9 Upstate New York Foods Downstate New Yorkers Have Never Heard Of

Ask for a Garbage Plate in Manhattan, and you may get a blank stare.

Upstate New Yorkers grew up on several local favorites that never made a trip down the Thruway.

Here’s a taste of the upstate dishes that your downstate friends are missing out on.

1. Spiedies

Spiedies are skewered chunks of marinated meat, charbroiled and usually served on Italian bread.

Meats such as lamb, chicken, beef or pork go on the skewer.

You can see the dish dated to as early as 1938 on the roadside marker at Otsiningo Park in Binghamton.

The dish is believed to have been brought to the area by people of Italian ancestry.

Where’s the name from?

A Binghamton TV station’s history says the word spiedie comes from spiedini, the Italian word for skewer.

2. Salt Potatoes

Salt potatoes are potatoes boiled in brine and paired with melted butter, a dish popularized by salt industry workers around Syracuse.

Salt was big business.

At its height in the 1870s, Onondaga County supplied 90% of the nation’s salt, according to the roadside marker in Liverpool.

Many of the workers in that industry were Irish immigrants who brought potatoes to work.

Those workers began tossing the potatoes into the boiling kettles used to make salt.

Taverns and saloons on Syracuse’s North Side served bowls of the potatoes with melted butter alongside pints of beer.

You can trace the dish in local taverns and eateries to as early as 1883.

3. Garbage Plates

The Garbage Plate comes from Nick Tahou Hots, a lunch spot in downtown Rochester.

Rochester’s visitor bureau says you can pick a cheeseburger, hamburger, white or red hots, Italian sausage, chicken or grilled cheese as your protein.

You can add any combination of home fries, french fries, baked beans or macaroni salad.

The plate is usually topped with a Rochester-style meat hot sauce, and mustard, onions and ketchup are optional.

By the 1980s, college kids were asking for a plate with all that garbage on it, Saveur reported in 2012.

The name stuck.

4. White Hots

Why the white?

Zweigle’s says the white hot is white because it’s uncured, so you won’t find added nitrates or nitrites in it.

The Rochester company bases it on an old family recipe for a German white sausage.

Zweigle’s first created the white hot in 1925 for the Rochester Tribe, the team that became the Red Wings.

A Red Wings release says the team would play one night as the White Hots to mark the white hot’s 100th anniversary.

The white hot is a blend of pork, beef and veal stuffed into a natural pork casing.

5. Half Moon Cookies

Central New York reporting says Hemstrought’s Bakeries in Utica invented the half moon cookie.

A half moon is cakey, with vanilla and chocolate frosting on each side.

Don’t confuse a half moon with the hard black and white cookies of New York City.

Then there’s the size.

At Holland Farms Bakery & Deli in Manlius, a reporter measured several half moons that averaged about five inches wide.

The bakery has sold thousands of them since opening in August 2025.

6. Chicken Riggies

The Chesterfield Restaurant in Utica says one of its chefs created chicken riggies, according to a 2015 Spectrum News report.

The restaurant had served the dish for more than 25 years at the time.

It snowballed. By then, customers were coming from as far as Los Angeles and Chicago.

Utica radio station WIBX describes chicken riggies as rigatoni and sautéed chicken in a tomato sauce with peppers and onions.

Chicken isn’t your only option, since steak riggies and shrimp riggies are among the other versions.

7. Utica Greens

A 2010 Smithsonian magazine report on Utica greens starts at a restaurant in Lake Placid.

The writer tried a version made with Swiss chard, smoked trout and rock shrimp.

That version turned out to be a twist on a Utica favorite that probably started with Italian immigrants.

The most common ingredients in Utica greens are escarole, prosciutto, garlic, chicken broth and hot peppers.

Chard and other greens also work.

Prosciutto adds smokiness and salt.

If you don’t usually order greens, the writer says this dish has enough spice, salt and smoke to satisfy people who dislike them.

8. Michigan Hot Dogs

You’ll find the Plattsburgh michigan hot dog almost exclusively in northern New York, according to a 2012 Adirondack Life article.

The michigan hot dog was born in Clinton County.

Plattsburgh is the center of the michigan hot dog scene.

The Town of Plattsburgh defines a Plattsburgh michigan as a hot dog topped with a specially seasoned meat sauce.

A traditional michigan hot dog comes in a natural casing, set in a split-top bun.

The article describes the sauce as thick and hamburger-based, a mix of tomato puree and spices.

That sauce simmers for hours.

9. Beef on Weck

Beef on weck is thinly sliced roast beef with horseradish on a kümmelweck roll.

The roll has a hard outside topped with salt and caraway seeds, and a doughy inside.

The Pomeroy Foundation’s marker page says you can dip the roll in au jus or beef drippings.

A marker installed by the West Seneca Historical Society and Museum says the sandwich is believed to have first been served in the late 1800s.

Where’s the roll from?

Local legend credits a German baker named William Wahr.

You’ll find the sandwich throughout western New York, with Buffalo in particular.

Disputed Origins

Adirondack Life says you can trace the michigan to a 1927 newspaper ad, when Eula and Garth Otis first hyped their Michigan Hot-Dog Stand.

Eula Otis learned to make meat sauce in Detroit before she and her husband moved to Plattsburgh in the 1920s.

She's credited with coining the name for the Plattsburgh michigan.

Two rival stories exist.

One credits George Todoroff, who founded Jackson Coney Island in Michigan in 1914.

The magazine says that story fails because he never left Michigan.

The other centers on Nitzi Rabin, who did run an early michigan hot dog stand.

But a 1984 article has Rabin saying his sauce came from Eula Otis.