Six North American specialties you can taste at the source
Many of the foods we eat came into existence through an evolution of cooking techniques or by trial and error. But a notable few burst onto the scene through some interesting creation story that happened in one time and one place and gave birth to a now widely beloved and entirely new category of food.
For example, Boston’s classic Omni Parker House hotel is credited with the invention of its namesake Parker House roll, a type of bread, and the city’s more famous dessert, Boston Cream Pie. Caesar salad, a worldwide favorite, was invented not during the height of the Roman empire, but by an Italian-American restaurateur in Tijuana of all places. The very best example is the now ubiquitous Buffalo wing, a particular style of hot and spicy chicken wing that is deep fried until crispy, then tossed in a mixture of red hot sauce (traditionally Frank’s) and butter, then served with celery sticks and bleu cheese dressing. Today, there are many variations in style, heat, cooking technique, accompaniments and flavor, but many agree that if it were not for Teressa Bellissimo scrounging around the kitchen of the bar and grill she owned with her husband Frank, trying to come up with ingredients to throw together for a late-night snack for her college student son and some friends, the Buffalo wing would not have been born.
Thousands of food lovers make the pilgrimage to the original Anchor Bar in Buffalo, N.Y., where this happened, each year to taste food history, and so did Great American Bites. The Buffalo wing is hardly the only example — this column has showcased numerous foods at the places where they were created (or are believed to have been created — it gets a little fuzzy sometimes) in search of the original prototype for now widespread foods and drinks, and to experience a little culinary history and atmosphere at the same time. These are some of best and most interesting foods tried at the source.
Buffalo wings
This snack, now popular in every corner of the world, can be traced directly to one night in 1964, when Frank and Teressa Bellissimo’s son and several friends visited the family’s Anchor Bar, opened in 1935. She found some wings, and wanting to cook them quickly, threw them in the deep fryer and grabbed other on-hand ingredients, including butter and hot sauce, and the legend was born. The kids loved them, they added them to the restaurant menu, then everyone loved them, and the people of Buffalo went mad for the new creation. Within a couple of years, the dish became the city’s obsession, spawning wing-centric competitors, and within 20 years it has gone worldwide. Today there are several large wing-focused chains (Zaxby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Wingstop, Hooters) and somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 billion wings are consumed annually in America.
The immensely successful original has been greatly expanded, and today the Anchor Bar is cavernous. Thanks to a high-powered ventilation system and big metal exhaust pipe, you vividly smell frying wings and hot sauce as soon as you open your car door in the parking lot — inevitably filled with the out-of-state license plates of food pilgrims. It has become a bit of a food theme park, and there is a massive carved statue of Teressa outside the front door, a bar area where motorcycles hang from the ceiling, and a substantial gift shop, as the restaurant now makes and sells its sauce. Despite tons of seating, it still gets crowded, and the large back room, the original restaurant, is covered from floor to ceiling on all sides with framed articles about the Buffalo wing, hundreds of them.
The most popular medium-heat wings are perfectly fried with crispy skin and juicy meat, served swimming in sauce. Heat options range up to suicidal and the only non-original wing variety is barbecue. All the wings are served with bleu cheese dressing (now often replaced by ranch outside the Northeast) and celery sticks, and the dressing at the Anchor Bar is excellent, thick and chunky. There is a full menu of pizza, burgers, salads and more.
There are now several other locations, including in Buffalo, N.Y.’s airport, other upstate New York cities, three in Canada, and outliers such as San Antonio, Texas, and Richmond, Va. The latest and highest profile announcement is a New York City outpost opening in the next few months in Hell’s Kitchen, a suitable location for the fiery wings, and Anchor Bar also ships nationwide.
Muffuletta sandwich
New Orleans has more distinctive local specialties than any city, with an array of Cajun and Creole dishes like jambalaya, the city’s famous po' boy-style of sandwich, gumbo, crawfish and others. The one dish we cannot visit the Crescent City without eating is arguably the best sandwich in the entire nation, often imitated, both here and around the country, but never equaled since its creation more than 60 years ago. The muffuletta sandwich came into being at Central Grocery, a French Quarter grocery store that sells lots of staples, and when it comes to ready to eat food, offers nothing else besides its signature — yet the line goes out the door, every single day. If not for this line, the greatness of Central Grocery would be well disguised — only a small sign next to the door hints at what awaits inside, “For Three Generations Home of The Famous Italian Muffuletta Imitated By Many...But Never Duplicated.”
