Food
Bracket Madness | Favorite New England Foods
To celebrate Yankee’s 80th anniversary in 2015, we bring you the Yankee Magazine Favorite New England Foods Bracket! Are you ready to help vote for your favorite New England foods? Here’s how it works. In the tradition of the popular annual NCAA Men’s Basketball “March Madness” bracket, we’ve selected and matched up a list of […]
By Yankee Magazine|Oct 04 2015|
Coffee By Design | Portland, Maine
Photo Credit : Katherine Keenan
Are you ready to help vote for your favorite New England foods? Here’s how it works. In the tradition of the popular annual NCAA Men’s Basketball “March Madness” bracket, we’ve selected and matched up a list of 64 classic New England dishes and brands (no easy feat, we promise). Your job is to choose your favorite in each matchup, and then submit your votes. Need more info? We’ve put together a handy guide to 75 Classic New England Foods to help fill in the blanks. Each Monday for five weeks, the winners will advance to the next round against a new challenger (and so on, and so on…) until finally, a victor is crowned as the favorite classic New England food.
POLLS ARE NOW CLOSED.
Congratulations to our 2015 Favorite Classic New England Food…the LOBSTER DINNER!
I LIVE FOR THIS KIND OF THING (even though I’m not even from the NE originally). Love it! Great job!
Some of those choices were tough!
I’ve never liked “Moxie”! Voting was really FUN though!
wow, this was HARD!! Lol! Great fun though, thanks!
Absolutely loved this. Please do more!!
Takes me back to my roots!
Maple syrup vs. Necco wafers? You guys are CRUEL. And brown bread over coffee syrup? How could you guys?
Fun survey, but I don’t understand some of your match-ups: choosing between the HD chips vs. Cape Cod chips made sense, but choosing between Whoopie Pies vs. a Boiled Dinner, or Toll House cookies vs. Franks and Beans didn’t make any sense to me.
that was so hard I loved almost everything. I now live in Georgia and I miss everything New England and what I grow up with.
I know Linda. Ditto. How could they, seriously! And where’s Grape Nuts pudding. I desperately want a coffee frappe right now.
Wow! Some of these choices were tough to choose between, like blueberry and pumpkin pie. I love them both. I miss my homeland of New England! I need to get back there for a visit soon. I am very hungry now for some of this great New England food.
Thank you for the stroll down memory lane…although I think I gained a couple of pounds just viewing the choices
I was born and raised in NE never heard of potatoe candy?
I totally agree with Roxanne. I love Whoopie Pies for a snack but a Boiled Dinner is one of my favories too! And, whatever was matched with Salt Cod is bound to win.
I also love both blueberry pie and pumpkin pie. I usually choose by trying to see which looks like it is freshest!
Fortunately, I lived in Massachusetts for 30 years before moving to California and brought all my favorite recipes with me!
I was born and raised in Chatham Mass. I now live in the south. Taking this survey made me miss good ol Cape Cod:)
Some of the selections were rather strange, but it was fun.
It was harder than I thought. Sometimes there were two I liked and could not choose which I liked most.
Hi Pam! Needhams are a popular regional candy in Maine, made with a little mashed potato (but mostly butter, sugar, coconut, and chocolate). You can learn more about each dish on our bracket cheat sheet, Behind the Bracket http://www.yankeemagazine.com/article/food/guide-to-our-favorite-classic-new-england-foods. That page will link you to even more information, and sometimes a recipe!
Oops. I missed Grape Nuts pudding. Of course it’s there.
Hi Roxanne! We’re glad to hear you enjoyed it! In a bracket-style contest, there doesn’t really have to be any rhyme or reason the matches. Each week, the winners will be paired against other winners from the previous week, so the idea is that some of the matchups might get pretty wacky, and hopefully harder! We started by pairing very similar dishes against one another (the lobster rolls and fried clams, for example) so there has to be just one moving forward. We hope you’ll keep voting! 🙂
This was really hard! As a 10th generation New Englander, I have to say there really wasn’t anything on there I don’t like. But I think your pairings could have been better. For instance, whoopsie pies versus Toll House cookies. Baked beans versus beans and franks. Annadamer bread versus B&M Brown bread. I do think the lobster rolls and the clams were on target. Some of these were just too hard to pick and now you’ve made me hungry. By the way. American Chop Suey is a New England dish ONLY if made with Campbell’s tomato soup. If you use tomato sauce its Italian and not New England! I was 10 before I ever had tomato sauce and then it was at The Village Cafe in Portland!
