These Are the Strangest Foods From Every State

Caliche’s in Las Cruces is known for its frozen custard, but it doesn’t just top the various flavors with the usual sweet sauces, sprinkles, and the like. The specialty it calls the New Mexican is a big dish of frozen vanilla custard crowned with chopped green chiles and sprinkled with salted pecans.

You can put spaghetti on your pizza if you want to, like at Angelo’s in Illinois (see above) — but why introduced pasta into the equation? Why not just pile pizza on — or rather into — pizza. The specialty at Vinnie’s in Brooklyn is the Pizza Box Pizza, a small pepperoni pizza enclosed in a larger one that’s folded over to form a box.

It’s liver, all right, of the pork variety, mushed together with morsels of pig’s head meat and cornmeal, formed into rectangles, and fried into something that has been described as looking like burnt Pop-Tarts.

You don’t have to be from Arizona to improvise on the all-American hot dog. DogMahal DogHaus in Grand Forks offers a number of variations on the theme. The 5th Bro is the most outré — a beef frank topped with cream cheese, mango, relish, and Padang pineapple sriracha.

Related to North Carolina’s livermush and Pennsylvania’s scrapple, this German-inspired sausage made of ground pork (sometimes mixed with beef) and pinhead oats is a specialty of Cincinnati and of Covington, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River. It’s best when fried crisp, but at the annual Goettafest, it ends up in burritos, moo shu tacos, omelettes, and potato skins, among other things.