The voice of a man who has never eaten a proper Yorkshire Pudding.
I always find it funny how much British food gets beaten up, particularly by people who come from less-than-impressive culinary cultures themselves. I used to get it all the time when living in Germany - a country whose main contributions to food were the industrialisation of sausage production, the worst wines in the known universe, and putting cabbage in everything. They eat raw pork, for Gods’ sake!
My mother is from Michigan and my father is from Tennessee. Shortly after they were married my mother made broccoli with cheese sauce. My father jokingly said the cheese sauce would be good on okra. My mother took him seriously, bought some okra, boiled it, drained it, and put cheese sauce over it. I wish I could have seen the result, which was a swirl of slime and cheese.
And while everybody does fried chicken thankfully hot chicken remains a local specialty…although it’s probably only a matter of time.
Virginians like Peruvian: this is true. At least 10 Peruvian chicken places within a mile of where I’m sitting… seriously!
I’m from Georgia, and I was thinking pretty much the same thing. Of course, most of the people who raised me were from Oklahoma, so my view of southern food may be a bit skewed.
I like okra, I like cheese-sauce. non-deep-fried okra and cheese sauce does not sound like a winning combination.
Great. Now I’m hungry!
Also:
Fried green tomatoes and sweet tea
and if you want to get real Southern - picked pigs feet and pickled eggs. Last time I was in Alabama I still ran into a few rural gas stations carrying these items. I still have never eaten one, but it gives me a little thrill of nostalgia to see them again.
wait… Steamed hams are real?
So Skinner does steam a good ham…
Lauantaimakkara. I always gorge on it when over. Hernekeitto, which I nicknamed “kaasukeitto”, don’t ask why - but so worth it. And the best fish ever I had at a street kiosk at Helsinki. (Ireland also has good fish at places. Such things are best eaten near local fishing industry.)
Berlusconi is full of crap. Always was, always is. Proving he is wrong is a low-hanging fruit; but taking such a high caliber on him as a reindeer pizza is worth the exercise! 
(Todo: review and perhaps try the pizza.)
Wait, are you Finnish? Or just have visited the place? In anycase, if you’re in Tampere, Tapiola’s “mustamakkara” (lit. black sausage, but it’s blood sausage) is heavenly - one of my favorite foods of all times. And ryynimakkara, too. Lauantaimakkara I don’t care for, personally. Of course, I always have love for the basic hernekeitto (peasoup). Fish is indeed good here (I live in Turku, so right next to the sea), and it was also in Ireland when I visited.
For you to try: Karelian stew, Karelian pastries, anything with reindeer, fried muikku (a fish, either called vendance/European cisco) and yes, the pizza. I really think Kotipizza’s pizzas are really good. I haven’t tasted the Berlusconi myself (expensive!), but given how good their regular pizzas are, I bet it’s great. None of that “huge crust with a bucket load of fillings”-pizza I had in.
Watch the Finnish episodes of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations and you’ll see some good food.
Steamed cheeseburgers! A utterly repulsive pile of grey/brown slime that tastes so ridiculously good it rises above mere “cognitive dissonance” to somewhere between “I didn’t realize I was tripping” and “flowering-mind-awareness-of-Samsara”.
I noticed a distinct interest in Irish food in Northeast, which I wholeheartedly agree with from personal experience in the area. Irish Nachos FTW.
I’m always curious about food (… except for tripe), so always wanted to try a steeamed cheeseburg. Dragged my wife along on my birthday, and while she thought the whole idea repulsive, and thought the visuals repulsive, she loved it.
There’s only a small region that makes steamed cheeseburgers, but they have specialty equipment. Weird.
There is a restaurant supply store in Waterbury, CT that sells this:
To my knowledge no one outside of Connecticut knows what a steamed cheeseburger is.
Yeah, we had burgers at the BurgRTendr restaurant, and I was unimpressed. My wife liked them, but I preferred K. LeMay’s, and thought the fries were overcooked.
How is it that “diner” did not make the top five in New Jersey? Are all those folks who fill the diners in New Jersey from out of state?
My dad-on-law took me and the family to Ted’s in Meriden. The fries were similarly weak as I recall. The burgers were incredible, almost made me want to star making them at home.
I see what you did there 
[quote]Heaven and Hell
Heaven Is Where:
The French are the chefs
The Italians are the lovers
The British are the police
The Germans are the mechanics
And the Swiss make everything run on time
Hell is Where:
The British are the chefs
The Swiss are the lovers
The French are the mechanics
The Italians make everything run on time
And the Germans are the police[/quote]
(source)
We must add boiled peanuts to this list.
I notice that Fish and Chips is the second most disproportionately popular cuisine in WA.
I may be single handedly responsible for that. Although US Fish and Chips isn’t a patch on the stuff I could get from my old chippie.
Boiled peanuts are disgusting.
More for me then 
