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Regionalism isn't what it once was. I'd never heard of Rolling Rock Beer till I lived in Ohio. It was a local brand from Pennsylvania in those days. But now I could get it at my local drug store here, 2000 miles from PA, if I wanted it.
Where I grew up in St. Louis, there were a variety of names we heard for flavored carbonated water; soda, pop, soda pop, Coke. We knew people from different places said different things to mean the same thing. But we understood them all. On my first family trip to California we found out not everybody understood. We stopped at cafe in Barstow in the desert, which was then a much smaller and nicer place, than it is now. It was blazing hot, of course. But we had our first air-conditioned car. Somewhat in honor of my parents' first trip across the desert during the war, when no one had AC, we stopped for cool drinks. My father asked what kind of soda they had. The waitress curtly replied, "We didn't have any sodas." 'What do you have to drink,' asked father somewhat chastened. "Coke, Pepsi, 7-up, Root Beer..." dutifully replied the waitress. My whole family was too stunned to laugh at the waitress who didn't know the difference between an ice cream soda and a plain soda. So we all warily ordered our favorite, hoping that the waitress wasn't insane, and would suddenly snap there wasn't any Pepsi after all. When she went to get our drinks there was a lively discussion among the family on how to communicate with these strange natives we'd found in the Far West. (When I was driving to Tahoe last year, I found the same building in Barstow where that cafe was in 1960. It was no longer a restaurant, and of course the main highway has by-passed the whole area of town.)
A lot of the regional terminology has faded away just as many regional brands have grown or faded away. But not all. Here in Phoenix they call barbecued pork ribs, "St. Louis Style ribs." Anyone from St. Louis knows that you can get good ribs there. But St Louis isn't famous for pork ribs. Chicago or Kansas City may be known for their ribs, but not St. Louis. Barbecued chicken or pork steaks, sure, but not ribs. So the first reaction of St. Louis natives to St. Louis Style ribs is "What the heck is that?" There are also Country Style ribs here, which aren't ribs at all, but poorer cuts of pork roast cut into individual rib-sized chunks.
In the parts of Ohio I knew, every knows what Cincinnati Chilli is. Basically it's chilli served with spaghetti and a wide variety of toppings. When I tried to describe it, people in St. Louis immediately would exclaim, "Oh, it's chilli-mac!" "Um, well. Not exactly." Chilli-mac is a fairly set, unimaginative dish, where as Cincinnati Chilli is a whole class of imaginative dishes. No one understood.
In St. Louis every Chinese restaurant had Crab Rangoon, a generously sized fried won ton with a mild cheesy filling instead of meat. Here, nobody ever heard of them. A few Chinese places in Phoenix have 'crab puffs,' but they are a pale imitation. Have you ever heard of Crab Rangoon?
Do you have any regional food terms that others have trouble with or that make you laugh?
Where I grew up in St. Louis, there were a variety of names we heard for flavored carbonated water; soda, pop, soda pop, Coke. We knew people from different places said different things to mean the same thing. But we understood them all. On my first family trip to California we found out not everybody understood. We stopped at cafe in Barstow in the desert, which was then a much smaller and nicer place, than it is now. It was blazing hot, of course. But we had our first air-conditioned car. Somewhat in honor of my parents' first trip across the desert during the war, when no one had AC, we stopped for cool drinks. My father asked what kind of soda they had. The waitress curtly replied, "We didn't have any sodas." 'What do you have to drink,' asked father somewhat chastened. "Coke, Pepsi, 7-up, Root Beer..." dutifully replied the waitress. My whole family was too stunned to laugh at the waitress who didn't know the difference between an ice cream soda and a plain soda. So we all warily ordered our favorite, hoping that the waitress wasn't insane, and would suddenly snap there wasn't any Pepsi after all. When she went to get our drinks there was a lively discussion among the family on how to communicate with these strange natives we'd found in the Far West. (When I was driving to Tahoe last year, I found the same building in Barstow where that cafe was in 1960. It was no longer a restaurant, and of course the main highway has by-passed the whole area of town.)
