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About This Quiz
Everyone knows cuisine on a grand scale - Mexican, Italian, Chinese, French. Those are all delicious and well worth eating at every chance you get. But sometimes the best foods are a little less well known. Secret, tasty items that pop up in a certain town or region because an inspired chef has some great ingredients and does something brilliant. Â
Regional foods are some of the best things you can discover as you travel across the country. They're also the things you'll miss most when you leave home and realize no one on the other side of the country has ever heard of loco moco or hot brown. In fact, they'll probably make fun of you for even asking for hot brown. How do they not know how delicious hot brown is? Â
If you consider yourself any kind of a foodie, if you pride yourself on your gastronomic know-how, then surely you're familiar with a wide array of the regional delicacies that help make America's food landscape a delectable party for the senses. If you know your Watergate salad from your Frogmore stew, then this is the quiz for you. Grab your knife and fork, a pinch of salt and a shake of pepper, then dig into the ultimate regional food quiz!
Loco moco
Chow mein sandwich
The chow mein sandwich is very much what it sounds like. It features a chow mein mixture in gravy, served on a hamburger-style bun. It's usually only served in a very small region of New England.
Denver sandwich
Fried brain sandwich
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Burgoo
Burgoo is often served with cornbread and is generally made for a social event of some kind. It's an extremely thick stew, if it's been made right.
Gumbo
Yaka mein
Pepper pot
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Spiedle
Po'boy
Italian beef
Hot brown
Born at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, the hot brown is turkey, bacon and a cheesy Mornay sauce on bread. The whole thing gets put under a broiler to get all crispy and bubbly and delicious.
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The Crown Burger
Crown Burgers come from the restaurant chain with the same name in Utah. The burger became such a local favorite that many other restaurants also offer a pastrami-topped burger on their menu.
Garbage plate
Po'boy
Hamdog
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Pulled pork
Cheesesteak
Loose meat
Loose meat is very much what it sounds like. If you've never experienced one, imagine a sloppy joe that has no sauce, or just a hamburger that exploded for some reason.
Beef on weck
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Steak de burgo
Hoppin' John
Kolache
Goetta
Goetta, which rhymes with feta, is a European-inspired dish and traces its origins to parts of Cincinnati that have a heavy German population. When the meat and steel-cut oats are mixed and then fried, it gives the sausage a distinct, crispy texture.
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Jambalaya
Loco moco
Loco moco was created in the 1950s in Hawaii at the Lincoln Grill restaurant. According to legend, some local teens were looking for something quick and delicious, but they didn't want a sandwich.
Fluffernutter
Booyah
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Stuffies
Stuffies are essentially stuffed clams. You take the quahog clam and dice it up with bread crumbs, onion, peppers, celery and herbs, and then bake it right in the clam shell.
Tipsy cake
Cronut
Chislic
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Haupia
Beignet
Akutaq
Inuit Akutaq is usually made with more palatable fats if it's made these days, but for a time it was traditionally made with the whipped fat of animals taken in a hunt, which could be anything from seal to caribou. The fat was mixed with snow, herbs and fruit, and was probably insanely high-calorie.
Chislic
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Waldorf salad
Seven-layer salad
Cobb salad
Frogeye salad
Frogeye salad doesn't contain any frog eyes, thankfully, but it does have an unusual mix of small pasta called acini de pepe, along with pineapple, oranges, coconut and marshmallow.
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Bean hole beans
This dish traces its root to lumber camps in Maine. You have to soak the beans overnight, then boil them until the skins come off. Then you need to mix the beans with pork or bacon, molasses, mustard and spices, put it all in a cast iron pot and drop it into a pit lined with hot coals.
Jambalaya
Frogmore stew
Brunswick stew
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Johnny cakes
Fluffernutter
All you need to make a simple Fluffernutter sandwich is some bread, peanut butter and marshmallow fluff. It's an exceptionally sweet and sticky creation. You can make it with Nutella if you're feeling a little wild.
