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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?