The muffuletta is a variation on the Italian sandwich, a medley of cold cuts, ham, mortadella, salami, pepperoni and cappicola, plus Swiss and provolone cheeses (a vegetarian version is available). The two things that make it a muffuletta are the roll and the relish. The relish is the most important ingredient, a longtime secret family recipe, and while supermarket versions are called giardienera, Central Grocery's is Italian Olive Salad. It’s chunky with whole green olives, celery, cauliflower, carrots, onions, hot and sweet peppers, capers, olive oil, vinegar, spices, and lots of garlic. It's sold by the quart jar and fans put it on salads in lieu of dressing or on pasta instead of sauce. It is addictively good.
“In Sicily, muffuletta is actually the name of the roll, like Kaiser,” explained third-generation owner Frank Tusa. The meat, cheese and relish combination inside the bread is a strictly American invention created by Tusa’s immigrant grandparents. “We use premium ingredients, no shortcuts, the bread is locally handmade, and it’s a good value. There’s a lot of bad fast food out there — this is good fast food. We sell out every day so we must be doing something right.’”
The roll is immense, a flat round focaccia-shaped loaf about 10 inches in diameter, and the sandwiches are cut in quarter wedges, then sold by the half (two quarters) or whole. A quarter is enough for some, a half as big as most large sandwiches, and a whole is usually shared by two, or split into lunch and dinner. The muffuletta is served all around town and across the country, and the one here is impossibly tasty, shockingly great, a paradigm shift in every bite. To say it has a cult following is an understatement, and sometimes the person on line in front of you will order 30 of them. Central Grocery junkies sometimes have them overnighted, though Tusa suggests ordering just the relish, and making your own, though it is virtually impossible of find similar bread.
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As good as it is here, the sandwich actually improves with age, and many find it better the next day after the relish has seeped more deeply into the bread. It can be refrigerated (hotel mini bars work well) then allowed to come to room temperature, and it is fine stored unrefrigerated for up to 12 hours, enough for even long flights. That’s why many regulars make Central Grocery their next to last stop before the airport and enjoy the sandwiches at home.
Hamburger
No dish is as popular or representative of the American food pantheon as the burger, served in endless variations from fast food (under a buck even) to sliders to gourmet versions by many notable celebrity chefs. It’s been deconstructed, reconstructed, reimagined, served on lettuce, in wraps, on pizza, and the beef has been replaced by everything from veggies to shrimp to duck to bison. The “original” served at Louis’ Lunch in New Haven, Conn., is a basic prototype that predates the invention of the burger’s most important accessory, the hamburger bun.
Louis’ is an institution that time has passed by, and it remains pretty much as it was more than 100 years ago, a standalone shack that looks like a State Fair kiosk in downtown New Haven. Louis’ says it invented the burger, and while there are many other claimants and conflicting stories, the restaurant has many historians and even the Library of Congress on its side. The original custom-made upright cast iron gas grills, sort of vertical waffle irons for burgers, are still used here. Guests order at the counter, and the décor mainly consists of handmade signs (on which pie flavors are intentionally and elaborately misspelled: Appul, Bluuberry, Cheri, etc.) and admonitions (“Leave bottles here,” “Closed all August,” etc.). There are only a couple of tables, a half dozen old-fashioned school seats with built-in “arm desks,” which are set into recesses carved into a wooden wall, and the back room has been converted into a souvenir stand for t-shirts and logo items.
The entire menu consists of a burger, cheeseburger, raw onion and tomato, with sides limited to bags of chips or a Styrofoam coffee cup of cold potato salad. That, and pie for dessert, is it. The biggest selection is beverages, which includes lots of soft drinks, most notably old-fashioned sodas from the local Foxon factory (also served at New Haven’s famous Pepe’s pizzeria). Louis’ is frequently jammed with a line out the door, and while locals know the ordering lingo (“cheese-onion” or “cheese-works”) and never ask for ketchup, which they famously refuse to serve, the staff is very nice and patient, happily tolerating the many naive first timers who ignore the well posted signs.
The burgers are proudly unchanged since 1900, always served medium rare (unless you specify well done) on toasted white bread. If you order a cheeseburger, the bread is spread with something resembling WisPride cheese spread that you hardly taste when eating. Thanks to endless repetition and experience, the medium rare is perfectly cooked, which is unusual in the burger world, and the potato salad, while bland, is clearly homemade, creamy and chunky. The place is both historic and charming and you can see the burgers cooking in the unique and antique upright gas grills, so you go for the story — to be frank, there are much better burgers to be had.
