Many tourists stick to the well-known highlights of American cuisine, such as New Orleans gumbo, Texas barbecue, and New York pizza. However, if you look a little closer, you’ll find hyper-regional specialities that are rarely featured on national food lists but are fervently defended by the locals.
People in central Connecticut argue over which small-town restaurant serves the best steamed cheeseburgers—yes, steamed, not grilled—a peculiarity unique to the area where the patty and cheese are cooked with steam, creating an exceptionally moist burger with cheese that melts into a molten blanket. The historic standard-bearer is Ted’s in Meriden, but newer establishments continue to evolve the tradition.
Travel to Cincinnati and you’ll encounter “Cincinnati chili,” which isn’t chili in the Texan sense at all. This Mediterranean-spiced meat sauce served over spaghetti (and often topped with an improbable mountain of shredded cheddar) reflects the Greek and Macedonian influences on the city’s food history. Locals order it by numbers—”three-way” includes cheese, while a “five-way” adds beans and onions.
St. Louis guards its culinary peculiarities too. The city’s pizza features an ultra-thin, cracker-like crust topped with Provel cheese (a processed mix of cheddar, Swiss, and provolone) that’s unknown in most parts of the country.Meanwhile, a regional favourite is still gooey butter cake, a dense, sweet breakfast treat that was accidentally invented in the 1930s.
In addition to their odd ingredients or processes, these regional delicacies are fascinating because of how they reflect the immigration patterns, cultural exchanges, and economic conditions that produced these communities. We can learn more about the history of America from these delicious history lessons than from any museum exhibit.
At last, these hyperlocal specialities show that American cuisine is much more nuanced than national trends and chain restaurants may suggest, providing the curious foodie with both gastronomic exploration and cultural insight.
