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The cuisine of Michigan is part of the broader regional cuisine of the Midwestern United States. It is reflective of the diverse food history of settlement and immigration in the state, and draws its culinary roots most significantly from the cuisines of Central, Northern and Eastern Europe, and Native North America. [1]
Michigan is a leading grower of fruit in the U.S., including blueberries, tart cherries, apples, grapes, and peaches. [2] [3] Plums, pears, and strawberries are also grown in Michigan. These fruits are mainly grown in West Michigan due to the moderating effect of Lake Michigan on the climate. There is also significant fruit production, especially cherries, but also grapes, apples, and other fruits, in Northwest Michigan along Lake Michigan. Michigan produces wines, beers and a multitude of processed food products. This wide variety of crops grown in Michigan make it second only to California among U.S. states in the diversity of its agriculture. [4] The state has 54,800 farms utilizing 10,000,000 acres (40,000 km2) of land which sold $6.49 billion worth of products in 2010. [5] The most valuable agricultural product is milk. Leading crops include corn, soybeans, flowers, wheat, sugar beets, and potatoes. Livestock in the state included 78,000 sheep, a million cattle, a million hogs, and more than three million chickens. Livestock products accounted for 38% of the value of agricultural products while crops accounted for the majority.
The city of Detroit and surrounding metropolitan area is known for its wide variety of food items. The area's specialties include Coney Island hot dogs, found at hundreds of unaffiliated "Coney Island" restaurants. Not to be confused with a chili dog, a coney is served with a ground beef sauce, chopped onions and mustard. The Coney Special has an additional ground beef topping. It is often served with French fries. Food writers Jane and Michael Stern call out Detroit as the only "place to start" in pinpointing "the top Coney Islands in the land." [6] : 233
Detroit also has its own style of pizza, a thick-crusted, Sicilian cuisine-influenced, rectangular type called Detroit-style Pizza. Other Detroit foods include zip sauce, [7] served on steaks; the triple-decker Dinty Moore sandwich, [8] corned beef layered with lettuce, tomato and Russian dressing; and a Chinese-American dish called warr shu gai or almond boneless chicken. [9] Many pizza chains have had their start in or around Detroit, including Little Caesars, [10] [11] Jet's Pizza, [12] Hungry Howie's Pizza, [13] and Domino's Pizza in nearby Ypsilanti. [14] [15] Two of those chains, Little Caesars and Domino's Pizza, are both in the top three largest pizza chains in the United States. [16]
Detroit also has a substantial number of Greek restaurateurs. Thus, numerous Mediterranean restaurants dot the region and typical foods such as gyros, hummus and falafel can be found in many run-of-the-mill grocery stores and restaurants.
Polish food is also prominent in the state, including popular dishes such as pierogi, borscht, and pączki ( /ˈpuːnʃ.kiː/ POONSH-kee). Bakeries concentrated in the Polish enclave of Hamtramck, Michigan, within the city, are celebrated for their pączki, especially on Fat Tuesday. Hungarian food is featured in nearby eastern Toledo, Ohio with Tony Packo's Hungarian hot dog, a form of kolbász .
Chinese restaurants in the Detroit area serve almond boneless chicken, [17] a regional Chinese-American dish consisting of battered fried boneless chicken breasts served sliced on a bed of lettuce with a gravy-like chicken flavored sauce and slivered almonds. [18]
The Detroit area has many large groups of immigrants. A large Arabic-speaking population reside in and around the suburb of Dearborn, home to many Lebanese storefronts.
In Ann Arbor, the Chipati, a tossed salad, is served inside a freshly baked pita pocket with the "secret" Chipati sauce on the side. The Chipati's origination is claimed by both Pizza Bob's. [19]
Dutch cuisine, especially baked goods, are common in West Michigan, especially Ottawa County, due to the high number of Dutch immigrants to the area. [20] Also famous to the area is the wet burrito, which is said to have been created in Grand Rapids in 1966. [21]
Additionally, German cuisine is fairly common in the area of Frankenmuth, with multiple restaurants in Frankenmuth serving German food, including those at the Bavarian Inn. [22]
The Northwestern Lower Peninsula, specifically the Traverse City area, is world-renowned for its cherry production. Harvesting over 90,000 tons of cherries each year, Michigan is the nation's leading producer of tart cherries. The Montmorency cherry is the variety of tart, or sour, cherry most commonly grown in the state. [23] A Hungarian sour cherry cultivar, Balaton, has been commercially produced in Michigan since 1998. [24] Additionally, Traverse City hosts the National Cherry Festival each July, and is commonly known as the "Cherry Capital of the World". [25] [26] [27]
The city of Pinconning is known as the "Cheese Capital of Michigan". [28] This is because Pinconning is locally noted for its former production of cheese and cheese products, especially Pinconning cheese, made and distributed by Pinconning Cheese Company and Wilson's (Horn) Cheese Shoppe. [29] [30]
The Upper Peninsula has a distinctive local cuisine. The pasty ( /ˈpæstiː/ PASS-tee), a kind of meat turnover originally brought to the region by Cornish miners, is arguably the most famous food of the Upper Peninsula. Pasty restaurants and shops line highways across the peninsula. Varieties include chicken, venison, pork, hamburger, and pizza, all of which many restaurants serve. [31] Many U.P. restaurants also serve potato sausage and cudighi, a spicy Italian meat.
