30 Regional American Foods That Rock

Celebrated at an annual festival and served in pubs around the city, Buffalo Wings are more prolific in its home city today than when Teressa Bellissimo first served them at The Anchor Bar in 1964. Sides of carrots, celery and blue cheese dipping sauce offset the calories – at least that’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Dig Deeper: Baked Buffalo Wings Recipe

There’s no argument that the Philly cheesesteak was invented in the City of Brotherly Love – the city’s name is in the sandwich name after all. There’s also no argument that the most appropriate toppings for the long chopped steak sandwich are cheese (either Cheez Whiz or provolone) and fried onions. Instead, the argument focuses on who makes the best Philly cheesesteaks in the gloriously greasy sandwich’s home city.

Dig Deeper: Philadelphia Food Favorites

Invented in Nashville but beloved beyond its borders, hot chicken is a must-eat Nashville food whether you spend a day or week in the city. Start your Hot Chicken exploration at Prince’s Hot Chicken to taste the original version flavored from plain all the way to extra hot based on your heat tolerance. You may gain a few pounds from this unique fried chicken crawl, but you certainly won’t be bored.

Dig Deeper: The Best Fried Chicken in America and Beyond

Bob Cobb (yes, that’s his real name) introduced his signature salad at The Brown Derby in Los Angeles almost a century ago. Filled with avocado, bacon, chicken breast, hard-boiled egg slices and blue cheese, the Cobb isn’t an average salad – it’s a protein powerhouse.

Dig Deeper: Awesome Salads Around the World

Cincinnati Chili lives up to its name since it’s from Cincinnati and its main ingredient is chili. Sort of. The chili in this dish is nothing like chili eaten in Texas or sold in cans across America. Instead, it’s more like a Greek meat sauce with flavors of cinnamon, clove and bay leaf. We recommend ordering Cincinnati Five Way Chili with chopped onions, kidney beans and lots of grated cheddar cheese when you’re in Ohio’s Queen City. How you eat it at home is up to you.

Dig Deeper: Cincinnati Chili Recipe

Though associated with Boston, great clam soup or “chower” is a hearty soup served throughout America’s eastern seaboard with one unifying factor – the clams themselves. New England clam chowder is a white, milky, creamy soup while Portuguese immigrants inspired the replacement of milk with tomatoes in the Manhattan version.

Dig Deeper: Awesome Soups Around the World

Roux-thickened, brown bowl of Louisiana gumbo, filled with thick slices of Andouille sausage, chicken or seafood, is a New Orleans food favorite with French, Creole and Native American influences. Some gumbos are thickened with okra while, others, in a nod to Choctaw influence, are thickened with filé (a thickening powder from the American sassafras tree).

Dig Deeper: Chicken and Sausage Gumbo Recipe

Despite its name, the Italian Beef Sandwich is an all-American sandwich with deep Chicago roots. It’s basically a long roll that’s filled with thinly sliced roast beef. Chicago cooks follow local tradition by cooking seasoned roast beef in water and keeping it warm in its own juices on a steam table. The meat’s jus becomes part of the sandwich, adding a juiciness that’s not so different from the jus in a French Dip. That jus makes ketchup and mustard obsolete. Locals skip those condiments and instead pile on sweet peppers and/or spicy, pickled giardiniera, both of which provide additional color and flavor. You should do the same.

Dig Deeper: Awesome Sandwiches in America and Italy

Loco Moco is essentially a burger dish but’s not like any other burger dishes on the planet. In this unique dish, a burger is served on a pile of white rice, bathed in gravy and topped with a fried egg. In Hawaii, where the dish originated, Loco Moco is often served at lunch with macaroni salad on the side. The dish is also popular in Las Vegas which is sometimes called Hawaii’s ninth island due to the large number of Hawaiian tourists and transplants.

Dig Deeper: Loco Moco Recipe

While deep dish pizza is just one of several pizza styles in Chicago, these layered pies are practically synonymous with the term Chicago pizza. There’s something special about Chicago’s iconic deep dish pizza. Maybe it’s the crunchy crust or maybe it’s because chunky tomato sauce is layered on top of the cheese. Or maybe it’s the generous amounts of pepperoni or sausage that seems to be in each pie.

Dig Deeper: Pizza in New Haven and NYC

Classic hot dogs will make you happy whether they’re made of beef or pork and especially when they have toppings like relish and diced onions. It’s up to you if you want to add ketchup, mustard or both.

Explore More: Awesome Hot Dogs Around the World

Americans love cooking their meat over fire, whether it’s over a hot grill or low and slow in a smoker. It’s so popular that the country has four distinct BBQ styles. Kansas City’s style stands out from the pack thanks to its sticky sweet sauce and for its burnt ends.

Explore More: Texas BBQ in Lockhart

You can eat a bagel and lox for breakfast across the country but there’s nothing like eating the savory salmon sandwich in New York City. New York Jews started making bagel and lox sandwiches a century ago using bagels inspired by Poland, brined smoked salmon from Norway and cream cheese produced in the US. Still popular today, this melting pot of a meal is what we want to eat for breakfast at American delis unless when we’re in the mood for bagels topped with white fish salad.

