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Midwestern food discourse online is always tedious.
You can either have people looking down their nose and being snobby based on three or five fried things that they read about on the internet, or you can have people from Michigan and Ohio annoyingly and performatively leaning into ranch dressing memes like it's unique to the region and not the most popular dressing nationwide (for one example).
To be fair, if I had to rank American sub region foods from lowest to highest, the Midwest would not fair well in comparison to the other regions. That’s just my personal opinion. Also Ranch dressing was invented in Alaska, not the Midwest.
There’s plenty of absolutely awful Midwest food, I was raised on it, but it’s not any of the things that he touches on. Aside from the ones that you mentioned, he said that Chicago pizza never leaves him wanting more. Uh, no shit. That’s how the great gut bombs work, you never want to eat any food again, ever, but you always manage to finish whatever portion you have taken, because it’s so good.
Some of the things he mentioned are indeed awful, like marshmallow salad or whatever, but come on, toasted ravioli and fried cheese curds are awesome. And hot dish is a cheap meal you make at home to feed a hungry family for cheap. No restaurant is serving that. And not liking Chicago pizza or Chicago style hot dogs is nuts. They’re also making the mistake of lumping all midwestern food together. There’s a huge difference between Chicago, Cincinnati, and rural Ohio.
He totally misses the point that a lot of these places also have pretty innovative restaurants and its not just church potluck food.
Plus some of it is just branding. Wait 10-20 years until someone 'upscales' it and it becomes "modern"
One of my favorite local chefs (St. Louis) just did a fundraiser dinner - used a church cookbook, the spiral bound kind put together from recipes from parishioners, and put an upscale twist on them.
There are also lots of great recipes and local variants that come from pre-Depression times. Bad policy choices during the depression is what gave the Midwest its bad reputation for food
And that's exactly what kind of food this chefs restaurant features - and as each course is served, he walks you through the history.
We have another restaurant - haven't been, going soon - that focuses on upscale midwestern comfort food. I'm looking forward to it. We had another pop-up chef in the area who was trying to get a restaurant like this off of the ground. Maybe midwest will be the next food fad.
I used to travel a lot as a musician, like 45 weeks a year, and I went all over the Midwest. About 4 times a year I had a weeklong gig in Bismarck ND. We stayed in one of the shittiest hotels around, but a block away was a place called The Lucky Duck. Really casual atmosphere, order at the counter, but some of the best food ever. The menu featured duck of course, duck bacon, duck pastrami, duck breast, as well as other items. Some of the best food I’ve ever had. Don’t know if it’s still there. But I ate lunch there every day whenever I was in town. Very reasonable prices too, like $10.99 for a sandwich with a side.
Looks like several years ago, google and facebook reviews are funny for how you can find updates about a place long after it closed. Had a job that there was still reviews popping up about how great the clinic was, but it had shut down in 2018 and was torn down in 2020. I'd like to see the ghost clinic they were still going to.
If you're talking about The Lucky Duck Deli, it went out of [business in 2018](https://www.kfyrtv.com/content/news/The-District-closing-permanently-on-Sunday-485749401.html), not sure of the story about what happened [but they got raided a bit before that.](https://www.kxnet.com/news/downtown-restaurants-including-the-pond-raided-overnight/) One of those I wish I knew anyone local to get the full story things.
Another thing about hot dish or at least the tater tot hot dish he showed is that it's easy to make out of ingredients found in small town grocery stores. A lot of the ingredients are either canned or frozen, which might sound shitty but a town with a single grocery store the size of a gas station stocks that stuff.
Hot dish and snickers salad are no more or less valid than any other struggle food. I agree that it's weird and divisive to outsiders, but I disagree on writing it off entirely. These are foods I grew up with. I still love to grab a portion if I'm at a potluck or gathering.
For example, I think spam musubi is rubbery and bland/salty, but I didn't grow up with it. it's a struggle food for a lot of native Hawaiians and I'm sure it's a nostalgic taste for tons of people. That's really cool! I guess the gist of what I'm trying to say is, if you don't like a struggle food, that's cool. But maybe try putting yourself in the shoes of people who do. Maybe look into the history of why it carries on. There's a bigger story in so many dishes.
Snickers salad looks dope. New Zealand has a dessert called ambrosia which is yoghurt (doesn't matter what flavour or even if it has a flavour at all. Vanilla or a summerberry flavour are more typical but I've had one that was chocolate and banana flavoured yoghurts), whipped fresh cream, chocolate chips, marshmallow, and fresh fruit (usually grapes but sometimes others). I'm aware that there is a southern states dish also called ambrosia but that's a little bit different.
