patrick.net

So you live in Michigan. Is that really the Midwest? I’d classify it as a semi-Coast due to the Great Lakes. You want to see some corn fed fat people, go to Missouri or Kansas.

TwoScoopsOfWompWomp says

NYC and know what real Italian-American Pizza tastes like.

NYC has the best pizza in the world, even better than Italy. In NYC, Italian taste met American plenty. Midwestern taste seems more Germanic, e.g. hiding ham or sausage underneath the cheese; exceptions do exist, but they tend to have moved from NYC.

It should be better than Italy, since it was invented in Coney Island.

Note: No evidence of Pizzerias anywhere in Europe, including Italy, until after WW2 - when NY GIs introduced Europe to Pizza. The whole Queen Margharita story is apocryphal.

There was something called Pizza , which was yesterday's stale bread with some cheese, served in the South of Italy, but not a pie, not with Tomato Sauce, and it was a worker's snack sold in kiosks, not something made in a restaurant. Sometimes the bread was wrapped around the cheese, more of a Calzone.

TwoScoopsOfWompWomp says

No evidence of Pizzerias anywhere in Europe, including Italy

The Tomato's use as a major food staple didn't come into use in Italy until the late 1800's around the same time Italian Immigrants restaurants were crafting inventive ways to use it along with more inventive ways to shape Pastas in America's big cities like Chicago and NYC. They always had breads, cheese, olive oil, throwing a slice tomato or even a reduced tomato in the form of sauce on it was just a natural progression. That households and adventurous entrepreneurs would have made the connection at the same time without knowing each other. Here or there First is irrelevant it was no doubt an Italian that invented the pastas, pizzas and tomato sauces. Most likely from the Old Country.

The same thing bothers me when people give American Chinese food flack. It doesn't matter if it's not real Chinese. It was made by Chinese people using Chinese ingredients they kept as valuable staples, and used it to cook ingredients they normally wouldn't have had available in a Chinese household. But it's still Chinese style cooking, and it has to be cooked by regional Chinese cooking styles. Cantonese, Mongolian, Hunan, if the restaurant stays true to those styles it is authentic in that class.
It's not the same when an American decides to open up a Chinese restaurant and has a bunch of after school kids wiping stuff in a Wok.
Nobody is having that. You rarely see a successful Chinese joint that owned and operated by Frank and Judy Rogers.
It ain't happening.
Our Chinese food is Chinese food. I don't sit around and eat Moon Pies and Baloney sandwiches. But I not going to say it's not American food.

Tenpoundbass says

The same thing bothers me when people give American Chinese food flack. It doesn't matter if it's not real Chinese. It was made by Chinese people using Chinese ingredients they kept as valuable staples, and used it to cook ingredients they normally wouldn't have had available in a Chinese household. But it's still Chinese style cooking, and it has to be cooked by regional Chinese cooking styles. Cantonese, Mongolian, Hunan, if the restaurant stays true to those styles it is authentic in that class.

Exactly.

And Chinese food is a bit different everywhere. Like Chile, where its Chifa, and they have fries in soy sauce which isn't as bad as it sounds. Good marketeers, them Chinese.

Each region has what it cooks best

In a "Midwest" place like Omaha, the local Czech and other Slavic descendants have created an area where you can get top rate sausages and fresh baked breads. And by the way, lots of that corn you see is not just "animal feed." Nothing better than a freshly picked ear of corn thrown on the grill still in the husk. Tastes sweet enough no salt and butter needed. I found that true in Ohio as well. I used to think Omaha had the best steaks, but I dined at Peter Lugar's in NYC and although Omaha has great meat, NYC was better.

In Virginia coast, try the fresh blue crab, Smithfield ham, and peanut soup. In season peanuts in VA are the best anywhere.

When I was in Minnesota, every little dive bar and grill had fresh walleye. Even the Cedar Fair park in Sandusky, OH had fresh lake perch.

Some guys in Santa Cruz, CA around 1981 paid a guy from Brooklyn thousands of dollars to show them how to make pizza.

Since then they made a ton of money, I believe that the original guys sold out. The place is Pizza My Heart.

When I first ate it in 1982 I was sort of surprised: "How come this tastes like real pizza when everywhere else makes it all wrong around here?" Then I heard the story behind it.

They have fine pizza in Florida and Connecticut also now.

Pizza making is like wine making; years ago only few knew how it was done, now the knowledge has spread, but not to the Midwest evidently.

TwoScoopsOfWompWomp says

So far not impressed with Chicago though! The burger is okay. I don't think Chicago is particularly known for it's food.