Finnish immigrants in the western and central Upper Peninsula contributed nisu, a cardamom-flavored sweet bread; limppu, an Eastern Finnish rye bread; pannukakku, a variant on the pancake with a custard flavor; viili (sometimes spelled "fellia"), a stretchy, fermented Finnish milk; and korppu, hard slices of toasted cinnamon bread, traditionally dipped in coffee. Some Finnish foods such as juusto (squeaky cheese, essentially a cheese curd, like Leipäjuusto) and saunamakkara (a ring-bologna sausage) have become so ubiquitous in Upper Peninsula cuisine that they are now commonly found in most grocery stores and supermarkets.
Maple syrup is a highly prized local delicacy. [32] Fresh Great Lakes fish, such as the lake trout, whitefish, and (in the spring) smelt are widely eaten. Interestingly, there is minimal concern about contamination of fish from Lake Superior waters. [33] Smoked fish is also popular. Thimbleberry jam and chokecherry jelly are a treat. [34]
Trenary Toast is another food with roots in the Upper Peninsula. The snack product hails from Trenary, a small town in Alger County, and consisted of toast coated in a blend of cinnamon and sugar. [35]
Additionally, the peninsula, especially Marquette and Copper Country, are known for their brewery industries. [36]
Fish fries are common on Fridays and during Lent in Michigan, usually set up buffet-style with items including rolls, potatoes (typically in the form of french fries and mashed), salad, coleslaw, apple sauce, deep-fried fish, and sometimes fried shrimp and baked fish. Fish is generally popular throughout the state due to the state's location on four of the Great Lakes. Trout, walleye, perch, and catfish are common. Whitefish is a regional specialty usually offered along the coast, with smoked whitefish and whitefish dip being noteworthy. [37]
Michigan's wine and beer industries are substantial in the region. The Traverse City area is a popular destination to visit wineries and the state makes many varieties of wine, such as Rieslings, ice wines, and fruit wines. Micro-breweries continue to blossom, creating a wide range of unique beers. Grand Rapids is known as "Beer City USA", with Founders being the largest of Grand Rapids' breweries. [38] Bell's, another large Michigan craft brewery, is located further south in Kalamazoo, another city known for its breweries. [39]
Mackinac Island, between Michigan's Upper and Lower Peninsulas, is world-renowned for its fudge. Phil Porter wrote a book entitled "Fudge: Mackinac's Sweet Souvenir", which explains how fudge became such a popular treat in Mackinac. After the fur trade in the region collapsed, the island became a summer vacationing spot. Visitors began to associate sweets with the island, originally starting when Native Americans began collecting maple sugar. In the 1887, though, the Murdick family opened the first candy shop on the island. [40] Fans were used to send the scent of their fudge out into the community to draw in customers, and the scent of fudge, as well as the increase in shop openings, became commonplace on the island. [41] Additionally, every August, the island hosts the Mackinac Island Fudge Festival. [42] Mackinac Island's visitors became known as "fudgies", a term which has spread to cover any tourists, regardless of whether or not fudge is purchased, across Northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. [43] Today, fudge shops are also common in Michigan's tourist towns outside Mackinac Island, such as St. Ignace and Traverse City.
W. K. Kellogg, an industrialist, had worked for his brother, John Harvey Kellogg, in a variety of capacities at the sanitarium in Battle Creek. Tired of living in the shadow of his brother, W.K. Kellogg struck out on his own, going to the boom-towns surrounding the oilfields in Oklahoma as a broom salesman. Having failed, he returned to work as an assistant to his brother. While working at the sanitariums' laboratory, W.K. spilled liquefied cornmeal on a heating device that cooked the product and rendered it to flakes. He tasted the flakes and added milk to them. He was able to get his brother to allow him to give some of the product to some of the patients at the sanitarium, and the patients' demand for the product exceeded his expectations to the point that W.K made the decision to leave the sanitarium. Along with some investors, he built a factory to satisfy the demand for his "corn flakes". It was during this time of going their separate ways for good that Dr. John Harvey Kellogg sued his brother for copyright infringement. The U.S. Supreme court ruled in W.K. Kellogg's favor, due to the greater sales and public profile of W.K. Kellogg's company. Inspired by Kellogg's innovation, C. W. Post invented Grape-Nuts and founded his own cereal company in the town. For this reason, Battle Creek has been nicknamed "the Cereal City."
Below are restaurants, as well as food and beverage companies, founded in or based out of Michigan, unless otherwise specified.
The cuisine of the American Midwest draws its culinary roots most significantly from the cuisines of Central, Northern and Eastern Europe, and Indigenous cuisine of the Americas, and is influenced by regionally and locally grown foodstuffs and cultural diversity.