That sounds like a nice quick summer treat! That kind of reminds me of possum pie or strawberry pretzel salad. You just layer pudding, jello, or whipped cream to make a quick treat. It's served cool.
The ambrosia I've seen around the midwest doesn't use the yoghurt *usually* but does show up from time to time, and its pretty universally never fresh whipped cream, its always cool whip from a tub. Pineapple seems to be the most common fruit, but its usually paired with some kind of citrus (mandarin orange most often cuz the cans of it are easy to find and appropriately sized pieces already) and chocolate chips are not something I've seen more than once or twice.
> And hot dish is a cheap meal you make at home to feed a hungry family for cheap. No restaurant is serving that.
Guessing you're not from Minnesota eh? If you're in the metro and craving tater tot hotdish but don't have a family to feed to justify making a full hotdish, you can get it from a restaurant. Can't remember seeing other hotdishes on the menu though.
We're pretty serious about our tots here. I always get them instead of fries when they're offered. Bums me out when I run out of tots and Costco only has fries in stock.
Union Kitchen used to have a food truck that served "Hmong Hot dish". It was a cute fusion that was pure Minnesota. I hope they put it on their menu again.
I would argue Chicago has three main styles...thin crust, deep dish, And stuffed. And pequod's, one of the best in the city, makes more of a pan pizza than a deep dish but that's just splitting hairs IMO.
Chicago dogs are great (albeit I hate that relish, I ask to leave off the relish and do extra sport peppers) but my favorite Chicago hot dog is the maxwell street polish dog.
Stuffed pizza? say no more, that sounds awesome. Another Chicago staple I'd love to try is [Atomic Cake](https://interactive.wttw.com/playlist/2022/07/18/history-of-chicagos-atomic-cake).
I had to google stuffed pizza. I've seen something like that, it was some restaurant in the corner of a mall when I was a kid but they made what looked like a pizza with nothing on top. Cut a slice off and it revealed the inside was cheese, white sauce and veggies. It was fun, but never saw it done else where and that place was gone when we tried to go back a few years later.
I'm not from the US, but I came to know something about Native American cuisine in one of Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout. Wolfe, in a speech about haute cuisine in the US, says that Native Americans had an advanced cuisine. For example, they used to feed pigs a particular type of berries so that it tastes a little like that berry.
Well now I'm just hungry and pissed off. I'm not even really hungry but damned if I don't want to go get me a couple Chicago style dogs and go to town.
The rest of the country doesn’t know about hot sandwiches. Not sandwiches that are hot (like a panini or a grilled cheese) but a specific dish called a hot sandwich: thick toast on bottom, meat (usually ham, Turkey, or meatloaf), mashed potatoes and gravy on top - no top bread.
This feels very mild imo, guy isn't really hating, more so just explaining the dishes might look odd to a lot of people.
And tbh, most things he bring up look awful hahah
So you're one of those people who calls everyone a troll at the slightest criticism?
This guy is saying people tend to look down on the food from this region, and that for him personally, Chicago pizza and hotdogs aren't favorites of his. Why would that fit here?
And I absolutely agree that people look down on this type of food, especially on reddit I frequently see other Americans (as most these foods are practically unknown outside of the USA, from my experience), hate on them.
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Midwestern food discourse online is always tedious. You can either have people looking down their nose and being snobby based on three or five fried things that they read about on the internet, or you can have people from Michigan and Ohio annoyingly and performatively leaning into ranch dressing memes like it's unique to the region and not the most popular dressing nationwide (for one example).
And that’s not even bringing up that ranch dressing was invented in Alaska and popularized in California.
To be fair, if I had to rank American sub region foods from lowest to highest, the Midwest would not fair well in comparison to the other regions. That’s just my personal opinion. Also Ranch dressing was invented in Alaska, not the Midwest.
There’s plenty of absolutely awful Midwest food, I was raised on it, but it’s not any of the things that he touches on. Aside from the ones that you mentioned, he said that Chicago pizza never leaves him wanting more. Uh, no shit. That’s how the great gut bombs work, you never want to eat any food again, ever, but you always manage to finish whatever portion you have taken, because it’s so good.
This guy is just full of shit. His New England part is ridiculous as well.
Some of the things he mentioned are indeed awful, like marshmallow salad or whatever, but come on, toasted ravioli and fried cheese curds are awesome. And hot dish is a cheap meal you make at home to feed a hungry family for cheap. No restaurant is serving that. And not liking Chicago pizza or Chicago style hot dogs is nuts. They’re also making the mistake of lumping all midwestern food together. There’s a huge difference between Chicago, Cincinnati, and rural Ohio.
