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OVERRATED & UNDERRATED
Traditional Dish
BY RUTH REICHL
Most Overrated Traditional Dish:
Meat loaf. In my opinion it’s just a lazy man’s hamburger. It’s got the beef, but it lacks the sizzle. Americans gave the world great beef and then ruined it by grinding it, mixing it with a lot of absurd ingredients, and baking it dry. Real meat eaters want their stuff charred and juicy; this is just so much gray dust.
Most Underrated Traditional Dish:
The peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It’s the perfect American dish: sweet, salty, soft, chewy. It’s also infinitely portable. Relegating this wonderful invention to the school lunch is a terrible waste.
—Ruth Reichl is the editor in chief of Gourmet magazine.
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