Baked Alaska was certainly not invented in Alaska, and was first called that in a New York restaurant. French Toast does originate in France, according to this article, but was called "pain perdu" (lost bread) there; it was named French Toast elsewhere.

Let's not go into Moon Pies...

Wait, Moon pies aren't made in a small resort town on the shores of the Sea of Tranquility?

Pre- which war?

The Great War. The scene is a bar in Mexico during Prohibition-times. The story was written in 1924.

But was it maple syrup or maple-flavored syrup?

For my taste, ham and pineapple go together just fine, but on top of a flatbread with tomato sauce? Blech.

Don't be so sure. There must be some reason there are fewer Junior Scouts than Brownies.

I'm thinking the name "brownies" itself is your first clue to look further...

I think I won't think about it.

The most mis-used adjective on food labels is probably "All-Natural".

The Washington City Paper has a meditation on the mystery of Maryland fried chicken.

Which is a hamburger with a fried egg on top, which I don't think I've ever encountered in the US...

Thank you very much, Mister Upton Sinclair.

...which means you've never been inside a Red Robin restaurant, where the "Royal" is exactly that. Personally, I've seen fried egg burgers in many places, but RR is the most obvious and most prolific of the chains carrying them.

Bonus points: in our region of New England, at least, Red Robin is also notable for having televisions sets inset into the floors of their waiting areas, showing athletic events underfoot (and under scuffed hard plastic) while you wait to garner table-level access to booths where one can watch even more TV in multiple directions as at a sports bar. The floor-inset TV is, surely, a truly American conceit, and I've not seen it elsewhere.

And adding to the misleading names: I say a place today that was labeled as a 'sports grille and bar'.

On the other hand, it's fascinating. "French cut" is a word for julienning, or cutting and trimming in a way that could be like fries. But actually french fries are "French" because they came from France before there was a term "french cut."

We took a trip to Hot Springs, AR,. got there in the evening and ordered out pizza because we were all starving. He tried to order a Hawaiian Pizza, they asked him to describe it and then said, "Boy, you ain't right. This is a pizza shop, not a produce stand. What do you really want to order?"

*We got married in 1978. He still 'ain't quite right', but I got the right one, and a fanboy at that, the first time.

Oh yes, we have fried eggs on hamburgers here in the US. Sometimes also with ham and cheddar as well.

http://www.house-foods.com/curry/products.aspx

My Toronto-born husband has no idea what they were on about. This was a small local grocer that had several sorts of 'ethnic' specialties showing, some with Arabic on the label and some with Cyrillic, so I'm not certain what ethnicity thinks Canada has its own 'style' of sour cream ...

The Last Samurai tells of fried chicken restaurants in London named for many different American states. I so wanted this to be true that I never tried to check it out.

Boiled wheat and crickets?

There's a thing called a Michigan rock which actually is from Michigan, but isn't a rock: it's compressed paint from old cars.

Scotch eggs do not come from Scotland originally: Fortnum & Mason's in London claims to have invented them, but it's also possible the Moghuls beat them to it.

When this got its start, my brother was somewhat alarmed to walk into a certain well-known store and find himself staring at an aisle marked "Free From Food".

*Subject to terms and conditions. May contain nuts anyway. Or anything. Freedom not for sale in Swaziland or Chipping Sodbury. By inferring this you consent to our Non-Disclosure Agreement and agree not to sue us for brain-strain incurred in the process. Hooray for Captain Planet! Did you know that people bolting their food causes 150000 deaths per year, join our responsible table manners campaign at our website. Fnord. Mayor Snorkum will lay the cake**. Void.

Surprising if true: isn't pork an important ingredient? (That said: I've often been struck by the similarities between
içli köfte and Scotch eggs.)

ObSF: Kentucki Fried Lizzard Partes, though widely and eagerly awaited, has yet to make its debut on this side of the pond.

Welcome Chez Chef Chewie's Le Millenium Falcon!
("Not that kind of tub, Serge.")
Oh.
Nevermind.

I note with amusement that the website cited says that appropriate care is to buff it with Turtle Wax or the like.

Ah, yes, as Clifton mentioned here, and some followup commentary. His link no longer goes to the original article, however.