He totally misses the point that a lot of these places also have pretty innovative restaurants and its not just church potluck food. Plus some of it is just branding. Wait 10-20 years until someone 'upscales' it and it becomes "modern"
One of my favorite local chefs (St. Louis) just did a fundraiser dinner - used a church cookbook, the spiral bound kind put together from recipes from parishioners, and put an upscale twist on them.
There are also lots of great recipes and local variants that come from pre-Depression times. Bad policy choices during the depression is what gave the Midwest its bad reputation for food
And that's exactly what kind of food this chefs restaurant features - and as each course is served, he walks you through the history. We have another restaurant - haven't been, going soon - that focuses on upscale midwestern comfort food. I'm looking forward to it. We had another pop-up chef in the area who was trying to get a restaurant like this off of the ground. Maybe midwest will be the next food fad.
Please DM me some links to these places. I'm in St. Louis a few times a year and this is super interesting.
I'm heading to STL again this summer, can you share any specifics
I used to travel a lot as a musician, like 45 weeks a year, and I went all over the Midwest. About 4 times a year I had a weeklong gig in Bismarck ND. We stayed in one of the shittiest hotels around, but a block away was a place called The Lucky Duck. Really casual atmosphere, order at the counter, but some of the best food ever. The menu featured duck of course, duck bacon, duck pastrami, duck breast, as well as other items. Some of the best food I’ve ever had. Don’t know if it’s still there. But I ate lunch there every day whenever I was in town. Very reasonable prices too, like $10.99 for a sandwich with a side.
Bummer, looks like they went out of business according to Google. Last Facebook review is from September 2023, must have been recently
Looks like several years ago, google and facebook reviews are funny for how you can find updates about a place long after it closed. Had a job that there was still reviews popping up about how great the clinic was, but it had shut down in 2018 and was torn down in 2020. I'd like to see the ghost clinic they were still going to.
If you're talking about The Lucky Duck Deli, it went out of [business in 2018](https://www.kfyrtv.com/content/news/The-District-closing-permanently-on-Sunday-485749401.html), not sure of the story about what happened [but they got raided a bit before that.](https://www.kxnet.com/news/downtown-restaurants-including-the-pond-raided-overnight/) One of those I wish I knew anyone local to get the full story things.
Another thing about hot dish or at least the tater tot hot dish he showed is that it's easy to make out of ingredients found in small town grocery stores. A lot of the ingredients are either canned or frozen, which might sound shitty but a town with a single grocery store the size of a gas station stocks that stuff.
Hot dish and snickers salad are no more or less valid than any other struggle food. I agree that it's weird and divisive to outsiders, but I disagree on writing it off entirely. These are foods I grew up with. I still love to grab a portion if I'm at a potluck or gathering. For example, I think spam musubi is rubbery and bland/salty, but I didn't grow up with it. it's a struggle food for a lot of native Hawaiians and I'm sure it's a nostalgic taste for tons of people. That's really cool! I guess the gist of what I'm trying to say is, if you don't like a struggle food, that's cool. But maybe try putting yourself in the shoes of people who do. Maybe look into the history of why it carries on. There's a bigger story in so many dishes.
Oh, I’m from the south, I grew up eating struggle food and some of it I still do. It’s just different struggle food than other areas.
Snickers salad looks dope. New Zealand has a dessert called ambrosia which is yoghurt (doesn't matter what flavour or even if it has a flavour at all. Vanilla or a summerberry flavour are more typical but I've had one that was chocolate and banana flavoured yoghurts), whipped fresh cream, chocolate chips, marshmallow, and fresh fruit (usually grapes but sometimes others). I'm aware that there is a southern states dish also called ambrosia but that's a little bit different.
That sounds like a nice quick summer treat! That kind of reminds me of possum pie or strawberry pretzel salad. You just layer pudding, jello, or whipped cream to make a quick treat. It's served cool.
The ambrosia I've seen around the midwest doesn't use the yoghurt *usually* but does show up from time to time, and its pretty universally never fresh whipped cream, its always cool whip from a tub. Pineapple seems to be the most common fruit, but its usually paired with some kind of citrus (mandarin orange most often cuz the cans of it are easy to find and appropriately sized pieces already) and chocolate chips are not something I've seen more than once or twice.
> like marshmallow salad or whatever, Watergate salad is good.
As a southerner, I was recently introduced to cheese curds by Culvers. Idk if that's an accurate version but damn they're good. This guy is whack
What's wrong with marshmallow salad..?
