american food i have known & (mostly) loved, part 1

Paul — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:40:02 +0000

As a foreigner, one could be forgiven for having very low expectations of American food. Mysteriously, what has been selected for export as representative of the USA tends to be fairly vile combinations of grease, beef, sugary bread and fake cheese. Many, many pre-made US foods contain ridiculously huge quantities of high fructose corn syrup, which to my tastes makes things taste sweet in a nasty, artificial way.

Travelling around the States, however, it became apparent that there were many fantastic regional foods which despite mostly being combinations of grease, beef, sugary bread and fake cheese were far from vile.

Below are some of the standouts from around the USA.

Name: Underdog hotdogs

Location: San Francisco, California

Comments: Excellent organic hot dogs served with potato gems/tots – probably the best hot dog I had in the USA. Went down very nicely with flavoured iced tea, which is ubiquitous in the US and cheap. Underdog is near the science museum in western San Francisco and worth the walk of a couple of blocks to visit if you are ever there.

Rating: A-

Name: Fresh fruit

Location: Somewhere on the side of the road between San Francisco and Yosemite National Park, California (near a drive-through gun shop)

Comments: So fresh food does exist in this country… Surprisingly juicy and delicious; blueberries were particularly sweet and the strawberries were about twice the size of Australian ones. These stalls are dotted along the highway to Yosemite, which travels through a large fruit growing region east of San Francisco. Compared to most food in the US this was cheap, too.

Rating: A-

Name: Deep dish pizza

Location: Pizzeria Uno, Chicago, Illinois

Comments: Without exaggeration one of the best things I have ever eaten. Insanely filling but insanely good. The crust was buttery and delicious, closer to something cakey or biscuity than italian pizza dough. The rest of it was made upside down, with filling, cheese, then tonnes of tomato sauce dousing the whole thing. Even the green capsicum, which I ordinarily dislike, was delicious. I was pretty hungry and could only eat one slice from a 9″ pizza (i.e. an Australian ‘small’).

Rating: A+++

Name: Chicago-style hot dog

Location: Street stall, Chicago, Illinois

Comments: It is some kind of crime to eat a hot dog with tomato sauce in Chicago. Instead it must be served as shown – mustard, relish, chillis, salad. This combination was ok but a little underwhelming – the chillis seemed to be hot for the sake of it rather than adding much, and the actual dog was nothing special, just a typical watery street hot dog. The relish was a good addition though.

Rating: C+

Name: Beef, gravy mashed potato sandwich thing

Location: Eleven City Diner, Chicago Illinois

Comments: A mountain of roast beef and mashed potato on bread swimming in gravy. Simple, but extremely tasty. The restaurant was a New York/jewish style diner with all kinds of specialties. After too much oily American food this was nice and straightforward. I did feel like I was having heart palpitations by the time I finished. Eleven City is open late and located in downtown Chicago, which is another thing to recommend it if travelling.

Rating: B+

Name: Philly cheese steak

Location: By George, Reading Terminal Market, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Comments: An epic combination of bread, roast beef and cheez-wiz. Absolutely delicious although very greasy too. Half of a standard sized cheese steak was more food than a normal human needed (but of course this is America we’re talking about, so these were available with chips and various other additions to make sure that at least 50 mega-calories could be obtained by starving workers in their lunch breaks). Quite hard to eat due to high density and grease factor but… well worth it.

Rating: A-

100 megacalorie warhead

Paul — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 08:00:22 +0000

Continuing with the emerging theme of “totally repulsive things you should never actually eat”, Erin points to this masterpiece of high-energy, low nutrient food: various McDonalds products on a pizza.

The gun in the final picture is presumably there so you can finish yourself off rather than waiting another 10-15 years for the effects of the saturated fats to kill you.

truly visionary

Paul — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:35:39 +0000

This reminds me of my own battered batter project (the secret is to roll the first round of batter in flour to reduce oil before re-battering): french fry coated hotdog. Truly, they are years ahead of me.

You know you want it. Thanks to Karloskar.

Edit: I have to add a link to this, too – if only they’d had the foresight to use shortcrust pastry for the cone it would have been perfect (thanks… I think, Riya).

it’s rice, jim, but not as we know it

Karloskar — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:12:48 +0000

Seems like someone with a lot of creativity and time on their hands has decided to get creative with bentō boxes.

See the full set of bentō box pictures.

a roll of the dice » food

american food i have known & (mostly) loved, part 1

100 megacalorie warhead

truly visionary

it’s rice, jim, but not as we know it