I'm kind of with @Feux Fullets on this one. If you're a foodie, Chicago is a top 10 destination in the world. Not country, world. This will come across as me being a dick, but you need to get better recommendations when you come to Chicago again. There's soooooooooooo (too many o's?) many great places to eat. Including pizza.

http://www.businessinsider.com/cities-with-the-most-michelin-stars-in-the-world-2016-12

And lots of the surrounding touristy areas have phenomenal options. My buddy is a chef in Michigan wine country and the food options there pretty damn good. I haven't been to the bay area forever (looks like SF is rated very high), but recently went to San Diego and Palm Springs. Food was average at best and MASSIVELY overpriced. Best dinner I had was at the hotel we were staying at, Sparrows Lodge. They bring in different chefs and cook a homestyle meal 2 times a week for only about 16 guests. That was top notch.

We went to other highly rated and recommended places in southern CA and it might as well have been a dressed up Chili's (referencing the quality of food). In southern CA what I've noticed is an over compensation for atmosphere and a lack of attention to the quality of the food outside of making it look "pretty" and not actually taste good. And of course, there are great restaurants in every local, it's just how many good ones are there?

Quigley says

Is that really the Midwest?

No, Michigan is definitely NOT the Midwest. The winters are warmer, the summers cooler, we get a TON of cloudy days. More forests, not just endless plains. I lived there 7 years, Grand Rapids and Muskegon. If I had to live anywhere else in the continental US besides California, it would be Michigan. Beautiful state.

clambo says

Pizza making is like wine making; years ago only few knew how it was done, now the knowledge has spread, but not to the Midwest evidently.

Chicago and NYC has better bread climate.

WookieMan says

In southern CA what I've noticed is an over compensation for atmosphere and a lack of attention to the quality of the food outside of making it look "pretty" and not actually taste good.

I’ve eaten deep dish in Chicago and I’ll agree it was damn good. However we have a chain in Southern California called “BJs Pizza” that has the best pizza I’ve eaten outside of Cook county. It’s Chicago style tho, so there’s that! If you’re near one sometime check out a pie and lemme know what you think!

Feux Follets says

Food quality = Food quality is the quality characteristics of food that is acceptable to consumers. This includes external factors as appearance (size, shape, colour, gloss, and consistency), texture, and flavour; factors such as federal grade standards (e.g. of eggs) and internal (chemical, physical, microbial).

Please don't tell me the Bay Area has a lock on this ?

As to the second part - food in the Midwest is not good based on what ?

The only thing the bay area has over other areas I have frequented is great Dim-Sum and that is not even universal. There is great food all over this country including the Midwest.

So is it the overall food "quality", your personal taste in food or something else entirely ?

There is simply a bad feedback loop going on in the Midwest, where the large majority of people buy low-quality or highly processed food and think it's normal. They literally don't know what they are missing, for the most part.

And as result of buying patterns, the stores also stock low quality food. So the loop is complete: you buy what's on offer, and what's on offer is bad because that's the last thing you bought.

Sure, high-quality food is available in the Midwest if you want to put in the time to hunt it down, but most people don't. They don't even see why they should, since higher quality food is generally more expensive.

My first encounter with this phenomenon was bread when I was an exchange student in Germany one summer in high school. It was the first time in my life I had really good bread, and when I got back to the Midwest, I searched all the local stores in my town for good bread, but it was simply not to be found. It was all pre-sliced crap from factories. There are actually still bakeries in Germany and people really go to them to buy their morning bread.

Had the same experience with beer, which is generally far superior to anything you can buy in America. Even the beers exported from Germany to America kinda suck by comparison with the same beer in Germany. German beers were clearly marked with bottling and/or expiration dates. Americans falsely assume that beer does not decline in quality with age. It does.

And again, the same experience with coffee. The brown swill that I thought was coffee in the Midwest has very little resemblance to a strong cup made with freshly roasted high-quality beans.

And on and on with meats and even vegetables.

I do have to say the situation has greatly improved over the years, and I can go to the Midwest and find pretty much anything now, but the food in the Midwest is still generally lower quality than in California.

Patrick, good call on food quality. One of the reasons the US has shitty coffee for so long was the Great Depression.

WW2 19,20 year old GIs often had only the first coffee in the military; they were poor in the Great Depression.

It was all instant.

So for 30-40 years, instant coffee or other shitty coffee was the only experience they ever had with Coffee.

US Coffee was actually excellent before 1930, but the Great Depression ruined it for many deacdes.

Feux Follets says

they know too well what they are missing

I certainly did not know.

Nor did my parents, nor any of my quite numerous midwestern relatives.

