14 Regional Foods Hardly Anyone Knows About, According To Reddit

There are some regional or local foods that everyone knows about. If you travel up into New England for your summer vacation, chances are good that you're going to come across a lobster roll. Headed to Philly? Gotta get that cheesesteak. New York City? Bagels and pizza await your tastebuds.

However, there are also some foods that haven't been able to stretch beyond the geographical boundaries of their popularity — foods that are beloved to locals, but never really caught on beyond that. There's no logical reason why they haven't. Try them once and you'll probably agree that they're pretty good. Still, when locals leave their hometowns, they may realize that some of the meals they've enjoyed for possibly decades aren't common knowledge to the broader public. Mention them and be met with raised eyebrows and looks of confusion. 

If you're looking to expand your knowledge of America's regional cuisine, though, these are dishes that you're going to want to try, asap. Here are some of the regional foods that hardly anyone knows about, according to Reddit users.

When talking barbecue, it's common to associate certain states or cities with certain styles of 'que. Texas is all about that oak-smoked brisket. In the Carolinas, you've got pork slathered in sauces that range from vinegar and pepper to Carolina Gold. Memphis, Kansas City, Alabama — they all have their own takes. But what about Baltimore? That's a city whose barbecue scene doesn't get enough love. But if you've lived there long enough, you've likely become well aware of what's known as "pit beef."

A food that some didn't realize was more or less relegated to Maryland, according to Reddit, some Reddit users call pit beef a style of American barbecue that's been ignored (though others argue that it's just glorified roast beef and not actually barbecue at all). So what is pit beef, exactly? It's basically top round roast, grilled, sliced, and served on a roll alongside horseradish sauce or barbecue sauce. Tiger sauce is also a popular topping, a combination of mayo, horseradish, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and pepper.

When asking Redditors about their regional favorites that they didn't realize were regional, one food that comes up time and time again is Dutch crunch bread, also known as Tiger bread, which many confirm is a Northern California thing, specifically a Bay Area favorite. If you couldn't guess from the name(s), this is a bread with a crunchy exterior, often with striations similar to a tiger's stripes. You can find it at various sandwich shops throughout San Fran and the surrounding region, with the bread's popularity expanding throughout the state as of late. The bread gets its characteristic appearance and texture from a rice flour paste that's spread onto the top of the loaf before baking.

Redditors further describe the bread as slightly sweet, though many admit that the crunchiness does come with a bit of pain. As a result, some prefer eating their Dutch crunch bread sandwiches upside down, to avoid basically lacerating the roof of your mouth.

Chocolate gravy is a regional dish of Appalachia, but one that Redditors say isn't really heard of once you leave the area. Chocolate gravy is just what it sounds like, though — gravy made with cocoa powder and sugar, for a sweet take on the breakfast classic. As for its origins, some say that Spanish Louisiana traders brought the concept of breakfast chocolate (or chocolate con churros) into Appalachia, where cooks adapted the dish into something more familiar: a chocolate version of gravy, to be served over their biscuits. Also called soppin' chocolate, however it originated, chocolate gravy makes biscuits and gravy a whole lot sweeter.

Chocolate gravy comes together pretty quickly and, if you can make a standard white breakfast gravy, you can make chocolate gravy. It's one of the most delicious biscuit toppings worth trying, if you're tired of your ho-hum, mundane savory breakfast — alongside other popular but perhaps more well known biscuit toppings such as pimento cheese, apple butter, hot honey, or creamed chipped beef.

Back in Baltimore, we have a treat that's a regional favorite, and yet it seems to be losing its popular standing among younger generations, per Reddit, though you can still find it at events like fairs and festivals. Maybe the decline is due to the concoction's unique and admittedly odd, even if simple, appearance?

Basically, a Baltimore lemon stick is literally just a peppermint stick shoved into the middle of a halved lemon. You eat it by sucking on the peppermint stick first, which then melts and acts as a straw, through which you can further suck up some of the lemon juice. Fans advise that you use Meyer lemons for this, as well as soft peppermint sticks. Rather than halving the lemon, some prefer just cutting off the top quarter of the fruit, for more juice and less mess. The treat has been around for a while, though its exact origins are unknown, and can be traced back to the early 1900s.

