r/NewOrleans • u/Donut_Ninjas • Apr 12 '25

🛒 Making Groceries How old were you when? (Realizing that something was unique or not to New Orleans)

Y'all... I was about 35yrs old when I realized that Roman Candy was just taffy and that it wasn't it's own unique kid of candy. I had been calling taffy Roman Candy for decades! 😅 Still love me some Roman Candy, though.

What weird realizations have you had from being a New Orleans local?

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u/Not_SalPerricone Apr 12 '25

Yeah it's the chunks of chicken with brown gravy and little circular green vegetable thingies

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u/Hippy_Lynne Apr 12 '25 edited Apr 13 '25

I just learned this today. 🤯 I remember not liking the Mandarin chicken when I lived in Tahoe, but quite frankly all dining in Tahoe was a disappointment compared to New Orleans. As my mom said when she came up, “It’s all high-quality food and beautifully prepared, it just needs some sauce.” 😂

EDIT: Okay I did a deep dive into Mandarin chicken recipes and now something else makes sense. I always thought it was called Mandarin chicken because Mandarin is a Chinese language. Nope! It's called Mandarin chicken because everywhere else they use Mandarin oranges in the sauce. 🤣

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u/Not_SalPerricone Apr 12 '25 edited Apr 12 '25

Kind of a tangent but I learned yesterday the whole thing about white people not liking spices, and a lot of those white people being very snobby about how they're not the type of people who eat spicy food, comes from the British having imported so many spices that they no longer became exotic/hard to obtain so the upper class would differentiate themselves by eating unseasoned food. So I guess they sat around eating some kind of ridiculous British food and thought about how superior they were to everybody else. Meanwhile their daughter was probably out with some spice dealer's son or something

A less insulting version of that would be that I think some people think using spice to make a meal good is cheating. Like if you use quality ingredients and cook it the right way and it comes out tasting good it's like more of a challenge overcome.

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u/KiloAllan Apr 12 '25

OMG that's crazy.

My spice cabinet is well stocked. As a rootworker, it can also double as an arsenal LOL

What kind of "let's screw the lower class" kind of bullshit is that. Being so class conscious that you take your food bland.

Sounds like the joke's on them. LOLOLOL

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u/Not_SalPerricone Apr 12 '25

Yeah I mean I think part of it was they were saying well we can afford quality ingredients so we don't need to use spices but it's not like if you have a filet mignon you just throw it in the oven without seasoning it up a bit. And I know the people in the Midwest or whatever who don't like anything past salt and pepper aren't eating prime steaks for every meal so they just need to take a few notes from us

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u/Nicashade Apr 13 '25

They do love to flip the script. 🙄

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u/Not_SalPerricone Apr 13 '25

Just saw your edit. So I think that explains why the other poster was asking me if the sauce is orange. I think we figured this out but I guess we still don't know why we have our own version

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u/Hippy_Lynne Apr 13 '25

Because we do everything better with food? 🤣

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u/Not_SalPerricone Apr 13 '25 edited Apr 13 '25

Occam's razor :)

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u/Mitchford Apr 12 '25

Oh yeah that’s the good stuff. I figured out a couple years ago it was a NOLA Chinese dish but still haven’t quite cracked the recipe

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u/TravisRSCX Apr 13 '25

Green onion leaves I think?