quote:Originally posted by mistertawny
We recently found a fish restaurant in land locked Tulsa, Oklahoma that would rival anything on Fisheman's Wharf.
I hate to say it, but that's because there isn't any food on Fisherman's Wharf, with the possible exception of the outdoor Dungeness cocktails, that's any good. I have never cared for West Coast seafood, having been raised near the Chesapeake and spent considerable time up and down the southern Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
In general, though, I do endorse your thesis that the left coast culinary scene is over-rated. My problem with it is the obsession with making everything "healthy" at the expense of taste and "fresh" at the expense of traditional preparation methods and ingredients.
Still, there are things here worth looking for. For one thing, you simply won't find the quality and variety of Asian foods anywhere else that you find in West Coast cities and, increasingly, their suburbs. Here in my winter hideout in Tucson, for example, there hardly seems to exist a Thai restaurant that doesn't feel compelled to also serve Americanized Chinese food because too few people here even know what Thai food is.
I also think that the Hispanic food scene on the West Coast is hard to beat--certainly in the heartland. I don't say just Mexican because there is so much more than that (Argentine, Brazilian, Central American, Peruvian, Euro-Spanish, even Basque).
And finally, for those who are into "fresh", the quality of fruits and veggies available in California especially tends to astound people from other parts of the country. Yes, at the height of the season, the garden crops like tomatoes that are available in the East and South may be the best there is, but any veggie lover will think him or herself in heaven upon seeing the produce section of even a mediocre California supermarket. And the farmers markets are, of course, even better.
