The Foods That Say "Michigan!"

Arizona has prickly pear candy, Arkansas has Slim Chickens and Georgia has pimento cheese. Louisiana has Zapp’s potato chips, Nevada has fry bread, New Hampshire has maple sweets and Ohio has Cherikee Red soda.

Alabama loves their signature Moon Pies so much, a 12-foot version of one drops from a building in Mobile, Ala., on New Year’s Eve.

So, which foods and beverages are so iconic they make you immediately think Michigan? Let’s find out.

STATEWIDE SODA

Well, make that “pop,” actually. That’s the favored term for carbonated beverages here in the Midwest. There are two pops native to Michigan and both are made in Detroit: Faygo and Vernors.

Faygo’s been around since 1907 and is a favorite of both kids and adults for two main reasons: the relatively low price and the ridiculously long list of available flavors.

While Faygo started with just three varieties – grape, strawberry and fruit punch – today you can find 53 (if you include diet versions), from their legendary Red Pop and Citrus Twist to Pineapple Watermelon, Candy Apple and Michigan favorite, Black Cherry.

Vernors, on the other hand, does one thing, but very well – and it has an even older pedigree than Faygo. It’s the oldest surviving ginger ale brand in the U.S., created in 1866 by James Vernor, a Detroit pharmacist.

This is the pop that your doctor will actually instruct you to drink if you have an upset stomach, but its refreshing ginger flavor and golden glow go a lot farther than that. Not only is it a favorite beverage, it’s one of two main ingredients in a Boston Cooler (the other being vanilla ice cream), as well as a key component in things like barbecue sauces and marinades.

Good luck buying it out of state, though — it’s tricky to find.

THESE CHIPS ARE BETTER

Better Made chips have been well made since the 1930s and they, too, aren’t easy to acquire elsewhere. They’re not far behind Faygo in selection, with 13 flavors including Original, BBQ, Green Onion, Garlic Dill Pickle and Cheddar and Sour Cream, although they started with just one: the plain potato chip in 1934.

By 1955, they’d introduced the oh-soexotic-for-the-times Wavy chip and, by the 1960s, they’d brought in BBQ, Red Hot and Cheese flavors.

More recently, they’ve added what they call Rainbow Chips, dark-sweet “burnt” potato chips, to answer customer demand, and they’ve diversified a little, too, adding items like popcorn, cheese puffs and tortilla chips to their lineup.

But, it’s always the plain ole Better Made potato chip that Michiganians return to for a little flavor from their home state.

FOLLOW THE MOOSE TRACKS

The original Moose Tracks ice cream came from Denali Flavors, an ice cream company based in Wayland, Mich, back in the early ’90s.

Vanilla ice cream provides the sweet base for chunks of chocolate and broken peanut butter candies (representing the moose footprints), plus ribbons of fudge; locals and returning tourists both know that the goal of eating Moose Tracks is to get a little of everything in each spoonful.

As Moose Tracks gained popularity, the company added several spinoffs on the flavor, including Chocolate Moose Tracks and Extreme Moose Tracks (with fudge-filled candies instead of peanut butter).

Can you find Moose Tracks outside of Michigan? Yes. And you can also find it in other licensed versions as marketed by companies like Kemp’s and Hershey’s, but, as with most things, the original remains the best.

PASTY POWER

While pasties are technically identified with Cornwall, England, where miners found them a perfect pocket meal for taking underground, the copper miners of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula thought this was a pretty good idea, too, and now you can find pasty shops and shacks all across the U.P.

There are several variations of pasty, but the general consensus is that it’s a half-circle shaped baked turnover pastry with a potato, meat, onion and usually rutabaga filling, and can be eaten as-is, with ketchup or with gravy.

For many Michiganians, a road trip to the U.P. wouldn’t be complete without stopping to pick up a warm pasty, usually wrapped in wax paper or tinfoil, to eat in the car along the way or as part of an impromptu picnic along US-2 on Lake Michigan’s northernmost shore.

Good luck having that experience in other parts of the country because, while pasty shacks are ubiquitous in the U.P., many folks elsewhere in the U.S. might not even know what a pasty is.

FINALLY, FUDGE

What trip to northern Michigan would be complete without a rectangular box of fudge, garnished with a small white plastic knife?

While fudge can be found everywhere around the region, of course the best and most authentic “vacation fudge” comes from Mackinac Island, where bringing back one of those little boxes is a rite of summertime passage meaning you actually went to the island on a ferry to get it.

Fudge started its tourist domination on Mackinac Island in the late 19th century, when some of the shops thought it would be a good chocolate product to sell to summer vacationers.

Now, you can pick from a wealth of fudge flavors, from classic plain chocolate to vanilla, chocolate with nuts added, peanut butter fudge, cherry fudge, turtle fudge with caramel and pecans, or maple fudge, another local favorite.

Little did those early fudge makers know that this candy souvenir would still be around today and that, no matter what flavor you choose, those little boxes of fudge would come to be one of the many things that represent the state of Michigan.

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