New York State
New York State Food & Traditional Cuisine
The city's food is the immigrant record written down: Jewish delis, Italian pizza, Chinese, Dominican, West African and a hundred others, most of them cheaper and better at a counter than a table.
Upstate cooking is almost entirely separate and barely known outside the state — a set of specific, local, largely working-class dishes that each belong to one city.
Between them is serious agriculture: New York is a major producer of apples and dairy, and the Finger Lakes have become a real wine region rather than a curiosity.
Signature Dishes
New York pizza, sold by the wide foldable slice, and the bagel, boiled before baking.
Pastrami on rye from a deli counter, cut by hand and stacked past reason.
Buffalo wings, invented in that city in 1964 and served with blue cheese and celery — never ranch, if you are anywhere near the place they came from.
The garbage plate, a Rochester construction of home fries, macaroni salad and meat under hot sauce, and the spiedie, marinated grilled meat on a roll, which belongs to Binghamton.
Apple cider doughnuts everywhere in autumn, and maple from the Adirondack foothills.
Markets & Local Food Culture
New York City is a market city as much as a restaurant one: the greenmarkets, the outer-borough food halls, and the street carts are where much of the interesting eating is.
Upstate, farm stands and pick-your-own orchards run from August through October, and the roadside honesty box is normal practice.
The Finger Lakes wine trails are organised around the lakes rather than the towns, which makes a designated driver the practical requirement of any day spent on one.
Regional Wine Heritage
New York is the country's third-largest wine producer, and the Finger Lakes are the reason. The deep glacial lakes hold enough heat to keep vines from freezing on the slopes above them, which makes cool-climate grapes viable this far north.
Riesling is what the region does best and is taken seriously internationally; cabernet franc and cool-climate reds follow.
Long Island's North Fork has a smaller and warmer maritime wine region, and the Hudson Valley claims some of the oldest continuously working vineyards in the United States.
Cider is the older tradition, and the orchards that support it are still here.