Garbage Plate

Description

This unusually named dish originates from Rochester, New York and consists of a messy combination of either cheeseburger, hamburger, sausages, steak, chicken, grilled cheese sandwich, fried fish or eggs (one can choose two ingredients from the list), served on top of fries, beans, and macaroni salad. The dish is then topped with optional onions, mustard, or hot sauce, and served with a side dish of white bread and butter, its purpose to soak up the juices after the garbage plate has been eaten. It was invented at Nick Tahou Hots' fast-food restaurant in Rochester, and they even trademarked the name in 1992. The original version of the dish from 1918 was called hots and potatoes , but many years later, Rochester's big community of college students would ask the waitress to have one of those plates with all the garbage on it, and the new name spread like wildfire. Although it is a bizarre dish with an unappetizing name, in this case garbage refers to abundance and variety, and it is the number one reason why hangovers don't stand a chance in Rochester.