In the years since I made that discovery, Snyder's has continued to make what they think are Mexican-style snacks, but I'm pretty sure it's the Pennsylvanian fondness for sweet vegetable pickles and relishes that gets us products like "garden-style sweet-and-sour" Sweet Salsa and Tres Bean Dip.

(Proposition: As long as you stayed off the interstates, you could navigate from NYC to Lancaster County just by stopping at roadside diners and checking out the salad bars, which gradually shade from NYC-style deli coleslaw, half-sours, and marinated antipasto veggie mix, to Central Pennsylvanian corn relish and three-bean salad.)

Little pink beast @13:

Around here we have Old Dutch Restaurant-Style Tortilla Chips. With a windmill on the bag.

When Patrick and I were bicycling around Haarlem, we passed an eaterie called the Cafe Popocatepetl. It wasn't open, so I'm still wondering how the locals pronounce that.

Peter Erwin @25, et seq.:

In Spain you can get hamburguesa americana = "American hamburger".

Which is a hamburger with a fried egg on top, which I don't think I've ever encountered in the US...

errolwi @40:

Fried egg is a standard option on New Zealand burgers - and beetroot is near-compulsory. McDonalds here sometimes has a Kiwiburger, which contains beetroot (and an egg maybe?), but no New Zealanders or kiwifruit.

janetl @46, Bruce H. @47, re "Utah Roll": funeral potatoes around a double-strength jello core, wrapped in seaweed and sprinkled with crushed canned onion rings?

Xopher @48: Michigan is rich in cool rocks.

There's a thing called a Michigan rock which actually is from Michigan, but isn't a rock: it's compressed paint from old cars.

The best stuff comes from auto plants and third-party auto repainting shops, which can yield finely striped deposits built up over many years. It can be surprisingly hard and stable.

The American ordered a martini, and was baffled that the waiter had no idea what he wanted (some vermouth, perhaps?). He grew more upset yet when he ordered pasta and found it impossible to get red pepper to sprinkle on it.

His companions were quite unable to explain to him that these supposedly quintessentially Italian items were unknown to genuine Italian dining.

OK, I googled it.
1. ingredients not described
2. Crab, asparagus, mayonnaise
3. ingredients not described
4. Crab and avocado
5. deep fried yellowtail and cream cheese
6. Tuna, crab salad, and avocado
7. ingredients not described
etc.

... Chipping Sodbury ...

(Wakes up) What? Why pick on Chipping Sodbury? What should I know?

Yate-Based Hedgehog.

Why pick on Chipping Sodbury?

Alas, there's that pesky NDA to reckon with. I could tell you, but then I'd have to sue myself.

Tobias Sturt @76: Bertie Rooster's! That's brilliant. Almost, but not quite, brilliant enough to make me overcome my northern-based antipathy to crossing the river.

Is it true that New Zealanders classify any warm chunk-style meat-on-a-bun sandwich as a burger?

Yes, and in Australia too -- "burger" here is a form factor, not an ingredient. So a chicken burger is a round roll sliced horizontally with a large chunk of chicken meat inside (plus various and optional salad and dressing). A chicken sandwich would be two flat slices of bread with mutiple chunks of chicken between. A cheese burger, though, still contains both cheese and beef; and a bacon burger is likely to contain both bacon and beef.

You can also have a vegie burger.

Up to a point. A chicken breast in a bun is a chicken burger, but a chunk of steak in a bun is still a steak sandwich.

That's pretty much the same taxonomy as in the UK, FYI.

I was under the belief that they (french fries) were Belgian. Although in Sweden, they're simply "pommes frites" (or more likely, one of "pommfritt", "frittar" or "pommes" (the last with a rising tone and the stress on the "pom" and a falling, semi-long second syllable)).

tracie @ #35:

Hah, a burger with egg (and between two slices of "french bread" rather than in a burger bun) is a "Parisare" in Sweden ('Parisian', I guess, in English).

bruce @ #45:

I've mostly seen "Southern Fried Chicken" and "Dixie Fried Chicken" in and around London (and, of course, the ubiquitous 'KFC' that used to be longer in name.

