I grew up in a city between Philadelphia and Baltimore, so I consider my "national dishes" to be the Philly cheese steak and the Chesapeake Bay blue crab (steamed or made into crab cakes).
The Philly cheese steak could also be considered a "heart attack on a bun": thinly sliced fried steak, fried onions, and melted cheese on a soft white-bread roll (usually topped with pickled hot and/or sweet peppers). I've often thought of opening a chain of cheese steak shops in the U.K. because they are made with ingredients from the four basic British food groups: red meat, fried onions, starch (white bread), and grease. (Did I mention the grease?) I think I'd make a fortune. What do you think, Malkie?
By the way, you
never make cheese steaks at home. You
only buy them in cheese steak shops (which often also sell "subs" - another whole area of Philly food that I'm not going into here
)
Read about cheese steaks here:
http://en.wikipedia....iki/Cheesesteak
This article is pretty funny and "right on":
http://philadelphia....cheesesteak.htm
And here's a nation-wide guide to cheesesteak shops for anyone in the U.S. who's dying to try one (yes, they
can be found outside the immediate Philadelphia area):
http://www.bestcheesesteaks.com/
My other favorite,
favorite local food is the Chesapeake Bay blue crab (scientific name "Callinectes sapidus" which means "tasty beautiful swimmer"), which is Baltimore's "signature" food, but is available all over the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay region.
There are two classic ways to prepare blue crabs. One is just to steam them in a big pot, with seasonings, most often "Old Bay" seasoning which is a ready-made spice mix. The other way is to make them into crab cakes by mixing the crab meat, seasoned with green onions (scallions), with some bread crumbs or better yet cracker crumbs and a little raw egg to bind the crab meat, form into patties, roll in more cracker crumbs, and saute.
You can get crab cakes in high-end restaurants or low, but the steamed crabs are usually just served in funky "crab houses" or "crab shakes" where you sit at a big table covered with paper and they bring a big pot of steamed crabs out and just dump them on the table and you sit there cracking them and picking the meat out of them (usually accompanied by cole slaw and beer). This is a
classic summertime meal in the area. Often churches or service clubs like Rotary or Lions clubs hold big "crab feeds" as fund raisers.
Commercial crabbers catch crabs in wire traps, but a lot of people catch their own crabs, either by going out in a small boat or by "crabbing" off a pier. Crabbing is very simple: you tie bait (often a chicken neck or something similar) to a piece of twine and drop it into the water, wait for a tug, slowly pull the twine till you can seek if there's a crab nibbling the bait, take a long-handled net and carefully dip it into the water behind the crab so you don't scare it off, scoop the crab into the net, and dump it into a basket. The crabs try to scramble out and sometimes they succeed. If you are in a boat, with bare feet, and a crab escapes - WATCH OUT! - because they can bite the heck out of you, as I know from personal childhood experience! I can get cheese steaks where I live now, not not blue crabs, and I certainly can't go crabbing. Now I'm feeling nostalgic and homesick.
Here's some info on blue crabs, crab houses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_crab
http://recipes.howst...es-a-recipe.htm
http://www.thebluecrab.com/http://www.bluecrab....aming_crabs.htm
http://skipjack.net/...cking_index.htm
http://www.bluecrab..../crabhouses.htm
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power." - Abraham Lincoln
3
(anyone who has read tim winton's 'cloudstreet' will remember the many, many nights and days spent on the swan river, the river that runs through my home city. and if you haven't read it, rush out now and buy it! 