Texas Tommy
White hot
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Garbage plate
The name "garbage plate" refers to the fact that this dish contains just about anything and everything you might find in a diner. Home fries, macaroni salad, baked beans, hamburger, french fries, you name it.
Frogmore stew
Chitlins
Spam musubi
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Chitlins
Hoppin' John
Livermush
Pepperoni roll
A pepperoni roll is a fairly simple invention. You need to bake a soft, white roll with some pepperoni in the middle of it. The result is a puffy roll that absorbs the pepperoni grease as it bakes, so the whole thing has that spicy pepperoni taste mixed in.
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Stone-baked bison burger
Steamed cheeseburger
The steamed cheeseburger is exactly what it sounds like. Rather than cooked on a grill or even a pan or flat top, the burger is placed in a stainless-steel steaming tray so that the end result is a very, very moist burger.
Sous vide bacon burger
Microwave sliders
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Cincinnati chili
The thing you need to know about Cincinnati chili is that it's not actually chili. It's chili-esque, maybe. It's made from meat, stock, tomato sauce and spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and, in some cases, even chocolate, plus various other ingredients of your choice. it should only be served as a topping, not as a meal.
Hot brown
Loose meat
Livermush
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Po'boy
Hamdog
Hot wiener
The very literally named hot wiener is also sometimes called the New York System wiener. This was Rhode Island trying to capitalize on the Coney Island hot dog craze. A hot wiener "all the way" should be served in a steamed bun and include toppings like celery salt, onions, mustard and some kind of chili.
Half-smoke
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Quad Cities pizza
Quad Cities pizza is from the Quad Cities region of Iowa and Illinois. The crust is made with a mix of ingredients that includes molasses and malt, and the tomato sauce should be a little spicy as well. All the toppings are hidden under a layer of cheese.
Tomato pie
White hot
Tipsy cake
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Fool's gold loaf
Jibarito
Francheezie
Scrapple
The idea behind scrapple was to not let any food go to waste. So if you had scraps of meat left over from butchering or other preparations that weren't good for much on their own, you could save them, mix them with leftover grain bits and make a meatloaf with it. Fry it up and you've got scrapple.
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Hotdish
Chicken riggies
Chicken riggies gets its name from the rigatoni pasta used in the dish. It should be made with a tomato and cream-based sauce that has a little spice to it, as well as some peppers and, of course, chicken.
Laulau
Runza
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Boiled peanuts
You make boiled peanuts by boiling the freshly harvested nuts in salty water for hours until the shells become soft and the nuts taste a bit like cooked legumes. When refrigerated, the nuts will be good for about a week.
Chitlins
Stromboli
Succotash
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Rolled oysters
Frito pie
Hot chicken
Hot chicken is a Nashville staple. The chicken is fried, and the hot part comes from the sauce applied afterward, which is often just a mix of lard and cayenne pepper, though some recipes will obviously add different spices and flavors.
Hoppin' John
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Cuban sandwich
The Cuban sandwich or Cubano is a lot like a next-level grilled cheese. You should also serve it with some yellow mustard, and the bread should ideally be a Cuban roll to perfect the whole thing.
Reuben sandwich
Gerber sandwich
Horseshoe sandwich
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Pizza puff
Chicago-style deep dish
Chicago-style pizza is not like pizza you're going to find anywhere else. A true deep-dish pizza from Chicago lives up to the name - deep - featuring a high crust packed with fillings. You pretty much need to eat it like an actual piece of pie.
Tomato pie
Panzarotti
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Mother-in-law
Italian beef
Cheesesteak
Juicy Lucy
Sometimes called the Jucy Lucy, this is a stuffed cheeseburger. Essentially that means you put cheese on top but you also put cheese inside. The origin is a mystery, as more than one place in Minnesota claims to have invented it.
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Jibarito
Spam musubi
Spam musubi has become incredibly popular in Hawaii. It's a grilled piece of Spam served on sushi rice and wrapped in nori, which is seaweed. This dish is so common in Hawaii you can buy it at 7-11.
