12 Things Pennsylvanians Miss Most After Moving Away

A Pennsylvania transplant walks into a grocery store in Nevada looking for scrapple and walks out empty-handed.

The deli clerk has never heard the word.

Neither has anybody else in the store.

These are the things Pennsylvanians miss most after they move away.

1. Primanti Bros Sandwich

Pittsburgh’s Strip District gave Pennsylvania a sandwich that stuffs French fries and coleslaw right between the bread.

Joe Primanti started the business off a sandwich cart during the Great Depression, feeding truck drivers who needed to eat one-handed on the job.

The fries went on almost by accident, after a trucker showed up one winter with more potatoes than he knew what to do with.

Everything stayed.

The James Beard Foundation named Primanti Bros. one of America’s Classics in 2007, and the restaurant still builds the sandwich the same clumsy, perfect way.

A Pennsylvania transplant in Colorado orders a sandwich, gets a plain stack of meat and cheese, and has to ask the counter to throw the fries on top.

They get a strange stare in return.

2. Soft Pretzels From a Street Cart

Pennsylvania invented the soft pretzel, and Philadelphia turned buying a warm twist into a daily habit.

Pennsylvania Dutch bakers twisted the dough by hand long before shopping malls started selling a version of it.

Mustard is the only right answer.

Anne Beiler opened her first pretzel stand at a farmers market in Pennsylvania Dutch country in 1988, and the company she built now runs more than 2,000 shops chasing that same warm twist.

Order a pretzel in Arizona, and it usually shows up dry and stiff, closer to bread than to what a Philadelphia cart hands over warm.

That’s a letdown every time.

3. Scrapple on the Breakfast Plate

Scrapple started with Pennsylvania Dutch families in Lancaster County who refused to waste a scrap of the hog.

German and Swiss settlers boiled pork trimmings with cornmeal and pressed the mix into a loaf, a recipe that has barely changed in three centuries.

The name comes straight from the scraps, first written down in the 1820s.

Slice it thin.

Fry the edges crisp, and add syrup if that’s your way.

Move to a state without a Pennsylvania Dutch market nearby, and the grocery store substitute is usually a sad tube of breakfast sausage.

It’s not the same breakfast.

4. Calling It a Hoagie

Ask for a hoagie outside Pennsylvania, and half the country hears “sub” and blinks at you.

Philadelphia’s name for a stuffed Italian roll traces back to World War I shipyard workers on Hog Island, who packed meat and cheese into a lunch and nicknamed it the “hoggie.”

Say it fast enough in a Philadelphia accent, and hoggie turns into hoagie.

Mayor Ed Rendell made it official in 1992, naming the hoagie Philadelphia’s own sandwich.

A transplant in Tennessee orders a hoagie, and the counter hands back a sandwich that tastes about right but sounds completely wrong coming out of their own mouth.

The word never leaves.

5. Church Pierogi Sales

Pittsburgh’s pierogies came from Polish and Slavic immigrants who settled Polish Hill in the late 1800s and never let go of the recipe.

Church basements across the city still turn out trays of potato and cheese pierogies for fundraisers, the same way they have for generations.

The Pittsburgh Pierogi Festival at Kennywood Park has run since 2012 and now pulls in vendors from outside the state just to compete.

Georgia serves its own dumpling styles, but none built from a recipe passed down through Polish Hill families for generations.

Nothing comes close.

6. Water Ice From the Corner Stand

Philadelphia calls it water ice, never Italian ice, and the difference matters to everybody who grew up on it.

John Cardullo opened his water ice stand in the Italian Market in 1945, using nothing but fruit, sugar, and frozen water.

Lemon, cherry, chocolate, and pineapple are the four flavors that built the reputation.

Say “wooder ice” out loud, and a fellow Pennsylvanian knows exactly where you’re from.

Ask for water ice in Florida, and a server hands over a snow cone instead.

That’s close, but wrong.

7. Tastykake in the Snack Aisle

Tastykake started in a Philadelphia bakery in 1914, when a baker and an egg salesman pooled their money and started wrapping cakes one at a time.

A Butterscotch Krimpet in the snack aisle is as Pennsylvania as the six o'clock news.

The name came from a taste test, when one tester bit into a cake and called it a tasty cake.

That stuck, too.

A transplant in Oregon scans the snack aisle at their grocery store and finds nothing close to a Kandy Kake.

They mail-order it instead.

8. Yuengling on Tap

Yuengling has run out of Pottsville since 1829, longer than any other brewery in the country has stayed open.

German immigrant David Yuengling built the place into a hillside, and workers dug caves underneath it to keep the beer cold before refrigeration existed.

The company is still family-owned, five generations later.

Order a lager by name at a bar outside Pennsylvania, and the bartender sometimes has to check whether the distributor even carries it.

A blank look usually follows.

9. Sheetz Made-to-Order Runs

Sheetz started as one dairy store in Altoona in 1952, before Bob Sheetz turned it into a round-the-clock stop for gas and made-to-order food.

Touchscreen ordering built the loyalty, letting a shopper build a sandwich exactly the way they want it at two in the morning.

Pennsylvania put food and fuel under the same roof long before that combination became normal everywhere else.

A transplant in Illinois pulls into a gas station expecting the same menu and finds a rack of hot dogs instead.

That's a rough adjustment.

10. State Store Ritual

Pennsylvania is one of just two states left where wine and spirits sell exclusively through government-run stores.

Every bottle runs through a Fine Wine and Good Spirits location, a system the state built right after Prohibition ended.

Shoppers learn their own store's staff, their own store's selection, and exactly which aisle holds the Chairman's Selection releases.

Move to a state where wine sits next to the cereal at the grocery store, and the whole errand suddenly takes ten minutes instead of a planned trip.

Some transplants miss that errand.

11. Groundhog Day Bragging Rights

Every February 2, a groundhog named Phil steps out of a burrow in Punxsutawney, and the whole country waits to hear what he saw.

German settlers brought the tradition to Pennsylvania in the 1700s and 1800s, swapping a European badger for the local groundhog once they landed.

The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club organized in 1899 and has cared for Phil at Gobbler's Knob ever since.

A transplant watches the morning news in another state and has to explain to confused coworkers why a rodent's shadow matters at all.

Coworkers rarely buy it.

12. Peeps Fresh From Bethlehem

Every marshmallow Peep in the country traces back to one factory in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Just Born moved its operation there in 1932, and the company now pushes out 2 billion Peeps a year off a single conveyor line.

Locals used to time an Easter trip around the factory outlet store, buying misshapen Peeps for a fraction of the shelf price.

North Carolina shelves carry the marshmallow chicks too, just without the hometown bragging rights that come from living five miles from where they're made.