Nope, you don't pronounce it as if you were taunting Spiderman. This Binghamton, New York, invention is pronounced like "speed-ies" and is a central New York regional favorite. The name is derived from the Italian word for a kitchen cooking spit and spiedies became popular in the early 20^th century. 

A spiedie sandwich doesn't necessarily have to include chicken, and the meat of choice could also be pork, beef, or lamb, but chicken spiedies are pretty run of the mill. Whatever the protein, though, it's cubed and marinated in oil, vinegar, and lemon, for an extended amount of time. Then, the meat cubes are skewered and grilled, and placed on soft bread for chowing down. For true authenticity, you don't add anything else — it's just meat and bread.

If your mouth is watering at the thought, you can buy spiedie-specific marinades, by the bottle. There's also an annual, central New York festival dedicated to this delicious regional food.

The jibarito is such a regional niche food that some Redditors say that, even in the sandwich's hometown of Chicago, it's totally possible to meet people who have no idea what it is. If you likewise are unfamiliar with this Puerto Rican-rooted creation, it's basically a steak sandwich but with plantains instead of bread. That's right. For the gluten-averse, this sandwich delivers, because there's no bread involved whatsoever. Instead, you fry plantains into a sort of flattened patty shape, and you use those to hold your sandwich contents, which can include seasoned steak, mayo, cheese (or not — up to you), tomato, and lettuce.

Compared to many other regional favorites on this list, the jibarito is relatively new. Stories say that it was first popularized in the 1990s, making this a Chicago sandwich that's basically a Millennial. Spreading through the destination's Puerto Rican population, and slowly making its way onto the broader radars of those throughout the city, it's a sandwich that deserves more attention.

Not all too far away, in Cincinnati, goetta is a regional breakfast classic that has fans scrambling to find the dish in other cities like Chicago, New Orleans, or Baltimore, desperately taking to Reddit in an attempt to source the beloved oat-meat combo. For the unfamiliar, goetta is a German breakfast dish that made its way to Ohio along with the state's large number of German immigrants, and it's literally meat and oats. More specifically, it's traditionally the more underutilized cuts of meat, like offal, plus spices and steel-cut oats. Press it all together into a patty or loaf and you've got slices of goetta.

Today, you might not find the same meat scraps in your goetta, and the ingredients list may be a little more high quality as compared to what was used in the early 1800s, but the idea is much the same. Additionally, now, you can find goetta used in far more places than just at the breakfast table, in patty form. The meat is used in pizzas, chili, nachos, and more. In short, it's basically sausage, but with an upgrade and usually a more complex flavor profile.

You probably already put salt on your potatoes, but salt potatoes are their own specific thing — and they're something that you might not be able to find outside of upstate New York, as Redditors have come to learn. Salt potatoes boast unique origins, dating back to the 1800s. At that time, Syracuse and the surrounding county was responsible for nearly the entirety of America's salt production. The workers producing all that salt had to eat, and so they would bring along potatoes (many of the workers were Irish immigrants) to work, and toss those potatoes into the salt brine that was being boiled, in order to separate the salt from the brine. The result was a unique form of boiled potato, all thanks to the heavily salted water in which they were cooked.

Today, salt potatoes are similarly made by boiling potatoes in water with a large amount of salt. The potatoes end up seasoned, with a salty, cracked exterior, and are typically served with simply melted butter.

Chislic is a dish that you're not going to be able to easily find outside of South Dakota or Nebraska, per Reddit. The former state's unofficial state dish, chislic is yet another regional favorite that we can thank immigrants for bringing to our shores. It's theorized that chislic came to South Dakota in the late 1800s, by way of Germany and Russia, with the dish's name associated with the Turkic words "shashlik" or "shashlyk."

So what is it? Basically, chislic is deep-fried cubes of meat — and the meat can differ, and may be beef, lamb, or pork — seasoned with garlic salt and eaten with the help of a toothpick stabbed into each individual cube. The little cubes of meat could be served alongside saltine crackers, hot sauce, and/or beer. Overall, it's a salty, savory, and easy to enjoy snack or dinner that's not out of place in a dive bar. If you try this dish for yourself and discover you like it, you might even make plans to attend the Freeman, South Dakota, chislic festival.