By the way, loved seeing the Hoodsie cups! During Workd War I I my mom tested milk for Hood’s Dairy here in Coos County NH. They tested for high fat content and for Ungulin fever which made the milk bad. She was one of a dozen or so and they were referred to as the Hoodsie girls! After the war, the girls were let go so the returning soldiers could have the jobs. But Hoodsie cups were a staple in our home!
Hi Victoria! Thanks so much for weighing in! Each week, the winners will be paired against other winners from the previous week, so the idea is that some of the matchups might get pretty wacky, and hopefully harder! We started by pairing very similar dishes against one another (the lobster rolls and fried clams, for example) so there has to be just one moving forward, but didn’t want to make the pairs too easy in the first round. We hope you’ll keep voting! 🙂
What a fun memory! Imagine being able to call yourself an official Hoodsie Girl! We’re glad Hoodsie Cups are still a staple in many New England households.
My old Yankee family used to make a red flannel hash using dried salt cod that had been soaked overnight, instead of corned beef. My mother would dice pork fat, fry it up and sprinkle the crispy bits of fat over the mashed potatoes, beets and flaked salt cod. We loved it. I though it was called Cape Cod Hash. Ever heard of it?
Miss NE but your Yankee quizzes etc bring back such awesome memories. Lived in CT, schooled in RI, summers in ME & NH! Visited & shopped in VT. As a Floridian, I miss it all. Yankee, This Bracket Madness made my day. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!!!
I am originally from Fitchburg, MA. This brought back many wonderful memories
This brings back memories–an exile in the Mid-Atlantic misses a lot of those. Some were EASY. Others–a tough choice between two faves.
This resonates with me, a Cape Codder, and made me think of stuff my folks and grandparents also had around the house. #GoodStuff
Some difficult choices . I’m a NE native, but what are “Froggers” ?
How does Ben and Jerry’s not make the list. Go to any store and you’ll find shelves of Ben and Jerry’s (any flavor will do but I’ll pick Half Baked) but like two coffee ice creams. Stuff’s awful.
Hi Chuck! Ben & Jerry’s was a contender in Round 1 of our Favorite New England Foods Bracket, but lost to Cabot Cheddar! We hope you’ll keep voting to save your favorites.
Really difficulty, because the choices weren’t analogous; it was apples and oranges. Squaring maple candy v. steamers didn’t work real well for me. Put maple candy up against a Sky Bar, steamers against whole belly clams, etc.
Where do you find Coffee Syrup. I haven’t been able to find it.
Hi Mark! Thanks for your comment! With a bracket system, the pairs are different every week depending on the previous week’s winners, so it would be impossible to always pair similar items. It’s also (to me, anyway) a bit more fun to make you choose between a favorite seafood AND candy. 🙂 We hope you’ll keep voting!
Hi Donna. I’m not sure where you live, but my local Market Basket here in southern New Hampshire carries coffee syrup (including Autocrat) right next to the Hershey’s syrup. A quick Google search will also yield a few online retailers. Thanks!
would be interesting to change the matches each time they are presented. Would see the actual preferences for each item then.
this was really hard cause I love both items in most of the voting offerings.
I wished I could have voted for both they are sooo yummy. I was born
in MA and over my lifetime made quite a few trips back to visit relatives
and check out my old stomping grounds. Now that I live in Philadelphia
I miss my New England something fierce.
What a great bracket concept. It’s been fun to watch and vote along the way. It was tough making decisions between these Final 8 pairings.
Hard to choose just one in the brackets.