A lot of the regional terminology has faded away just as many regional brands have grown or faded away. But not all. Here in Phoenix they call barbecued pork ribs, "St. Louis Style ribs." Anyone from St. Louis knows that you can get good ribs there. But St Louis isn't famous for pork ribs. Chicago or Kansas City may be known for their ribs, but not St. Louis. Barbecued chicken or pork steaks, sure, but not ribs. So the first reaction of St. Louis natives to St. Louis Style ribs is "What the heck is that?" There are also Country Style ribs here, which aren't ribs at all, but poorer cuts of pork roast cut into individual rib-sized chunks.
In the parts of Ohio I knew, every knows what Cincinnati Chilli is. Basically it's chilli served with spaghetti and a wide variety of toppings. When I tried to describe it, people in St. Louis immediately would exclaim, "Oh, it's chilli-mac!" "Um, well. Not exactly." Chilli-mac is a fairly set, unimaginative dish, where as Cincinnati Chilli is a whole class of imaginative dishes. No one understood.
In St. Louis every Chinese restaurant had Crab Rangoon, a generously sized fried won ton with a mild cheesy filling instead of meat. Here, nobody ever heard of them. A few Chinese places in Phoenix have 'crab puffs,' but they are a pale imitation. Have you ever heard of Crab Rangoon?
Do you have any regional food terms that others have trouble with or that make you laugh?
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From:
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I'm from California, and I'd never had crab rangoon 'til I moved (back) to Chicago for grad school. (I'd avoided them as an undergrad because I was a vegetarian.) I've since eaten them in CT, and interviewed various native midwesterner friends (Ohio, Missouri) who are familiar with them. They're still unknown by that name to my CA friends and family - though, as Deeva points out, one can find variations.
Rolling Rock beer has experienced a bit of a popularity surge recently as, I've read (and heard), part of a larger backlash against the monolithic American beer companies like Coors, MGD, and Bud. Younger people, uninterested in drinking beer that's advertised as crassly as those I mentioned above, have been turning to the older brands they recognize from their youth - the stuff they remember their grandparents drinking, or remember from family reunions. So beers like Pabst Blue Ribbon, Hamm's, and Rolling Rock have become more popular recently.
You may recall a recentish advertising campaign for one of MGD's line: the tv spots were narrated by a soothing female voice, who introduced herself at the end of the ad as "the girl in the moon," a reference to the icon on the label. The ads themselves were images of people sitting around enjoying beer and good company, rather than the usual tits-and-ass/drink this beer and busty women will have sex with you!
My understanding is that this particular campaign was an effort by Miller to capitalize on the brand-exhaustion that was driving people over to beers like Rolling Rock.
A food-regionalism that doesn't seem to translate well outside its region is the "Chicago-style pizza." In Chicago, of course, Chicago-style pizza is a deep-dish pie, where the sauce and toppings become fillings and are then themselves topped with cheese and more sauce. Lots of non-Chicago pizza places have a deep-dish pizza that is relatively Chicago-like, but also a "Chicago-style" pizza that is... not. I haven't yet found a commonality between various non-Chicago Chicago-style pizzas besides the name. The worst offender is, not surprisingly, Domino's in London: Chicago-style pizza is thin-crust with some cheese and sauce! Maybe even a meatball!
From:
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We ought to do post-and-replies on the best pizza, sometime. I bet we'd get a lot of variety!
From:
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I'm a PBR woman myself, though the family stories all revolve around Coors; when my mother's parents moved to CA, in the '50s, all the Ohio reletives would drive across to visit and spend 6-8 weeks in CA, drinking Coors (because they couldn't get it in Ohio) and playing Euchre!
Happily, few enough things change that my mom and her sisters and I all sit around and play Euchre and drink beer at family reunions, too.
I'd be fascinated by a pizza post!