Warning: Food May Vary by Region

At its simplest, the American dish called chili – short for chili con carne and occasionally misspelled as chilli – contains beef (or another meat), chili peppers, and spices. Chili has been the official state dish of Texas¹ since 1977 and was introduced to the region far earlier.

Though it's difficult to track down an exact history of how and where the now-revered Texas chili recipe was first developed, it was preceded by similar Mexican dishes², and the popularity of the dish is usually traced to San Antonio and the Chili Queens³ who operated there until around 1940.

Any Texan will tell you that chili should never have beans⁴ – but when you order the chili enthusiastically offered in and around Cincinnati, Ohio, at restaurants like Skyline Chili, it is served a number of ways: on a bed of spaghetti noodles and covered with cheese ("3-Way"), onions ("4-Way"), and, yes, even beans ("5-Way"). Credit for the creation of this American dish is generally given to brothers John and Tom Kiradjieff⁵, Greek immigrants who founded Empress Chili in 1922.

Despite being called Cincinnati chili⁶, this regional food is not another version of the chili Texans love (and love to debate).

A post shared by Skyline Chili (@officialskylinechili) on Mar 25, 2017 at 8:01am PDT

When you order a crab sandwich at a restaurant, you might expect perfectly round crab cakes or lumps of crab meat stuck neatly between two slices of bread. If it's soft-shell crab season, beware: your sandwich may have legs.

That's because soft-shell crabs⁷ are blue crabs that have shed their harder shells and, if caught in a window of just a few days, can be prepared and eaten more or less whole. To make a crab sandwich, the soft-shell crab – claws and all – will usually be battered and fried, then stacked between a bun with lettuce, tomato, and condiments.

The molting crabs are in season from May to September, when the crab sandwich and other soft-shell specialties crawl onto menus along the mid-Atlantic coast. It's especially popular in and around "the DMV,"⁸ a region including the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia.

Although newcomers to this regional food may think they're being pranked by locals who want to see if they'll actually eat it, the soft-shell crab and its fried appendages can be found elsewhere (like on a po' boy at Big & Little's in Chicago).

A post shared by Lindsay (@vodkaandbiscuits) on Aug 15, 2016 at 9:40am PDT

If you order chicken and waffles at a restaurant in the south, or in Los Angeles, or in Harlem – all of which are places this American dish is rumored to have originated⁹ – you would expect to enjoy delicious, perfectly fried chicken on top of a crispy waffle, probably covered in syrup.

But locals to the Pennsylvania Dutch region are accustomed to a chicken and waffles recipe¹⁰ that looks (and tastes) quite different. The waffle is still there, but the chicken is roasted instead of fried, shredded, and topped with gravy.

While the history of fried chicken and waffles is hotly contested by several regions wanting to lay claim to it, the origin of the version popular in Pennsylvania can easily be traced back to America's colonial beginnings and the German and Swiss immigrants who gave the Pennsylvania Dutch area its name. Likewise, this version is called Pennsylvania chicken and waffles or PA Dutch chicken and waffles.

For many Americans, sloppy joes are a comfort food that harkens back to childhood. Another American food simmering in mystery, it may be considered a type of loose meat (or tavern) sandwich¹¹ and has been mass-produced under the brand name Manwich since 1969. Whether it's homemade or store bought, everyone knows a basic sloppy joe is ground beef mixed with a tomato-based sauce and various seasonings – unless you're in a New Jersey deli.

In the state perhaps most famous for its well-documented shore, a sloppy joe is a cold sandwich made with one cheese, two meats, and three layers of rye bread, topped with coleslaw, and Russian dressing.

Credit for the sandwich is given to Town Hall Deli,¹² which is said to have created it in 1934. Today, the deli offers nearly a dozen different joes, each of which is meant to feed as many as three people.

Interestingly, Jersey Mike's Subs, a sandwich chain founded in New Jersey in 1956 that has more than 1,000 locations across the country, doesn't have any version of the sloppy joe sandwich on its menu, no doubt because customers outside of the Garden State would have a beef with the cold concoction.

A post shared by Town Hall Deli (@townhalldeli) on Sep 13, 2015 at 9:42am PDT