Ham and pineapple, I dunno (better white pie than standard, for my money), but pepperoni and pineapple on a tomato pie? Someone hide the other half of the pie before I eat that, too...

Whereas I'd still call "a chunk of steak in a bun" a burger, a steak burger. That would be on the basis of the type of bread used, so any meat in a burger bun would be called a burger of some description.

errolwi #40:
Also no kiwis (the bird of the residents of New Zealand) in kiwifruit (which is actually a Chinese gooseberry).

My first question on reading of a "kiwi burger" was "is it made with the birds, the fruit, or the shoe polish?"

I would suggest that whichever of the two advertises and/or puts it on their menu as something like "French Dip Sandwich au Jus" vs. "French Dip Sandwich with Au Jus" would be the winner. I don't remember when I first noticed that most menus said "French Dip Sandwich with (With Juice)", but since then I cannot fail to see it...

No geese in a gooseberry, Chinese or otherwise...

Do we still see "Automatic ATM Machines" or "Personal PIN Numbers" (which are used for Identification, of course)? That was the bugaboo of a decade ago.

I do remember a discussion one night on local CBC about where that staple of Canadian "Chinese" Food, Ginger Beef, came from; that is, whether it was invented at the Palliser Hotel in Calgary, or another hotel (who's name I can't remember) in Calgary. That same discussion talked about the fact that (with the softwood lumber dispute in full swing), the largest single source for wood for chopsticks in China was Alberta; and that they were starting to see "Authentic American-Style (or San Franciso-Style, I can't remember) Fortune Cookies" served at the ends of meals in Beijing.

Nope. It's "Chile con Carne with meat." I've actually seen that one.

How about Vermont Curry from--ta-da--JAPAN??!
(H-Mart not only carries it, it's one of the things usually being cooked up for samples in the store in Burlington, MA, on weekends.)

Surely you knew that American bagels are the product of a cargo cult started in Roswell, N.M.? They are circular and have a hole in the center to represent the star gates that so many of the cult have been abducted through. They're not boiled as real bagels should be because that tends to destroy the superconducting circuits that generate the tachyon field.

Veering a bit from food, here in Los Angeles we have the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits (it's right there in the title of the Page's web page).

Paula L: I read "in JAPAN...H-Mart [] carries it" and just about lost it. Now trying to figure out what else H-Mart would sell in Japan...

(And now I've got a very Japanese-looking Ash, with his tentacle, quoting appropriately-mangled lines from Army Defence Force of Darkness in my head. Note to self: <Jack Benny>Now cut that out.</Jack Benny>)

Listen people for I have something to tell you. Once upon a time somewhere in the vicinity of Manchester we came across Alaska Fried Chicken. And here is the most mysterious thing - we could not tell the chicken or chips from those sold by any other generic fried chicken joint*.

Alaska Baked Chicken would be something else I assume.

* Such as, for example, Stepney Fried Chicken.

Do you mean the cheesy or the mushroomy funeral potatoes? Does the jello contain carrots or fruit?

#70 Bruce H.: Utah Roll OK, I googled it.

You're no fun....

I still remember my Japanese friend's response to fruit in gelatin. She was shocked and mildly horrified. After trying it she called it "good, but strange." Japanese gelatin is like double strength finger jello.

PHILIPPE “FRENCH DIPPED” SANDWICHES are a delicious combination of a crusty French roll dipped in our own authentic “jus” created from our freshly roasted meats. Ask for “single-dip”, double-dip” or “wet”.

COLE'S CLASSIC FRENCH DIPS
Served with a cup of our Au Jus & Atomic Pickle Spear

(I don't think I want an 'Atomic Pickle Spear'. Really.)

Currently in the rotation: the "Las Vegas Burger". Coming soon: the "Beverly Hills Burger" and the "Broadway Burger".

Note kumara is the locally-grown type of sweet potato.

Mine is work-related: PCR reaction.

Yeah, it said in big letters, "Sarah Lee Bites!"

I also won't venture to guess what they'd call a "a situation that is so balled up it is beyond description."

There's a Euro Fried Chicken in Bradford. Apparently that tickled me enough I took a picture.