Chicken tenders
Everything about the Puritan Backroom, in Manchester, N.H., is unlikely, including its massive success and local popularity. The huge, sprawling complex contains a conference center, large function and banquet spaces, and a perennially busy takeout storefront with a bustling ice cream stand, in addition to the large main restaurant for dining in, and all of this is an offbeat spot outside downtown along a strip full of car dealerships and mini-malls. The most unlikely thing about the Puritan Backroom is also the most compelling reason to visit: it is believed to be the birthplace of the fried chicken tender, a popular contribution to the American food canon. An institution opened a century ago (in 1917) by Greek immigrants, it is part of Manchester’s fabric, the place for birthday parties, multi-generational family dinners, large group get-togethers, teams of kids after sports games, couples on dates, and just about everyone.
The menu is huge and so are the portions, stretching from burgers to pastas to pizza to steaks, with a fair sprinkling of New England dishes, such as lobster, haddock, lots of fried seafood and savory pies, plus a heavy dose of Greek influences such as tzatziki sauce, hummus, fried feta, spanakopita, and the pita bread that accompanies rolls in the complimentary bread basket. By far the most popular dish, the one people come for and take home in vast quantities from the to-go counter, is the fried chicken tenders. The story, as told by Chris Pappas, current generation of one of the founding families, is that back in 1974, the restaurant was serving boneless breasts, which involved trimming down whole breasts and leaving them with a pile of strips. The solution was to marinate and fry the strips, which were quickly added to the menu and became a runaway success. While it does appear to be the first national mention of chicken tenders, there were already other restaurants serving variations such as chicken fingers (generally thinner slices of the same piece) and chicken nuggets (often ground and reformed). So while this claim involves semantics, the Puritan was likely the progenitor of the “gourmet” style whole chicken tender as we know it today, and they are really, really good — chicken tenders the homemade way.
The key is the marinating, so flavor goes much deeper than the breading, in every bite. The chicken itself is juicy and real, not chopped or ground. There are four flavors: regular, spicy, Buffalo and coconut, and flavors are available individually, half and half, or as a sampler, in all sorts of orders: as an appetizer, side dish, main course “plate,” in a wrap, as a salad topping, as a pizza topping, even as fried chicken tenders parmigiana. The tenders are best appreciated straight up, and served with three dipping sauces: honey mustard, ranch, and the house special homemade duck sauce, an unlikely option until you consider that Chinese restaurants were one of the first to widely serve boneless fried chicken appetizers in this country. Unlike most duck sauce it is almost clear, not orangey in color, and like the tenders themselves, tastes more real and less processed. It is the best of the sauces and likely better than any duck sauce you have had (jars are available for purchase in the to-go shop). If you like coconut, the coconut tenders are great, extra crispy with a slightly Pacific Rim flavor. The spicy has a distinctive peppery taste, a heat that builds in intensity as you eat more, and lingers on your tongue, which is more nuanced than the Buffalo. In all cases the flavor is marinated and fried into the dish, which is very good as chicken tenders go.
Nashville hot chicken
This is one of the latest examples of a regional specialty exploding in national popularity, embraced by both hipster chefs in spots like Brooklyn and on a national level in a (poor) imitation by fast-food chain KFC. While very similar to fried chicken, Nashville hot chicken is its own distinct variant on the genre, not covered in sauce like Buffalo wings, rather cooked in a special heat-infused style, and it all started at Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack. The legend is that the current owner’s uncle was a ladies man, and so angered his girlfriend with his dalliances that she took revenge one day by spiking his favorite dish, fried chicken, with fiery additives. But instead of becoming distraught, he loved it, and Nashville hot chicken was born. Thirty years later, the dish is a city specialty served at many great spots around town, and pilgrims flock to this original, which his niece runs. You order at a window, it’s cash only, and there are only seven tables since it is mostly takeout. Prince’s has a very limited menu: hot chicken in four levels (mild, medium, hot and extra-hot) and a handful of sides (fries, beans, cold slaw and potato salad), along with extra pickle and extra bread options, since all chicken is served atop white bread and topped with pickles.
