You Are Here: 21st Century Regional American Cuisine

Craig “Skip” Julius is one chef who gets around. Over the years, he’s racked up countless miles on the nation’s interstates and flyways. En route, he’s learned, among other lessons, this pearl of local lore: the best place for a quality hot dog is, in fact, the Motor City.

“Even though I don’t live there anymore, whenever I connect at Detroit Metro Airport, I run to the National Coney Islands—there are two!—located in the terminal,” says Julius, director of innovation, Pierre Foods, Cincinnati. “A Detroit Coney is a hot dog topped with a special chili made from beef hearts, sprinkled with diced onions and a ribbon of mustard. You can’t get a hot dog like that anywhere else.”

Detroit boasts other gastronomic delights, including, courtesy of the city’s Greek community, a surfeit of gyro shops serving slices of the spit-roasted lamb tucked into grilled pita with cucumber-yogurt sauce. “There are some wannabe variants that have spread out from Detroit,” Julius claims, “but there’s nothing like the Original at Olga’s.”

Chefs and diners are rediscovering their culinary roots, wherever they’re planted. Savvy eaters have been unearthing America’s regional culinary quirks, and the hunger for homegrown cuisines continues to grow. But in our pursuit of America’s local treasures, we’re redefining what it means to cook, eat and celebrate regionally—and we’re also learning that America doesn’t always taste like it used to.

PROUD TO EAT AMERICAN

“Regional cuisines are always hot,” says Andrew Hunter, consulting culinary chef, Kikkoman Sales USA, Inc., San Francisco. “I’m not sure that the interest in and dedication to American regional foodways has ever subsided.”

But there’s something particularly fierce about our current enthusiasm. As Lori Daniel, founding chef and co-chair, Two Chefs on a Roll, Carson, CA, says, regional foods are “hot for all the right psychographic reasons.”

One such reason is a waxing of pride in who we are as Americans. The American culinary psyche has long labored under something of an inferiority complex, but that hang-up is fading, thanks in part to the regional renaissance. “It’s about finding pride in where we live—pride in home, pride in our space—and not looking outside,” Daniel says. “We’re feeling a lot more comfortable taking pride in things that are nearby.”