Gray Woodland @54

I've seen Kennedy Fried Chicken in New York, with the name scripted in such a way it was clearly meant to look like "Kentucky Fried Chicken" from a distance.

Not that I spend my holidays crisscrossing the Atlantic in search of dodgy independent fried chicken establishments.

Re: eggs on hamburgers: Red Robin, a national American chain restaurant, puts a fried egg on its signature burger. I have never ordered it, for fear that my arteries might just clang shut at the sight of it.

Other incongruous food: There is a food truck here that serves Korean barbecue tacos. Yes. And kimchee quesadillas.

abi, #53: Your filet Americain bears a certain resemblance to Ethiopian kitfo, which is generally served with inerja bread to pick up chunks in. I'm not quite brave enough to go tartare-style, but there's a nice Ethiopian restaurant in Dallas which offers the option of medium-rare kitfo.

elise, #60: Ooh, pretty! Looks like really random poly-clay work -- and I'll bet it has a similar feel as well.

Teresa, #66: The Popocatepetl is not in Canada!

Jon, #84: My now-ex and I thought we might challenge a restaurant in Winnipeg when we were at the 1994 Worldcon. We ordered a pizza that was half shrimp/ham/pineapple (him) and half mushroom/onion/feta (me). They didn't even blink -- and the receipt slip had "Live Long and Prosper" printed at the bottom. They knew who their customers were going to be during the week!

cajunfj40 & TexAnne, #89/90: Oy. And you're right, nobody in this country says it correctly on the menu. The "Au Jus Sauce" variation probably comes from the fact that it's labeled that way on the container (I've seen a new container being brought out of the back).

Paula, #97: I'm not surprised they use it for samples. There are probably a few things in the world that smell more appetizing than fresh hot curry, but I can't think of any offhand.

errolwi, #110: Does anybody offer rooburger?

Marty, #116: Around here, Mongolian BBQ is a style rather than a specific dish. You go down a buffet line of raw ingredients, selecting what you want and putting it into a bowl; then you add spices and a cup of sauce and take it up to the grill. They cook it all for you and serve it with your choice of starchy substrate. The chain I linked to is the most common, but you can also find little independent outlets that do the same thing.

P J Evans, #121: Somewhere in the LA area there's a roach-coach that serves a grilled mac-and-cheese sandwich. I swear I'm going to find it the next time I'm out there and try one.

I've had the tartare kitfo served on a bed of inerja covering the entire table. You rip off pieces and spoon up the meat with it. It was very good (and very spicy-hot). With dessert we were offered Ethiopian whiskey, which we were told was much like Scotch. Well, it clearly hadn't been anywhere near the British Isles, but it wasn't bad. Much better than what Suntori was making at the time.

We knew the kids were getting the hang of this English-language thing when they saw the "Who's On First" sketch and actually understood it. This led to a conversation in which I suggested that someone might have a similar misunderstanding of the name "wat". Big laugh, but just a couple of days later, it actually happened: a guest said, "No, I mean what is the name of this red sauce here?"

For months afterward, any sort of language mixup was answered with, "Who's on first, wat's on injera".

I used that incident in my YA novel about the Christmas Truce.

Dutch style: Potatos, bacon strips, mushrooms, onions - yes, that is basically boerenfriet.

German style: Potatos, onions, green beans, currywurst. A rather unfamiliar combination.

Greek style: Fried potatos, courgette, bell peppers, gyros meat. Sounds right.

Italian style: Fried potatos, spinach, salami cubes, mozzarella. Hm, Italian wikipedia says that fried potatos per se are an dish of South Tyrol, so they don't seem too popular in the other parts of the country.

Swiss style: Fried potatos, cheese, ham, onions. Going for a kind of rösti, I guess.

Turkish style: Fried potatos, onions, bell peppers, chicken shawarma. Sounds like a near miss.

All in all, they aseem to have rather good ideas what "foreign" cooking tatses like. Much better than what a German pizza maker offers:

Pizza Culinaria Dutch-style - with sliced ham, red onions and sauce hollandaise. Ick.