Visitors have to remember that this is all hot chicken, not fried chicken, so the temperature scale is relative, and even the mild is hot. Anything beyond medium is a digestive risk to the inexperienced, but because it has been on lots of food shows, tourists come seeking a hot challenge. “I try to talk people down from hot and extra-hot all the time," one of Prince’s family owners tells me. "It’s not just the sweating while you eat it — it is 24-hour chicken. It doesn’t leave you right away, and even if you get it down, sometime around midnight it will catch up with you.”
I am also repeatedly warned not to touch my eyes or face while eating, which apparently happens with frightening regularity and is akin to getting sprayed with mace. Make no mistake, Prince’s chicken is hot. I like hot food, but the mild is perfect and while I could eat the medium, I am mopping my brow too much and the food has lost its allure. I cannot imagine going higher up the thermometer.
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The process is a secret, but the family assures me the heat is in the marinade, the breading, and even the oil is spiced, so it’s not just a surface burn, like with Buffalo wings, but rather a heat that permeates the chicken to the bone. The fire is in the skin and crust, and in the innocent looking white meat. It looks like fried chicken on a bad day, with an evil redder tint (the medium is more a threatening reddish-brown, and as it gets hotter it looks more like a brick). The skin is very crispy and irregularly jagged, almost crunchy, and not greasy at all — minus the spices, it would be excellent fried chicken. It is a sweat fest, and since the bread underneath quickly mops up reddish hot juices, the starch offers no escape. Some like it hot, and if you are one, you will love Prince’s.
Margaritas
There is no cocktail more associated with a particular place on earth than the beloved margarita in Mexico, but the drink's backstory has a German element. In 1941, at Hussong’s Cantina in Ensenada, Mexico, a bartender created his own take on a tropical fruit drink, using limes, a salt-rimmed glass and the favorite local spirit, tequila, to impress a barroom regular, Margarita Henkel, the daughter of the German ambassador to Mexico. The drink caught on, was named after her, and just like that Hussong’s made a famous contribution to the edible canon. This landmark event occurred half a century into the hole in the wall’s storied life — Hussong’s was already the most famous bar in Mexico and still looks much like it did in 1892. It has attracted and served luminaries such as John Wayne, Steve McQueen, Ronald Reagan and Marilyn Monroe, but it is inconveniently located well down the Baja Peninsula. Fortunately for margarita-seeking Americans, Hussong’s opened its first and only satellite location on the Las Vegas Strip, in The Shoppes at Mandalay Place.
The mall spot has little character and makes no attempt to replicate the original, and is one big, deep room with a long bar down one side and nothing but stools and high-top bar tables, dark wood floors and walls almost entirely covered with sports star and celebrity photos. It feels more like an old-school steakhouse than a Mexican bar, except for the myriad piñatas hanging from the ceiling and live mariachi bands playing on weekends. The star attraction is the margarita, and The Original is the current version of the 1941 classic, though the first take used damiana, a sort of floral herb tea made from warm climate bushes that has since been largely replaced by triple sec or Cointreau.
What makes The Original margarita at Hussong’s a standout today are two marked differences from most margaritas at Mexican restaurants in this country. First, it uses a high quality, well aged, pure tequila (Sauza Blue reposado), while most use a cheap tequila that is none of these three things. Secondly, it foregoes sour mix, artificial sweeteners and other fillers, and uses actual fresh-squeezed lime juice and agave nectar. The result is a very good standard margarita, and 75 years after it was invented, the cocktail here comes in 15 increasingly wild variations — one of the bestsellers is the bizarre PB&J margarita, made with muddled berries and served in a peanut butter-rimmed glass. Other options include Cotton Candy, Lychee, Spicy Habanero, one with beer and grapefruit soda added, and the Romance, a 64-ounce (half-gallon!) cocktail for two.
As the menu boasts, “Our motto is less ice, more tequila!” All guests get complimentary and much better than average chips, which are puffy, crunchy and served hot, with two surprisingly good salsas, a tomato version and an excellent roasted tomatillo salsa verde. You may not be transported south of the border, but it’s still part of food history and one of the best places to drink margaritas in a city overflowing with mediocre takes on the classic.
Larry Olmsted has been writing about food and travel for more than 15 years. An avid eater and cook, he has attended cooking classes in Italy, judged a barbecue contest and once dined with Julia Child. Follow him on Twitter, @TravelFoodGuy, and if there's a unique American eatery you think he should visit, send him an e-mail at travel@usatoday.com. Some of the venues reviewed by this column provided complimentary services.
