Title pretty much says it. I'd like the opinion of Fodorlanders on the best and worst regional American cooking. The best is Cajun followed by Southern, Tex-Mex and Pacific seafood dishes. The worst has got to be the dull food of the Midwest, especially Ohio.

I like New Mexican cuisine a lot. I don't like Tex-Mex much, although I do like real Mexican food (which it does not resemble IMO). I'm from the Midwest, Ohio even, and you've got that one pegged right. Where I am from in Ohio, Bob Evans is considered haute cuisine and pizza is the only ethnic food around. They have strange meal habits, too, like drinking coffee as a beverage with meals (not after), and drinking lots of milk as a beverage, even as adults. They put disgusting sweet sauces on meat, like ham. I lived in Oklahoma for a while as a child, and I don't recall any great culinary adventures there, either. Oh, one good thing about Ohio is they do have good fresh sweet corn in the summer. I used to live in LA and like California cuisine, at least what came to be known as that, say in the 1970s-80s -- avocados, beansprouts, light meals, quiche, etc. That is one thing I miss about California, we almost always had cheap fresh avocados in the supermarket and fresh seafood (often coming down from Pacific NW). I live in Maryland now and it's terrible here, also.

Well, guys, you've certainly gotten this thread off with a real bang ... Ohio has been uniformly condemned for bad food. And Cajun is number one. You must be joking! LOL. Why don't you now shut down this stupidity ... it's about to become deadly dull. On behalf of my aunt who lives in Columbus, put a sock in it.

Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland all have great restaurants. Go bash another state Hank!

I like this thread!

Love:
Maine fresh seafood (lobster rolls)
Vermont for game dinners... try a supper at a local church or something like that.
New Mexico has some great regional cuisine.

Don't think it's fair to classify all midwestern food as dull, and I'm not from there. Nor have I ever been there, so can't say for sure!

Does this sound like one of those threads started by a writer, though?

I'm from Cleveland, and there are some really great restaurants there, especially downtown cleveland and also on the east side. On the West side, there are a lot of eastern european restaurants that are very good.

My wife is from a place outside Akron called Wadsworth. My mother-in-law not only cooks Lasagna much worse than Sara Lee but her gravy is the worst in the history of mankind--almost all water and grease. Most of her other food is equally bland. Eating out in Ohio I get more of the same, even in Ohio Amish country south of Akron-Canton. Chinese restaraunts in eastern Ohio serve that glow-in-the-dark Chinese sauce that all lousy Chinese restaurants use. On another note, do Midwesterners understand the beauty of hot seasoning? I've never encountered it. If you've ever watched that cooking dame on TV that does Amish cooking, you get the main dull idea of Midwestern cooking--fedd 'em like hogs at the trough.

Favorite -- New Mexican and southern barbecued pork. Least -- Scandinavian; all that white food: boiled potatoes with white gravy, white fish, tapioca and Wonder Bread. The only color comes from the abundance of Jell-O.

Norwegian Lutheran weddings and funerals in my area serve small, round, white bread slices spread with Cheese Whiz. These are considered delicacies!! (This borders on pathetic.)

Hank-Just because your mother-in-law can't cook doesn't make the whole state bad. You come down to Columbus and I will show you some darn good restaurants.

Hank -- Neither of my parents can cook worth a damn and they're both from New York City. So I guess you'd never want to eat at any restaurant there.

WE live in Southern Ca and there are many wonderful restaurants out here and many not so wonderful. Have found many friends out here do not cook as well as our friends in Midwest so have decided there is good food everywhere - have gotten wonderful meals in many states and areas and bad food in many states and areas. No real bad or good. Also depends on people's personal taste. Spicy food is not necessarily loved by all and is loved by others. Fortunately for this world we al like different things.

A few added notes. Worked a month in southern California in the mid-80s and though I found the food generally good (especially seafood), the pizza was horendous, not much above Chef Boyardee. And, as for my home are of Maryland's eastern shore, let me brag about our crabcakes and fresh rockfish. Best places for crabcakes- 1)Robert Morris Inn in Oxford 2)Harrison's in Tilghman 3)Michael Roarke's in St. Michaels 4)Hemingways on Kent Island 5)The Wharf in Chestertown. I'd suggest more but those are the places I've been.

ANY small church or school fundraiser just isn't the way to go, including:

New England States -- Bean Suppers
Wisconsin -- Fish Boils
Anytown USA -- Pancake Breakfasts

I travel and do a LOT of fine dining in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. Best steak I ever ate? Believe it or not, it's a tie between the American Legion Post or The Cattlemens in Pierre, South Dakota. Just like the people on the coasts brag that they wouldn't DREAM of eating any fish more than 3 hours from the ocean, nobody can complain about the quality of steaks and beef in the middle of cattle country.

(And it's pronounced like "pier," not that fru-fru sounding french way your teachers taught you.

I live in NY and eat out in a lot of nice restaurants, love to try out new or foreign cuisines, but I was born in the deep south, and dearly miss that extremely fattening food, what's called "soul" food up north. I love catfish, biscuits, grits, red beans & rice, fried chicken, shrimps and oysters, and all kinds of fresh vegetables out of the garden. I also lived in Ohio for a brief period of time, outside of Cleveland. Cleveland does have some very fine restaurants, but outside of Cleveland there are some very strange foods...wilted salad being one of them. I couldn't believe anyone would actually order intentionally wilted salad

Sorry, I hit the post button too soon. To finish my posting:

Our neighborhood Italian restaurant in Ohio served their dishes with a garnish of pineapple and maraschino cherry - like a cocktail. Very weird.

I think all regional cuisines have their strange dishes. One of my uncles in Louisiana teases me about squirrel brains - says you fry them in a pan like scrambled eggs and they're a real delicacy. I still can't decide whether he's teasing me or not. But I imagine at one time in the south, and elsewhere, and not too long ago, people would have eaten whatever they could catch or forage and been glad to have it. That's how regional cuisines evolve. Imagine settlers in the wilderness. I wonder what they ate. And they didn't even have ketchup. I remember my grandmother in Mississippi made sassafras tea from the roots of a tree growing there. Delicious!

Oh Ess, is the wilted salad the hot bacon dressing that's sweet and sour and tossed with greens? If so, it's delicious (although wilted) and part of my Pennsylvania childhood. Yum! Think there's great food anywhere in this country as well as garbage. Look to the good regional cooks/restaurants.

When we were in summer school in Europe, the only food we really craved from home was Tex-Mex. Mexican seafood; New England clam chowder; Texas bar-b-que, chicken fried steak, fruit and Czech kolaches; California fruit and interesting food combinations; New Orleans muffleta and boudan

Kam, it's been so long since we lived in Ohio (this was early 1980's) that I can't really recall how the wilted salad was made, but it was a regional favorite. As was fried mush.

Yes, Kam, it is a hot bacon fat dressing that makes the lettuce wilt. It was a popular recipe in the 60s and 70s, and I think you could probably find it in old cookbooks such as American Home, Betty Crocker, and the like. Foods go in and out of style, just as clothing. I can remember my mother making this salad, as well as a shredded carrot and raisin salad, apple-cinnamon tapioca, and, hold on to your hats, slices of Spam spread with mustard and brown sugar and placed under the broiler. We loved it! (We were kids, what did we know?)

IMHO

Best---New Orleans
Worst---Hawaiin