New Yorkers don’t always agree where upstate begins. For some, it starts north of 125th Street, while others might say it starts in Westchester. In Chuck D’Imperio’s A Taste of Upstate New York, he makes clear that he wants to explore foods north of the city (Sorry, 207th Street). The book looks at the food stories from the Hudson Valley to the Great Lakes to the Canadian border and around the vast area of central New York.

The book is divided into eight regions, and then from there organized around each distinct food within the region. Not all these regions have equal representation. Chautauqua / Allegany, for instance, has just two entries. The foods in the book range from hyperlocal, like apple sausages made in one shop in Wyoming, New York to national brands like Shredded Wheat. While there’s useful history here, for me, the most interesting of these stories are the regional dishes that have evolved from one restaurant or shop but since into a locally known dish available across many different restaurants, like chicken riggies.

The book is part history, part guide, with references to specific places that still exist. Many of the entries include color photos, a trait that proves useful when D’Imperio is exploring some of the less common foods like the circular Croghan Bologna. Other images are more for fun, like the giant cow sculpture in Lowville.

D’Imperio acknowledges there are some limitations of writing food stories in that there is often limited documentation. For instance, Albany apparently has a tradition of serving mozzarella sticks with raspberry sauce, but he couldn’t track down the story, and it remains untold. (If you know anything about this, feel free to reach out!).

For better or worse, these food stories in this book primarily exist in a vacuum. There’s no central narrative tying them together other than the regions the book is organized into. That’s understandable for such disparate tales. What ties the book together is D’Imperio’s casual tone. He’s interviewed the people involved with each of these dishes, and tells their stories, often in their own words.

He also doesn’t take himself too seriously, as in the case of Grandma Brown’s Home Baked Beans. He only spoke to the descendants of the founder once by phone and was never able to arrange an in-person interview. That’s alright, since this anecdote became part of the story. And that’s the appeal here. D’Imperio has infused these entries with his own relaxed storyteller voice, so while there’s no centralized narrative, it all feels very conversational. It isn’t overly encyclopedic. These are stories, not a dull volume of pure research.

The second half of the book shifts gears into longer form chapters. These read more like features articles in a magazine highlighting narratives like Buffalo wings, the last Howard Johnson’s, and Friday fish fries. Mostly these are useful for touching on topics that had longer stories, or that don’t fit the regional categorization, although some of these latter chapters feel a bit like they’re designed to stretch the book. There’s a chapter outlining the cookbooks from the region too, and while it’s helpful information, I’m left wondering if there was a better way of integrating this into a narrative.

There’s a final section at the end of the book that does feel a bit encyclopedia, focused on destinations. One chapter features notable restaurants and offers brief glimpses of each along with historic information. The second chapter in this section is focused on festivals, which is a useful snapshot in time but already contains some out of date information. Knowing that though, it does catalog the festivals.

Overall, the book is a fast read, and while it’s not exactly page-turning suspense, D’Imperio has done a good job of editing, and curating the stories into succinct narratives. The book may not satisfy the most rigorous completists (whatever did happen to those Albany mozzarella sticks?), but the stories that are here do feel complete and in-depth.

If there’s one take away from A Taste of Upstate New York, it’s the importance of the state’s immigrant communities on shaping the flavors and dishes that are synonymous with local culture, and distinctive flavors. New York is responsible for nationally known foods like Buffalo wings, potato chips, and ice cream sundaes, and D’Imperio has pulled together all this information into a singular, slim volume filled with stories and accounts of their creation. It’s an excellent model of regional food histories, and the kind of book more states could benefit from.

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A taste of Upstate New York : the people and the stories behind 40 food favorites

D’Imperio, Chuck
Syracuse University Press
2015

Buy it at Bookshop.org
Borrow it from Queens Public Library

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