy cake is indeed excellent: sweet and fruity and rich (and not at all pig-flavoured, should anyone be wondering). And now I have bobka to explore too, because I'm unfamiliar. See what a new world you're opening up for me tonight!

[gansje.livejournal.com]

I knew about cheesesteaks in their purest form not existing much beyond Philadelphia, South New Jersey and Wilmington, DE, but I was blown away when I went off to my first year of college in NYC in 1987 and no one knew what a Goldenberg's Peanut Chew was. Even through I knew cheesesteaks were a region-bound cuisine, I never quite... got what that really meant until the Peanut Chew incident. D'oh.

I gave a prized package of them to my roommate, who was from Rhode Island, and she called them, to my utter amazement, "disgusting, dehydrated Snickers bars." We're still close friends, somehow.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

There are candy shops around here that specialize in regional and rare candies, so I have tried a Goldenberg's Peanut Chew once. I found it ... decent. It wasn't my favorite. I mean, it was good, don't get me wrong, but I could tell that I would have liked it a lot more if I'd grown up with it.

[lietya.livejournal.com]

Well, this is the moment I learned about Whoopie pies, so 37. ;) To be fair, I also don't eat them, so.

I believe I was in my late 20s when I realized Fluff was a New England thing.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Fluff is not entirely a New England thing! We definitely had it growing up in the Midwest.

... Although, hmm, maybe that was marshmallow *creme* and not really the same, after all. Hmmm. Suddenly I am sad.

[lietya.livejournal.com]

I think it *is* basically the same thing, and it's only the Fluff brand that is specifically NE. Actually, it makes me feel better to think one can still get the stuff under other names, so please don't be sad. :)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

The Massachusetts one is the only one with no artificial flavors, colors, stabilizers, or preservatives, unless you count vanillin instead of vanilla to be an artificial flavor (to me, it's a borderline case. It's not vanilla, so it definitely is an IMITATION flavor, but whether it's an ARTIFICIAL flavor, I dunno.)

Fluff is egg whites, sugar, corn syrup, and vanillin. Everything else has other stuff in it, too.

[lietya.livejournal.com]

Oh, interesting. I had no idea, and while I'm not sure how much it'd matter to me (I'd have to taste test some of the others), it's good to know.

[fauxklore]

Fluff is available in NY, too. Growing up on Long Island, fluffernutter sandwiches were fairly common.

[lietya.livejournal.com]

I'm aware that it's technically incorrect, but I think of NY as part of New England. (I'm in CT, right up on the MA border, if it matters to why I'm geographically challenged.)

[thespian.livejournal.com]

fwiw, it was always available in southern Ontario when I was growing up.

[sproutntad.livejournal.com]

Now I really want a Fluffer-Nutter......

[bercilakslady.livejournal.com]

You can only get bagels in NYC. Montreal bagels are delicious, but different beasts entirely.

You can only get my preferred form of pizza in NYC, though I'll admit there are places that have other things they call pizza.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I learned at the age of five that Vernor's ginger-ale and Cornish pasties were not to be found in Tucson, after my family moved there from Detroit. On the flip side, I discovered marvelous *real* Mexican food long before Taco Bell became a national chain.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I have also heard that Tex-Mex is a distinct cuisine than either Texan OR Mexican, influenced by both, but its own beast.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is. My experience of *real* Tex-Mex came later, after I'd moved to Texas and married Paula. My mother-in-law had once been a tour guide in San Antonio, and she knew some Chili Queens from back in the days when they'd have chili cook-offs there in the Plaza. Oh my, that was an education.

[fauxklore]

A friend who grew up in Maine makes pumpkin whoopee pies. I may be attempting them this weekend, but I am thinking of a cream cheese filling, with some ginger liqueur in it.

The things I think of as very regional are mostly completely unavailable anywhere these days. I only know of one place to get pletzel. And nesselrode pie is completely extinct.

[ailbhe]

White Pudding. As distinct from Black Pudding. It's not a part of the English Fried Breakfast at all.

Their loss.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

We've got an Irish pub near us that serves an Irish breakfast.

It's got both white and black puddings. Their black pudding has lots and lots of nutmeg. I quite like it.

I have been known to swap out the Irish bacon for American bacon. Sorry, Ireland, England, Canada, and, indeed, most other countries -- your bacon is good, but I like the American version better, so long as it's fried crispy enough to be frangible.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

we don't call it Canadian bacon in Canada, btw. It's peameal bacon or peameal ham, depending where you are. We generally just called it 'peameal', even though it's actually rimmed in cornmeal these days.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

When I was living in Ottawa in the mid-80s, a roommate introduced me to Liberté yogurt, a high-fat-content spoonful of decadence from Québec, just available near the Québec border. I enjoyed it there again when I lived in Ottawa in the mid-90s, and was thrilled to find that it had migrated a few more hours into Anglophone Ontario when I moved to Kingston. I moved out west in 2008, apprehensive about how it would be different from what I was used to, and Liberté yogurt had made it here before me. (Of course, now they have lots of other products like Greek yogurt, qvark, and kefir, and not so many flavours of the super-rich stuff).

Similarly, I'd never heard of poutine before encountering it on a ski trip outside Québec City in 1984, it was a novelty when I could get it from a chip wagon in Ottawa in 1987, and it didn't become a familiar food across Canada until later that century.

Hmm, what else? The Tim Horton's doughnut chain started in my hometown. I didn't notice when it became ubiquitous (and it's still not very common in Vancouver.)

[thespian.livejournal.com]

poutine was available at Harvey's in 1988, because I was in Toronto, at Ryerson, and whenever I got more than 80% on my returned assignments I let myself have one at the Harvey's 3 blocks from the school.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Dark chocolate cake with marshmallow frosting is the first thing you get in the Afterlife if you've been really good. Go for it.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

AC Moore and Michaels both carry a Wilton whoopie pan, it's usually on sale for $5, and it will help you immensely with making sure that you get the halves the same size.

[banshee99.livejournal.com]

My mom, originally from Massachusetts, makes whoopie pies often.

AND THEY ARE AMAZING.

[paper-crystals.livejournal.com]

Snickerdoodles, which is kind of funny because my mother never made them, ever. Other mothers always made them and I am not even sure if they are specific to the New England region.

Also, one thing which I have been surprised isn't made more outside of New England is corn chowder. Probably because corn chowder tends to be a things which New England Jews make because they don't eat clam chowder (at least my family did). And most other regions don't have the same concentration of seafood culture, cold and Jews.

[cos]

We lived in Uganda my first year and a half, and some of my few memories from there are taste memories of things I ate. Next 5 years were in Israel. Then we moved to the US. So I've never had this experience of realizing retroactively that some food I've been used to and thought commonplace, was actually specific to my region; by the time I was old enough to have noticed anything of the sort, I'd had three radical cuisine changes. I grew up knowing how dramatically food varies.

The closest parallel that comes to mind for me was my surprise, after we moved to the US (when I was about 7), that there could be meals without bread. For non-babies, that is; I'm sure I had meals without bread as a baby in Uganda but I probably thought that was just babies. Everyone else had bread with every meal.