A Buffalo wing in American cuisine is an unbreaded chicken wing section that is generally deep-fried, then coated or dipped in a sauce consisting of a vinegar-based cayenne pepper hot sauce and melted butter prior to serving. They are traditionally served hot, along with celery sticks and carrot sticks, and a dip of blue cheese dressing or, primarily outside of New York, ranch dressing. Buffalo wings are named for Buffalo, New York, where they were invented, and have no relation to the animal. They are often called simply chickenwings, hot wings, or just wings.
Domino's is an American multinational pizza restaurant chain. Founded in 1960, the chain is owned by master franchisor Domino's Pizza, Inc. and led by CEO Russell Weiner. The corporation is Delaware-domiciled and headquartered at the Domino's Farms Office Park in Ann Arbor Township, near Ann Arbor, Michigan. As of 2018, Domino's had approximately 15,000 stores, with 5,649 in the United States, 1,500 in India, and 1,249 in the United Kingdom. Domino's has stores in over 83 countries and 5,701 cities worldwide.
Canadian cuisine consists of the cooking traditions and practices of Canada, with regional variances around the country. First Nations and Inuit have practiced their culinary traditions in what is now Canada since at least 15,000 years ago. The advent of European explorers and settlers, first on the east coast and then throughout the wider territories of New France, British North America and Canada, saw the melding of foreign recipes, cooking techniques, and ingredients with indigenous flora and fauna. Modern Canadian cuisine has maintained this dedication to local ingredients and terroir, as exemplified in the naming of specific ingredients based on their locale, such as Malpeque oysters or Alberta beef. Accordingly, Canadian cuisine privileges the quality of ingredients and regionality, and may be broadly defined as a national tradition of "creole" culinary practices, based on the complex multicultural and geographically diverse nature of both historical and contemporary Canadian society.
The cuisine of New York City comprises many cuisines belonging to various ethnic groups that have entered the United States through the city. Almost all ethnic cuisines are well represented in New York, both within and outside the various ethnic neighborhoods.
Romanian cuisine is a diverse blend of different dishes from several traditions with which it has come into contact, but it also maintains its own character. It has been mainly influenced by Turkish but also a series of European cuisines in particular from the Balkan Peninsula and Hungarian cuisine as well as culinary elements stemming from the cuisines of Central Europe.
A Coney Island is a type of restaurant that is popular in the northern United States, particularly in Michigan, named after the Coney Island hot dog.
Porchetta is a savory, fatty, and moist boneless pork roast of Italian culinary tradition. The carcass is deboned and spitted or roasted traditionally over wood for at least eight hours, fat and skin still on. In some traditions, porchetta is stuffed with liver and wild fennel, though many versions do not involve stuffing. Porchetta is usually heavily salted and can be stuffed with garlic, rosemary, fennel, or other herbs, often wild. Porchetta has been selected by the Italian Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policy as a prodotto agroalimentare tradizionale (PAT), one of a list of traditional Italian foods held to have cultural relevance.
A Coney Island hot dog, Coney dog, or Coney is a hot dog in a bun topped with a savory meat sauce and sometimes other toppings. It is often offered as part of a menu of classic American diner dishes and often at Coney Island restaurants. It is largely a phenomenon related to immigration from Greece and the region of Macedonia to the United States in the early 20th century.
The history of pizza begins in antiquity, as various ancient cultures produced flatbreads with several toppings.
Detroit-style pizza is a rectangular pan pizza with a thick, crisp, chewy crust. It is traditionally topped to the edges with mozzarella or Wisconsin brick cheese, which caramelizes against the high-sided heavyweight rectangular pan. Detroit-style pizza was originally baked in rectangular steel trays designed for use as automotive drip pans or to hold small industrial parts in factories. It was developed during the mid-20th century in Detroit, Michigan, before spreading to other parts of the United States in the 2010s. It is one of Detroit's iconic local foods.
A munchy box or munchie box is an inexpensive fast-food product sold from takeaway restaurants, primarily in Scotland and Glasgow in particular, but also in many other parts from Aberdeen to Rothesay. They are also now sold by many takeaways across the UK. It consists of an assortment of fast foods served in a large pizza box.
National Coney Island is a Coney Island-style restaurant based in Michigan that specializes in Greek-American cuisine. It is a corporation that has more than 20 National Coney Island locations in the Metro Detroit area.
Almond chicken is an American Chinese dish. The most common variations involve either stir frying or deep frying chicken and topping it with almonds.
The presence of pizza restaurant chains has contributed to a significant increase in pizza consumption in Mainland China and Hong Kong. This also had an effect of introducing cheese as a culinary ingredient and everyday food in China, which was relatively uncommon in Chinese cuisine prior to the emergence of pizza chains. Pizza Hut opened its first store in China in 1990, and several pizza restaurant chains exist in China today.
Kebab pizza is a Swedish style of pizza topped with kebab meat and other ingredients, the precise topping often varying between restaurants. A combination of Italian and Middle Eastern cuisines, the kebab pizza was created by Turkish and Middle Eastern immigrants in the 1980s. Since its creation, the kebab pizza has increased in popularity and is today one of Sweden's most popular pizzas, and one of the most popular fast food dishes overall. Due to its popularity the dish has reached a position of cultural prominence in Sweden as well as all over Scandinavia, sometimes being invoked in popular culture and politics.
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