The food service at our college called that "Shepherd's Pie". As if any shepherd could eat it conveniently. Some kind of enclosed sandwich, sure. But wrapped in mashed potatoes?!

The term "shepherd's pie" did not appear until 1877, and since then it has sometimes (incorrectly) been used synonymously with "cottage pie", regardless of whether the principal ingredient was beef or mutton. The term "shepherd's pie" should be used when the meat is mutton or lamb, with the origin being that shepherds are concerned with sheep and not cattle. This may, however, be an example of folk etymology

I hadn't heard the Palliser (or any other Calgary hotel) as the origin for ginger beef. What I heard was their origin was either the East Gate or Silver Inn restaurants in East Calgary. Interestingly, that entree has been radiating out geographically for years. 20 years ago in Vancouver it was rare. Ten years ago about half of the Chinese restaurants had it. Nowadays it's ubiquitous.

Serge's pâté Chinois sounds like cottage pie. Cottage pie and shepherd's pie are traditionally made in my family on a Monday (or Tuesday) to use up the remains of a Sunday roast of beef or lamb (respectively). Usually we only top it with mashed potato, not have any on the bottom. Although corn has been introduced to the recipe occasionally, more normally it is made from chopped roast meat, onion, carrot and the leftover gravy.

Occasionally a similar dish has been made leftover pork and been dubbed swineherd's pie or pigman's delight or pork in a pot, because according to my Mum I don't give the same dish the same name twice in a row.

*a way to use up leftover vegetables, usually with freshly-cooked ground beef. The batch made with leftover spaghetti was...odd.

And now at last I know why our local school cafeteria (in a town about 15 miles south of the Canadian border; seriously, we're closer to Montreal than we are to Boston) had "Chinese pie" rather than "shepherd's pie" on its menus. We've got a lot of Francophones in the school district, and some of them were probably lunchroom ladies.

Around here, there is a major grocery store chain called Cub Foods, and one small store with similar lettering called Cup Foods. We also have a large realty company called Edina Realty and a tiny one called Edna Realty which was pretty obviously trying to look like the big one.

Various on various kinds of meat pie: When Mike got his kidney transplant and was recuperating in the hospital, Neil Gaiman arranged to have a local pub deliver him a steak and kidney pie. At the hospital. It was hilarious. Mike ate half of it, which was doing quite well for someone at that stage of recovery, and announced in a pleased tone that he had been the envy of the ward because his dinner smelled so good.

You ARE trying to make me quote Poirot, aren't you?
:-)

Xopher, that's what it says on the front of the truck. (Soft tacos use flour tortillas: these days they mostly use vegetable shortening or even oil.)

Are you sure about that? Many places they'll ask if you want corn or flour, but almost any taco truck worth its masa will use corn tortillas as the default. Offhand I can't recall encountering a flour tortilla at an LA taco truck or taqueria. (Corn tortillas are whitish in color, rather than the bright yellow of Anglo-style hard taco shells, which makes them less visually identifiable as corn, but the texture is unmistakable.)

It was a daily ritual to hold your nose during the part of the drive to and from school that passed right by the Perdue plant. When I went off to school it took me some time to figure out what was odd about the traffic West of the Bay: you could go a whole *day* and not see a single chicken truck.

(On another topic: there was a long-ago Alexi Sayle sketch about a shop with sandwiches named for celebrities, and a customer complaining about the amount of actual Ethel Merman in the Ethel Merman Sandwich.)

Juan had a co-worker (or was it a boss?) back in his university-working days, when he was still hanging out with the agronomy and soil & water & climate folks, who was Belgian and who rented a small farm outside of town where he and his wife had an impressive garden and a big lawn under spreading trees. One day everybody in the department was invited out there for an afternoon, and Belgian fries, fresh made, were the treat of the day. They were really, really, really good.

Mike and I found a Belgian fries shop in NYC at one point. I think they had at least thirty different flavors of things to dip the fries in. Dunno if it's still there, though.

And a "California burger" usually refers to a hamburger with a big slice of onion, lettuce, and tomato, and usually pickles etc.

Another vote for calling the potato-and-beef thing "Shepherd's pie", even though you'd expect that it'd be made with mutton.