In the Midwest — specifically in Nebraska — you might come across a chain restaurant called Runza. Turns out, runzas are a type of food, also called bierocks, that are very specific to this part of the country. Popularized thanks to German and Eastern European immigrants throughout the region, the creation is essentially just a fluffy pastry roll stuffed with a delicious, savory mix of ground beef, cabbage, and onions. Before baking, the roll might receive an egg wash and sesame seeds.

Fans say that once you make runzas, or bierocks, at home, you're never going to want to visit the actual Runza restaurant again, but some of us don't have quite the baking skills necessary for crafting one of these meat-filled pastries. Instead, we'll just have to deal with the store-bought variety — which admittedly doesn't look bad. Imagine a loaf of French bread stuffed to the gills with something akin to a cheesesteak and you've basically got a Runza sandwich.

A kolache isn't that far off from a runza. Turns out that humans love filling bread with both sweet and savory concoctions. The kolache is a yeasted dough pastry that contains perhaps jam and cream cheese for the sweet variant, or maybe meat and cheese for the savory option. Some versions even more closely resemble a pig in a blanket. Kolaches are widely available in Texas, primarily thanks to the large number of Czech settlers who came to the area in the 1800s, where they continued making their native pastries, before those pastries evolved over time to reflect what Texans enjoy today.

Move outside of Texas, though, and you're going to be in for a rough time finding these pastries. You might be able to get them in the odd doughnut shop or bakery, particularly in other areas that had a strong Czech immigrant population, but otherwise you might be stuck making them on your own.

As far as food goes, Buffalo, New York, is definitely most widely known for buffalo wings, but the city has other niche foods that the greater American public simply isn't aware of. Take, for example, the stinger sub, which some on Reddit feel should be the true official food of Buffalo, rather than the city's namesake wings.

An underrated, underground, secret, only-locals-know sandwich, the stinger sub is a sub sandwich, that combines steak and chicken fingers (hence "stinger," with the "st" from "steak" and the "inger" from "chicken finger"). Opinions differ as to what the sub should consist of from there. Some say that you basically start out with a Philly cheesesteak, with shaved ribeye, American cheese, peppers, and onions, and then just add chicken tenders with buffalo sauce. Others say you need additional ingredients include blue cheese, lettuce, tomato, onions, and banana peppers. Largely, the use of a high-quality Italian roll is agreed to be crucial to the process. Whatever the case, it's a hearty, rib-sticking sandwich.

Another hearty sandwich that's gained regional fame, if not national acclaim? The horseshoe sandwich of Springfield, Illinois. This sandwich was invented in the 1920s, at the Leland Hotel. Story goes, a chef arranged ham and bread in the shape of a horseshoe, covered it in a sauce, and then arranged potato wedges around the invention's parameter, acting as the horseshoe's "nails." Now, the sandwich has evolved a bit, and it's typically going to look like two pieces of Texas Toast, topped with meat (could be ham or hamburger), fries, and cheese sauce.

The basic horseshoe is definitely great on its own, but some inventive cooks have put their own spin on the classic. For example, they might vary the cheese used, or the type of sauce or roll. 

Ultimately, though, this is a type of meat, cheese, and carb combo that can be seen throughout the country, just under different names. Take, for instance, upstate New York's garbage plate, which is typically fries topped with hamburger meat or hot dogs, macaroni salad, hot sauce, diced onions, and mustard. Reliably, Americans love combining all their food into one, messy, amazing dish.

Not a dish, but a condiment, fry sauce is a regional condiment that's not exactly easy to source outside of Utah, or maybe Idaho or Wyoming, per Redditors – but it's easy enough to make on your own. It's just mayonnaise and ketchup, plus a few spices and similar flavorings. It's been claimed by Arctic Circle Restaurants, with supposedly the combination being invented in 1940 — though, really, had no one thought to combine mayonnaise and ketchup before this? Additionally, some say that Arctic Circle wasn't the first to really bring this combo to the masses; previously, the Argentine invention of salsa golf was already a thing (though salsa golf typically includes different spices or seasonings and may be used for salad dressing or seafood, rather than in a fast food setting).

Compared to many regional niche dishes on this list, fry sauce may seem relatively ho-hum. After all, it's just a mix of two ingredients you already have in your fridge. However, Redditors assure that this is something you just have to experience for yourself, in order to get the hype, as it's one of the best dipping sauces for French fries.