Food? Where?

[bhunted 887]

Seeing the Taylor Ham/Pork Roll topic reactivated got me thinking about food availability. One thing I miss is the food you can get in NJ and surrounding areas.

What I'd like to start here to break up the monotony of the aforementioned is:

"What food do you crave that you cannot find by you"?

Location: Sumner County, TN.....For me its:

- Pizza! Real honest to goodness pizza that is started out being tossed and spun like the old days...
Most pizza outside of franchise crap here in Northern TN is done by a machine. They put the dough in what sounds like a pile driver. First time I ordered a pie, I though I was under attack. The kid simply puts the dough under it and it pounds it into submission. Sad state of affairs. It barely comes out round. Ask for crispier crust, forget it. They leave it in longer and the top comes out dryer and brown.
So so far, unless we want to drive all the way to Nashville, we end up getting franchise pies. 
We do have real pizza makers here. A nice Italian family from Chicago but they don't make it either. So their sauces and topics are top notch but they serve it on flat bread. Not bad but still not a replacement for dough. Not that they can't. They say like others say, the dough comes out wrong and blame the water. I've heard that in many states.
Chicago, NY and NJ seem to be the main places for the best pizza. 
Solution: Get a couple of box trucks, send a bunch of day workers to NJ/NY, dip a couple dozen 55 gallon drums into the river, drive them back and make some pizza dough!

- Bagels! You don't have to be Jewish to love bagels with a nice 'smear'.... Only place that comes close is Panera. Bread. Not bad. But unlike NJ where you can always find decent bagels, there  are none around here. Some say, well there are no Jews around here. How dumb is an excuse. 
Solution: Unless its a water issue, open up a bunch of bagel/sandwich shops and serve bagels!

- Pork Roll/Taylor Ham: Not going in depth here. But have not found any around here yet. You'd think so with all the farm animals around.

What say you? 

 

 

[njpilot 671]

I hear ya John. Being in FL for almost 4 1/2 years, I miss a lot of food from NJ. I have found a pizza place and a bagel place here that gets their dough shipped from Brooklyn. The bagel place even has bialys which are decent.

They say it's the water, but probably easier to have dough sent then water.

Agree, Panera bagels are good, as are the bagels from BJs. BJs here also carries pork roll

[fishnut 2,358]

Ive found decent bagels and there is a deli up here that has PORKROLL! They call it "Jersey porkroll" lmao

But the pizza and Italian food in general up here sucks