Top TenPlates
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North America · 38°53′N 77°02′W · Kitchen testing pending

United States

Fifty regional cuisines wearing one flag

The ten

Ranked by what people actually name first

  1. A double smash cheeseburger on a toasted potato bun, two lacy-edged patties with deep brown crusts and molten yellow American cheese draping over them.Smash Cheeseburger28 minThe lunch-counter burger as thermodynamics. Two loose 85 g balls of an 80/20 chuck, brisket and short rib grind hit a dry 230 °C cast-iron plate and get crushed paper-thin within ten seconds, building a lacy mahogany crust, then stacked with American cheese on a toasted potato bun with pickles, shaved onion and special sauce.
  2. Thick slices of smoked brisket with a black pepper bark and a bright pink smoke ring fanned on butcher paper, glistening with rendered fat.Texas Smoked Brisket14 hr 45 minCentral Texas, stripped of sauce. A whole packer brisket trimmed cold to an aerodynamic 6 mm fat cap, rubbed with nothing but kosher salt and coarse 16-mesh pepper, smoked over post oak for twelve to fourteen hours, wrapped in butcher paper through the stall, and rested four hours in a cooler before it is sliced.
  3. A wide bowl of thick ivory-white chowder with cubes of potato, chopped clam and crisp lardons, topped with chives and a scatter of oyster crackers.New England Clam Chowder1 hr 5 minThe Boston chowder, ivory-white and velvety. Live quahogs steamed just until they open so their liquor can be strained and kept, salt pork rendered and onion and celery sweated in the fat, russets simmered in the clam broth with a light roux, then cream and the chopped clams folded in at a sub-boil that never curdles either.
  4. Pieces of golden-mahogany fried chicken with jagged, craggy crusts cooling on a wire rack over a tray, beside a cast-iron skillet.Southern Fried Chicken55 minCast-iron skillet fried chicken on three pillars. A twelve-hour buttermilk brine with hot sauce and garlic, a flour dredge cut with cornflour and baking powder and flicked with brine to build shaggy crags, and a shallow fry in peanut oil held at 165 to 175 °C until the crust shatters and the dark meat reads 80 °C.
  5. A deep bowl of dark mahogany gumbo with pink shrimp, slices of andouille, okra rings and a cracked crab claw around a mound of white rice, scattered with scallion.Seafood and Andouille Gumbo2 hr 10 minThe bayou pot. A roux of flour and oil stirred without stopping for forty minutes to the colour of dark chocolate, arrested with the holy trinity of onion, celery and green pepper, built up with shell stock, andouille and okra, and finished with Gulf shrimp and blue crab poached for four minutes, with filé dusted at the table.
  6. Two tall golden-bronze crab cakes with large white lumps of crab visible on every side, with a lemon wedge and a small dish of tartar sauce.Maryland Crab Cakes28 minChesapeake purism. Jumbo lump blue crab folded four or five times into a binder of one egg, a little mayonnaise, mustard, Worcestershire, lemon, Old Bay and coarsely crushed saltines, shaped into tall mounds, chilled to set, and seared in foaming clarified butter until golden with the lumps still whole.
  7. A tall wedge of deep-dish pizza lifted from the pan, chunky red tomato on top, a thick pull of molten mozzarella beneath, in a golden cornmeal crust.Chicago Deep-Dish Pizza1 hr 20 minPizzeria Uno's 1943 inversion of the pizza. A cornmeal yeast dough laminated with softened butter and pressed 4 cm up an oiled pan, layered upside down, sliced mozzarella on the bottom, a sheet of raw fennel-free sausage over it, drained crushed San Marzanos on top, and baked forty minutes on the lowest rack.
  8. Pieces of fried chicken glazed a deep crimson red with a crackly crust, resting on slices of soft white bread with crinkle-cut pickles on toothpicks.Nashville Hot Chicken50 minPrince's revenge chicken. Pickle-brine buttermilk, a double dredge, a fry to a craggy crust, then the defining move, a ladle of the hot frying fat whisked into cayenne, brown sugar, paprika and garlic, and the chicken dipped straight through the molten red paste onto white bread with pickles.
  9. A side of ruby-red wild salmon lacquered dark amber on a smouldering cedar plank over grill grates, with thin lemon slices and dill on top.Cedar-Planked Wild Salmon38 minThe Columbia River method of the Coast Salish and Chinook peoples, on a grill. Wild sockeye or king salmon roasts on a soaked, charred western red cedar plank that shields it from the flame and steams cedar oil into the flesh, under a simmered lacquer of bourbon, brown sugar and grainy mustard, pulled at 52 °C.
  10. A rack of smoked baby back ribs with a sticky, glossy mahogany glaze and bones pulling back from the meat, sliced into individual ribs on a board.Barbecue Baby Back Ribs5 hr 30 minMemphis dry rub meets Kansas City glaze. Loin ribs stripped of their membrane, mustard-bound and rubbed with brown sugar and smoked paprika, smoked over hickory for the bark, wrapped in foil with butter and cider to braise tender, then unwrapped and lacquered with molasses-cider sauce until they pass the bend test.

There is no single American kitchen, only regions with strong opinions. This list is ten of them: the diner flat-top, the Central Texas pit, the New England wharf, the Southern skillet, the Louisiana bayou, the Chesapeake, the Chicago pizzeria, the Nashville shack, the Pacific Northwest beach fire and the barbecue shrines of Kansas City and Memphis.

What ties them together is fire and iron. The smash burger is beef crushed onto a 230 °C cast-iron plate within ten seconds of landing. The brisket is fourteen hours over post oak with nothing on it but salt and coarse pepper. The fried chicken is a shallow fry in a deep iron skillet. Even the salmon is cooked on a charred plank of cedar over coals. The country cooks hot and it cooks with smoke.

The other thread is the debt to Native and African cooks. Enslaved West Africans brought deep-frying mastery, okra and the buttermilk brine that make Southern chicken and gumbo what they are. Gumbo’s very name is Bantu for okra, and its filé is a Choctaw seasoning. The cedar plank belongs to the Coast Salish and Chinook. The lunch counter and the pitmaster built on that.

Two rules recur across the list. Coarse over fine: sixteen-mesh pepper for the brisket bark, saltine flakes rather than crumbs in a crab cake, cornmeal grit in a deep-dish crust. And restraint with heat on delicate protein: quahogs opened at 75 °C, wild sockeye pulled at 52, Gulf shrimp given four minutes in the gumbo and not a second more.

Regions and territories

Ten plates each, outside the country count