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Vice Blog

NEW YORK - NEBRASKA'S COMING TO TOWN

When you think of Nebraska do you immediately think of culinary superiority? Forget the beef. Now try again. No, you don't. But we native Nebraskans are a proud people and will cheer endlessly in the face of mediocrity (especially when it comes to college football) and will celebrate anything to do with our heritage, even fast food. Ever hear of a Runza? Originally called a

bierock

, It's essentially a ground beef and steamed cabbage bun. German in heritage, it is and has been the fast food sensation of Nebraska for decades. Relocated Cornhuskers get teary-eyed when reminiscing about them and for me, they are a required meal whenever I visit my parents.

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The Runza company even owned a 1950's theme restaurant for a period in downtown Lincoln. I worked there my senior year of high school as a roller-skating waitress; what poodle skirts had to do with meat buns I never did figure out. My boss used to alternate between sexually harassing me and calling me overweight. The smell of cabbage and beef used to nauseate my high-school-vegetarian sensibilities, but upon regaining my meat-eating sanity later in life I learned to love me a Runza.

The food culture of the American Midwest isn't something most outsiders want to explore. It's basic Americana, meat and potatoes, with nary a green in sight. I come from a place where there is a restaurant devoted entirely to chicken fingers and where the supermarket has an entire refrigerator case devoted to nothing but hot dogs. Every time I go home I spend an hour at Super Saver with my mother. It's basically a gigantic warehouse full of food, where the meat section is bigger than most entire New York City grocery stores.

While proud when it comes to meat, Nebraskans aren't experts on pizza. There's Valentinos, a local pizza/pasta buffet chain has some of the grossest pizza I have ever had: gluey-cheesed and cloyingly sweet-sauced; painful eating. As a chubby little kid I appreciated a buffet, but even then all-you-can-eat pizza didn't seem that enticing when it was from Vals. It was a favorite of childhood soccer dinners and birthdays and for some reason is consistently voted the best pizza in Lincoln.

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After living in Brooklyn for nine years, I can't quite call myself a New Yorker. The first 18 years of my life were spent dwelling in the No Coast land, home of Con Agra and Poppycock. A place where you can't find a Coca-Cola to save your life (Pepsi sponsors the University of Nebraska and as some apparent sign of solidarity every restaurant serves it, infuriating my Diet Coke prone Californian mother.) Despite my grumblings about the lack of good food, I get genuinely homesick for the local dairy ice cream, made with milk from cows that live a half an hour away. I miss those stinky Runzas and decidedly non-kosher Fairbury hot dogs.

So imagine my delight when an invite to the Nebraska Society of New York's Taste of Nebraska event showed up in my email inbox. My good buddy Glen's mother grew up in the tiny town of

Ord, Nebraska

, and somehow ended up in New Jersey--guess there aren't too many opportunities for Jewish girls in a town of 2,269 in the middle of nowhere, even by Nebraska's standards. She got him a gig DJing the party. This is Glen aka DJ Naan-Stop, the proudest New Jersey Jew with Nebraska heritage:

So if you want a Runza or want to find out what the hell a kolache is or if you are curious as to how 62.5% of Nebraskans became overweight or obese, show up at the Irish Rogue on Saturday from 3:30 to 7:00. $50 will get you unlimited beer, wine, and Nebraska fare. If that doesn't entice you, maybe a mention that Larry the Cable Guy is a sponsor will. Yes, he's also one of the fine specimens Nebraska has to offer.

BEVERLY HAMES