Explore More: Best NYC Bagel Shops

Like many desserts, key lime pie is best eaten in its homeland, which in this case is Florida’s Key West. Locals have been eating the tart custard pie made with graham cracker crust, key lime juice and sweetened condensed milk since the late 19th century. It’s fair to assume that they’ve perfected the sweet recipe by now.

Explore More: Great Global Desserts

Barbecue Spaghetti is a fusion of two dishes – BBQ and spaghetti. The Memphis specialty tops spaghetti noodles with a tangy red sauce and loads of slow-cooked shredded pork. Tasty and comforting, the dish is so wrong that it’s right.

Explore More: Great Restaurants and Bars in Memphis

Most sandwiches are best eaten without utensils. The hot brown is an exception to this rule. However, using a fork and knife is worth the extra effort when it comes to this sandwich invented at Louisville’s Brown Hotel in 1926. It’s a great sandwich to eat when between bourbon tastings.

Explore More: Buffalo Trace Distillery Tour

Jambalaya is rice dish inspired by settlers from Spain and West Africa. Its recipe includes andouille sausage, shrimp, Louisiana’s vegetable trinity of celery, onions and green peppers and a whole bunch of spices. Creole jambalaya adds tomatoes while Cajun jambalaya is a tomato-free dish.

Explore More: Jambalaya Recipe

Not all crab louie salads are the same. While lettuce and crab meat (either real or imitation) are a must, other ingredients vary depending on the chef. Typical elements include asparagus, eggs and tomato. Some chefs go further by adding olives, onions and even avocado.

Explore More: Great Global Salads

With roots in the Sonoran city of Hermosillo, the Sonoran hot dog is a Tucson food favorite that’s wrapped in bacon before it’s grilled and stuffed in a soft bolillo bun. Toppings include jalapeño peppers, mayonnaise, mustard, onion, pinto beans and tomato although you can add hot sauce if that’s how you roll.

Explore More: Great Tucson Restaurants

Ruth Wakefield gets credit for adding chocolate chunks and brown sugar to buttery cookie dough at the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts back in the 1930s. Although she later sold the recipe to Nestlé and the inn has closed, the American cookie is as popular today as it was nearly a century ago. Maybe even more so.

Explore More: Toll House Cookie Recipe

The chopped cheese sandwich is unique to NYC but it’s not what you may expet. Ironically, cheese isn’t the chopped cheese sandwich’s main ingredient. That honor goes to ground beef that’s chopped and grilled with the cheese. Other key ingredients include onions, lettuce, sliced tomato, ketchup and mayonnaise. The combination is both messy and wonderful.

Explore More: New York Food Favorites

Unlike barbecue in Memphis, Kansas City and North Carolina, Texas Barbecue doesn’t rely on sauces and rubs for flavor. Instead, Texas pitmasters cook meat low and slow in a hardwood fire pit to achieve melt-in-your-mouth juiciness. Sides like pickles, onions and white bread complete the meaty meal in Texas cities like Austin.

Explore More: Austin Food Favorites

Typically served ‘au jus’ with a side of beef juice, the French dip sandwich is a carnivore’s delight with its preponderance of thinly sliced roast beef. Interestingly, despite its name and its baguette base, this hot sandwich hails from Los Angeles. Yes, the French dip is a California classic.

Explore More: Los Angeles Food Experiences

Cheesecakes aren’t hard to find in America. You can find them in diner dessert cases across the country as well as at exclusive steakhouses and on upscale restaurant menus. Made with Philadelphia brand cream cheese, classic New York cheesecake has a thick, dense texture and rich luxurious mouthfeel that’s neither airy or light. These elements plus its tasty tang are what make American cheesecake great.

Explore More: Best Desserts in the World

The shrimp cocktail became a Las Vegas fixture when the Golden Gate Hotel & Casino added the seafood starter to its menu in 1959. Originally priced at just 50 cents and served in a parfait glass, that iconic shrimp cocktail featured cooked shrimp, spicy cocktail sauce and a lemon wedge. During its peak popularity, the casino proudly sold 2,000 shrimp cocktails each and every day. Whiile the Golden Gate no longer serves shrimp cocktails, you can easily find the dish at restaurants both on and off the strip. However, don’t assume that your shrimp cocktail will arrive in a parfait glass. Also, at today’s prices, expect to pay a lot more than 50 cents.

Dig Deeper: Shrimp Cocktail Recipe

The only thing confusing about the po boy is its name. Also called a poor boy, there’s nothing low class or deficient about this iconic sandwich especially when it’s topped with fried oysters. Invented in New Orleans in 1929, the po boy stands out as Louisiana’s most popular sandwich. But, seriously, we can’t blame locals for favoring the hoagie hybrid that tops a Leidenheimer baguette with either crispy seafood or slow cooked beef. It’s a great sandwich.

Dig Deeper: Top Po Boys in New Orleans