Feux Follets says

It's called poverty - they know too well what they are missing and it happens all over the country and the world

Poverty is much higher in the South, and in the major cities in the East Coast than it is in the Midwest. Housing is affordable, jobs are plentiful, and schools are generally better. I'm speaking from 16 years of experience living in or near the Midwest. Ignorance is the leading cause of unhealthy eating, BY FAR.

I'd go further and say poverty should never be a cause for eating unhealthy food. It's cheaper, and healthier to grow veggies yourself. And the cost offset of a preventive healthy diet in medical cost savings is HUGE. I'll pay the small increase for local organic anytime vs the unwieldy cost of our sickcare system.

Patrick says

Sure, high-quality food is available in the Midwest if you want to put in the time to hunt it down, but most people don't. They don't even see why they should, since higher quality food is generally more expensive.

SO, if I hear you right, you seem to think that the yuppie phenomenon, the dink phenomenon (double income no kids), the starbucks, Pete's etc phenomenon, the whole foods phenomenon, the going to vegas phenomenon (vegas has a lot of world class restaurants), the whole increasing appreciation of wine and craft beers the past 3 decades, missed the midwest ? I guess it's that you don't think any of the upper 20% of the income distribution live in the midwest ?

I think in the same way that I hear you sometimes generalize San Francisco (degree) left wing politics on to all of Califonia, I think you are overly assuming that no place else appreciates great food and drink as much as SF. What, based primarily on the fact that you didn't appreciate it out until you were in SF ?

I guess, that there's some truth to what you say, in that there are certainly a lot of places in the midwest, where there isn't enough of a market for a whole foods, or in some cases even a starbucks. But I grew up in Chicago which is part of the midwest, and there are dozens of smaller cities in the midwest where people appreciate and have access to good food.

https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/list/state

Only one in Iowa ? I'm sure that will change. 26 in Illinois.2 in Kentucky, 6 in Tennesee. 7 in Minnesota. 5 in Indiana. 3 in Wisconsin. 3 in Missouri.10 in Ohio.

Btw, I'm not defending or promoting "Whole paycheck" although I think it is getting better, and I do shop there (for some things) in addition to regular grocery stores. The point is that it's an indicator of among other things, how much of a market demand there is for quality (not overly processed/prepared) food in a given city.

marcus says

Only one in Iowa ?

I think you just helped prove my point, lol.

I didn't say that no one appreciates good food in the Midwest, only that the standard of quality is generally lower.

See this image from James Damore's truthful memo that got him fired:



Here too, we are talking about overlapping bell curves, and not completely disjoint vertical lines.

Feux Follets says

Housing is not "affordable" on minimum wage or slightly above.

Jobs are plentiful - so is low pay, little to no benefits and long commutes for those that take them.

My sister makes shit in Michigan, and lives comfortably because she only pays somthing like $400-600 for rent(Grand Rapids, now Muskegon). My brother-in-law bought his house with $500 down, I believe has it paid off, and works as a pen-tester in Des Moines. My other sister(his wife), has never had to work. They have three kids. My parents are planning on moving to Iowa, not California when they retire, because it's the most affordable. Des Moines has two freeways, no job is further than 30 min commute, and their rush hour is laughable.

I think you're confusing the South/SE with the Midwest.

NuttBoxer says

My sister makes shit in Michigan, and lives comfortably because she only pays somthing like $400-600 for rent(Grand Rapids, now Muskegon). My brother-in-law bought his house with $500 down, I believe has it paid off, and works as a pen-tester in Des Moines. My other sister(his wife), has never had to work. They have three kids. My parents are planning on moving to Iowa, not California when they retire, because it's the most affordable. Des Moines has two freeways, no job is further than 30 min commute, and their rush hour is laughable.

America needs about 10 new major cities and hundreds of new small towns. New Zipcodes like China did from 2006 to 2012, just keep building new ghost towns. While the West was scratching their heads. Why is China printing all of this money to build Ghost towns nobody is buying?
Well as it turned out, when America's consumption boom ended and when Trump threatened to pull back Chinese consumption.
Xi is now evicting the millions of Farmers who's lands were flooded in the 5 Gouges Damn project and forced to move to the major Manufacturing cities. Now that the boom has ended Xi is evicting the street vendors, and the poor that lived in old rundown buildings. And relocating them to new empty Cities that can hold 500K to 1M comfortably.

If he can get them situated in those new towns, get those towns pumping jobs and producing goods for domestic consumption.
China can have what we once had. A self contained producer/consumer economy. Tariffs wont matter, just like they wont matter here if we bring manufacturing back for domestic consumption.