Cioppino
Shandong beef rolls
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Runza
Runza is such a popular food item in Nebraska that there's actually a chain called Runza. Their runzas are filled with ground beef, cabbage, onion, and all kinds of other fillings, like mushroom and Swiss cheese, bacon, BLT and more.
Spoonbread
Toasted ravioli
Pilgrim sandwich
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Kulolo
Haupia
Beignet
Grape-Nuts ice cream
Grape Nuts, if you've never had them, are neither grapes nor nuts. They are crunchy little malty bits of grain that are loaded with fiber and nutrients. When you add them to ice cream, you make ice cream with a nice crunch.
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Snickers salad
Technically it's not fair to say there's nothing nutritious in a Snickers salad, as it does have Granny Smith apples. But it also has Snickers bars, whipped cream and pudding.
Seafoam salad
Waldorf salad
Strawberry cheesecake salad
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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sonoran_hot_dog.jpg
This Arizona specialty features bacon, pinto beans, tomato and onion. What is it?
Hamdog
Half-smoke
Sonoran dog
To make a Sonoran dog you have to wrap a hot dog in bacon and grill it, then cover the whole thing with onion, tomato and pinto beans, as well as mayonnaise, mustard and jalapeno.
Ripper
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Poke
Poke, which actually rhymes with "okay," is usually made with raw tuna or octopus, sliced thin and marinated in soy sauce and sesame oil. The fish is tossed in green onion and seaweed and sea salt. It can also include Maui onion and candlenut.
Cioppino
Stuffies
Jambalaya
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Pork tenderloin sandwich
The pork tenderloin sandwich is a big sandwich. It was invented near Fort Wayne, Indiana, and features a pork cutlet that's breaded and deep fried before being served on a bun.
Po'boy
Cheesesteak
Horseshoe sandwich
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Spiedie
Gerber sandwich
Fool's gold loaf
Z-man sandwich
From the famous Joe's Kansas City Barbecue comes the Z-Man sandwich, named for radio personality Mike Zarrick who was a big fan of the restaurant and promoted the sandwich on his show after it was invented.
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Frozen banana
Gooey butter cake
The gooey butter cake is chock full of sugar and butter, so there's no chance this is good for you, no matter how delicious it might be. The cake itself is pretty dense and brownie-like, though it's not made with chocolate.
Bananas Foster
Doberge cake
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King cake
Hummingbird cake
Chantilly cake
Cider donuts
A cider donut is a treat you can find in New Hampshire and the Northeastern U.S. during apple season when the cider is flowing. The donuts themselves can be made with cider or apple butter, plus cinnamon. They should be crispy on the outside.
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Jambalaya
Mofongo
Mofongo is made by taking fried plantains and mashing them with a mortar and pestle, along with garlic, salt, and pork rinds or bacon. Form the mixture into balls or use a mold to shape it into individual servings. Serve it with chicken broth and you're good to go.
Chow chow
Cioppino
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Chislic
Chislic is related to shish kebab. You need to take cubes of meat, usually beef or venison, and grill or deep fry them on a skewer until the outside is crispy. Or you could just toss all the cubes in the fryer at once, then serve them afterward on toothpicks. Serve with salt and maybe some BBQ sauce.
Yaka mein
Delmonico steak
Hotdish
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Hamdog
Coney Island dog
Half-smoke
The half-smoke looks like a chili dog, but it's actually a sausage on a bun, served with onions and chili. The sausage is coarse-ground, often a mix of beef and pork. It's smoked first, then grilled, hence the clever name.
Chili dog
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King cake
King Cake is a braided pastry cake spiced with cinnamon and pecans, then topped with colorful icing. It's traditional to bake a small plastic baby figurine inside to represent Jesus. The person who finds the baby is granted good luck and is supposed to host the king cake party next year.
Lane cake
Hummingbird cake
Shoofly pie
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Beef on weck
Fool's gold loaf
Baja fish taco
The Baja fish taco is the fish taco to eat. Fried white fish, a corn tortilla and some kind of shredded cabbage, sour cream or mayo-based sauce and a squirt of lime. You can dress it up in a million ways, but it's a California classic.
Jibarito
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