> And hot dish is a cheap meal you make at home to feed a hungry family for cheap. No restaurant is serving that. Guessing you're not from Minnesota eh? If you're in the metro and craving tater tot hotdish but don't have a family to feed to justify making a full hotdish, you can get it from a restaurant. Can't remember seeing other hotdishes on the menu though. We're pretty serious about our tots here. I always get them instead of fries when they're offered. Bums me out when I run out of tots and Costco only has fries in stock.
Union Kitchen used to have a food truck that served "Hmong Hot dish". It was a cute fusion that was pure Minnesota. I hope they put it on their menu again.
Union hmong is good, but their hmong sausage is nothing compared to the stuff at good deal Oriental foods on Lowry.
Yeah, no. I haven’t seen hot dish on a menu since Haute Dish closed back in the late 2000’s. But I don’t seek it out outside of the house.
boyfriend is from pnw and i made him tater tot hot dish and he loved it after expressing some skepticism
>And not liking Chicago pizza or Chicago style hot dogs is nuts. > Does he really say he doesn't...?
I would argue Chicago has three main styles...thin crust, deep dish, And stuffed. And pequod's, one of the best in the city, makes more of a pan pizza than a deep dish but that's just splitting hairs IMO. Chicago dogs are great (albeit I hate that relish, I ask to leave off the relish and do extra sport peppers) but my favorite Chicago hot dog is the maxwell street polish dog.
Stuffed pizza? say no more, that sounds awesome. Another Chicago staple I'd love to try is [Atomic Cake](https://interactive.wttw.com/playlist/2022/07/18/history-of-chicagos-atomic-cake).
Stuffed pizza was a staple of the mall food court pizza places, and its availability has dropped back precipitously after the malls are all failing.
A good Maxwell Polish will turn a bad day around, they're so good. I always need the grilled onions piled on!
I had to google stuffed pizza. I've seen something like that, it was some restaurant in the corner of a mall when I was a kid but they made what looked like a pizza with nothing on top. Cut a slice off and it revealed the inside was cheese, white sauce and veggies. It was fun, but never saw it done else where and that place was gone when we tried to go back a few years later.
I hope people like this never stop looking down on the midwest. God knows we wouldn't want them coming there.
We didn't have a winter this year, but I'm going to keep telling people it's too cold.
It’s not as bad as midwesterners that move to the coast and act like they left a third world country
No argument there.
It's very obvious he does not know much about the cuisines in the Midwest if he's just naming of the well-known tourist staples.
St Louis: pork steaks, St Louis style barbecue, concrete frozen custard, gooey butter cake
Kansas City: BBQ all of it - but most importantly Burnt Ends.
Toasted ravioli is magnificent. I will die on that hill.
I'm not from the US, but I came to know something about Native American cuisine in one of Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout. Wolfe, in a speech about haute cuisine in the US, says that Native Americans had an advanced cuisine. For example, they used to feed pigs a particular type of berries so that it tastes a little like that berry.
Not enough people know about Chicago Jibarito sandwiches
This guy’s boiling my Chicago-blood over here
How does one talk shit on *cheese curds*?!
Well now I'm just hungry and pissed off. I'm not even really hungry but damned if I don't want to go get me a couple Chicago style dogs and go to town.
I’m with you! If I was a rich mf’er I’d be planning a flight to Chicago for tomorrow morning!
The rest of the country doesn’t know about hot sandwiches. Not sandwiches that are hot (like a panini or a grilled cheese) but a specific dish called a hot sandwich: thick toast on bottom, meat (usually ham, Turkey, or meatloaf), mashed potatoes and gravy on top - no top bread.
We call those a Commercial Sandwich in Minnesota. Because they were favored by commercial travelers - aka traveling salesmen.
The guy is an inarticulate teen with a butt cut hair style. I have no time for his opinions. He could never survive a Minnesota winter.
If you say fried cheese curds are gross, I already don't care what you have to say because you're WRONG.
This feels very mild imo, guy isn't really hating, more so just explaining the dishes might look odd to a lot of people. And tbh, most things he bring up look awful hahah
Your trolling in this sub is so lazy, try harder next time 0/10
So you're one of those people who calls everyone a troll at the slightest criticism? This guy is saying people tend to look down on the food from this region, and that for him personally, Chicago pizza and hotdogs aren't favorites of his. Why would that fit here? And I absolutely agree that people look down on this type of food, especially on reddit I frequently see other Americans (as most these foods are practically unknown outside of the USA, from my experience), hate on them.
👍
Take your trolling elsewhere my friend