There needs to be so much available RE that unless you're NYC or SF and a few other exclusive Zipcodes. A 3br house should be $79K meidan price.

Patrick says

And again, the same experience with coffee. The brown swill that I thought was coffee in the Midwest has very little resemblance to a strong cup made with freshly roasted high-quality beans.

Check out the episode of Modern Marvels on coffee. This should answer a lot of your crappy coffee questions. But, basically they said that once the family owned coffee companies got bought out by conglomerates, the new owners substituted cheaper ingredients and ruined the taste. Once that happened, coffee consumption plummeted. Then Starbucks came along and changed everything, Having said that, the time frame might match comments above about the Great Depression ruining coffee. the TV show didn't give an exact date since presumably this happened over a period of several years.

Tenpoundbass says

China can have what we once had.

I'd say their gold holdings, and the fact that they actually produce goods is more important than how many times they shift their population around.

Feux Follets says

Patrick says

standard of quality is generally lower.

Based on what metrics is this proven out by ?

The Patrick-meter of what tastes good.

CP tastes like shit.

Getting back to pizza and not all food. Conde Nest seems to have a different take on pizza. Sorry, I'm a homer and will defend my pizza till my death :) That said, you can get great pizza everywhere. Why? Because cooks/chef that can make good pizza move.

https://www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2016-04-05/best-pizza-in-the-world-top-cities

Patrick says

Feux Follets says

Patrick says

standard of quality is generally lower.

Based on what metrics is this proven out by ?

The Patrick-meter of what tastes good.

Oh no he di'int.

Feux Follets says

Grand Rapids and Muskegon are not exactly the "garden" spots of the lower peninsula. "Comfortably" living or existing ?

Most people I know are existing, everywhere. I don't count mounds of debt as comfortably living, as that gravy train is soon to end. She had money to come out for my daughters graduation, despite just having moved and changing jobs. I'd say she's doing all right. Grand Rapids is a great city to live in. Good beer, thriving tech. Muskegon was rough. I can imagine it hasn't gotten much better since I've left, though I hear they have revitalized areas. I've been to the UP, lots of woods, not a lot of people, seems like my kind of place. But I don't put much stock in things or money. Anyway, the comparison was Midwest being poorer than the South, let's see what the facts say:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lowest-income_places_in_the_United_States

So out of the top 22, Missouri is there twice to represent your "poor Midwest". The Southwest is more prominently represented with six entries, and the SOUTH is represented 13 times. I'd say your boo-hooing of the Midwest is HIGHLY exaggerated.

WookieMan says

Getting back to pizza and not all food. Conde Nest seems to have a different take on pizza. Sorry, I'm a homer and will defend my pizza till my death :) That said, you can get great pizza everywhere. Why? Because cooks/chef that can make good pizza move.

Okay, any list that has Orlando at #4 for Pizza can be laughed out of the Room.

Their Picture for NY Pizza must be a stock image. That's nothing like a typical NY Pie.

Sorry Wookie!

It's the palm oil in it!

Okay. Well, I haven't seen much of Chicago, but my impression is it's the Orlando of the North. Very wide and low, lots of corporate places.

It looks like any of the more popular Pizzerias mostly became franchises, I tried to disprove my initial impression.

Deep Dish Pizza is Tomato Cake, which explains why Midwesterners model their Tomato Cakes after Chicago. Dry as a bone, no olive oil, Betty Crocker type flour, none of the bubbles in the crust which is required for real pizza. I guess Grandma Olsen and Aunt Brunhilda doesn't keep much Olive Oil in the house.

Correct:


HOWEVER, the thin crust, while not up to NY-NJ Standard, is good, particularly the Cheese-Tomato part. The square shape is wrong. Possibly second-best in the world, although Boston Italian is also excellent (really it's not any different than NY-NJ other than you have to watch the many college places which are cutting the price to serve students, but those are readily apparent from the menu)

AND, the Polish food, the perogies/blintzes, potato pancakes/latkes, pickles, kielbasas, etc. was EXCELLENT.

Chinatown was also great

I didn't make it much beyond the South Loop area, but it was very corporate with a "rehabbed downtown" with mostly chain eateries and a few Yuppie Sushi places.

It is, however, very clean.

Again, Chicago reminded me mostly of Orlando, Car Friendly, long walks, minimal retail/restaurant walkable locations and those mostly corporate. Between Mercy Hospital and the Marriott there was only a McDonalds, Starbucks, and generic hotel bar/restaurants.

My recommendation would be to imitate San Antonio's riverwalk along the Lake, and/or forcibly lower the rents to the many abandoned storefronts between the Convention/Hotel Area and China Town along Michigan Avenue.