Regional cuisine and the Super Bowl

In the runup to last week’s Super Bowl (American football championship game) between the Philadelphia Eagles and the New England Patriots, partisans from both areas engaged in a higher than usual level of trash talk.  Topics ranged from the two football teams, the cities, their history, the quality of the fans (?), the weather, and, of course, the food.

What surprised me in this debate were the foods that people chose to tout.  It seemed to be a contest as to who could prove they were the most blue-collar, not who had the best food. I heard people from Philadelphia promoting cheesesteaks and scrapple, which was to be expected, but hoagies from Wawa?  And if forced to choose a single thing to represent food from New England, I don’t think I’d pick coffee and donuts from Dunkin’ Donuts.

I know something about this debate because I grew up in Boston and lived there before moving to Philly in 2002. Honestly, these two cities have a lot more similarities than they’d admit but there are some differences.  Let’s start with long sandwiches stuffed with lettuce, tomatoes, meats, cheeses, etc.  In Philly, they are called hoagies and in Boston, they are usually called grinders, unless you are over 60 and come from South Boston or Dorchester in which case they are called spuckies.  It would be foolish to say that one is better than another, partly because the the best of these types of sandwiches I’ve ever eaten is the po’ boy from New Orleans.  I will say that Philadelphia’s hoagie bread is out of this world, but before Philly fanatics get too excited, Boston’s Parker House rolls are the best rolls in the world.

But hoagies aren’t the only sandwiches in the world.  The picture above shows a New England lobster roll and a Philly cheesesteak, but I also have to bring fluffernutters and roast pork sandwiches into the mix.  Not having grown up in Philadelphia, I think I’m allowed to say that, in my opinion, Philly cheesesteaks are overrated.  The bread and the shaved top round are perfectly wonderful if they’d stop there, but the Cheez-wiz can cause me to gag. The roast pork sandwich, though, is sublime.  That same wonderful Philly bread with shaved roast pork topped with sautéed broccoli rabe.  Magnificent, but I don’t think I can say it’s better than a good New England lobster roll.  Beautifully sweet lobster mixed with mayonnaise (preferably Cain’s) on a soft sweet roll.  I’m using the word “sweet” here a little differently than in the context of a fluffernutter.  I don’t know if anyone eats fluffernutters anymore, but in my day they were a staple of school lunchboxes.  White bread, marshmallow fluff (invented in Somerville, a Boston suburb), and peanut butter.  Perfection, if you’re into that kind of thing.

It’s not often that two different regions claim uniqueness for a food, but there are a few examples of that in this rivalry.  Both Philadelphia and New England claim whoopie pies.  We’re talking about two soft, thick chocolate cookies surrounding a thick creamy center.  It is the official treat of the State of Maine (on official state treat?  really?) but there’s a really good case for an Amish birthplace.  Those little sprinkles that go on ice cream cones present the same problem.  Both Philadelphia and New England call them jimmies, claim that jimmies are exclusive to their region, and support their claim with perfectly plausible myths.

Speaking of ice cream, that delicious frozen treat is one of a couple of situations where Philadelphia may have invented something but New England invented a revival that now defines at least part of the market.  Ice cream has been around forever but it was Bassett’s that created the first commercial ice cream company in 1861 in Philadelphia.  More than a century later, a pair of counter-cultural entrepreneurs launched Ben & Jerry’s from Vermont to lead a rejuvenation and reinvention of the ice cream market.  Bassett’s is still there carrying on the tradition, just as Ben & Jerry’s leads the counter-tradition.

Same thing in beer.  Pennsylvania’s Yuengling began operations in 1831 and is now the oldest existing American brewery, and like Bassett’s, continue to produce an excellent product nearly 200 years later.  In the mid-1980s, Jim Koch launched Sam Adams, the leading icon of the craft beer revolution of the late 20th century, and the most successful brand of the craft beer movement.

Initially, it might appear as if soda walked the same path as ice cream and beer.  As with ice cream, the idea of flavoring water or carbonated water had been bubbling around (sorry!) for centuries but in 1807, America’s first famous doctor, Dr. Philip Syng Physick, began prescribing artificially carbonated water to his patients to relieve gastric distress.  His pharmacist, Townsend Speakman, began adding sweetened fruit syrups to make it taste better while also developing the drink as a commercial product.  Thus was the American soda industry born.  Well that’s one story anyway.  The other Philly based story is that Philly pharmacist Charles Hires developed a recipe for something called root beer that became immensely popular at the 1876 Centennial.  Either way, Philly can justify the claim for soda.  New England’s contribution to the history of soda is Moxie, introduced about the same time as a nerve tonic.  It has a taste aficionados crave while the general public often finds abhorrent.  De gustibus non est disputandum, I guess. It’s also the official soft drink of Maine (an official soft drink?  really?).

I’ll close this discussion with a nod to midday snacks, but unfortunately, my choice for the great New England midday snack is long gone – the Jordan Marsh blueberry muffin.  Let me just start by saying that muffins are great.  I love muffins, but all in all, I don’t think anyone can claim any hegemony in the world of muffins.  Unless, that is, you remember the blueberry muffins from Jordan Marsh, a department store founded in 1861 and eventually subsumed into the Macy’s monolith.  They weren’t anything special as a department store except for their muffins, which reminds us that at one time department stores had bakeries and restaurants.  These were super muffins, crusted with sugar, oozing with fresh blueberries, and a muffin top larger than the actual muffin.  They were truly extraordinary, and while we can’t prove that today, evidence can be found in just how many recipes you can find claiming to duplicate the Jordan Marsh blueberry muffin.

I wish there were a contemporary equivalent, but there isn’t.  In Philadelphia, though, if I’m hungry in the middle of the day, I’m going to look for a pretzel.  In Philly, that means a a soft pretzel about 8″ in length and loaded with coarse salt.  Philly soft pretzels are such a perfect and simple food, you wonder if they haven’t always existed but I never had one before coming to Philadelphia.  There’s no monopoly on them, as in the Jordan Marsh blueberry muffin, and they can be found everywhere from The Pretzel Factory to nearly every convenience store counter to guys with stolen shopping carts loaded with pretzels hawking them outside sporting events or on parade routes.

There’s lots more about the regional food of Philadelphia and Boston.  I haven’t even touched on Necco wafers, scrapple, fried clams, water ice, tollhouse cookies, funnel cake, Indian pudding, strombolis, steamed clams, crab fries, or cranberry sauce.  I can, however, make a couple of observations.  One, is that none of the foods that have come to represent Philadelphia or New England have anything to do Michelin stars or fine dining – this is food with a tradition that is part of the lives or regular people.  The other is that things like soft pretzels, Moxie, hoagies, and memories of blueberry muffins are some of the things that make the U.S. such an interesting place.