(MONEY Magazine) – One Autumn day a few years ago, I found myself in central Wisconsin with one afternoon left on my vacation and two places I desperately wanted to visit. If I went north, I could go to Hayward, home of the highly touted Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame; if I went east, I could check out some eateries in Sheboygan, the self-proclaimed Bratwurst Capital of the World. With no time to do both, it seemed like an impossible choice until my travel partner brought a bit of perspective to the situation. "I'm sure the Hall of Fame would be fun," she said, "but compare that to the chance of having a meal we might remember for the rest of our lives."

End of discussion. As this anecdote handily demonstrates, an army isn't the only thing that travels on its stomach. Good food--especially regional specialties not available back home--should always be a priority when traveling. And since America features so many distinct culinary cultures, there's no shortage of regional delicacies to sample. Many have become fairly well known over the years--by now everyone's aware that Chicago is the place for deep-dish pizza and that New Orleans is where it's at for gumbo. Some, like Buffalo chicken wings and Philly cheese steaks, have even spread throughout the country, securing a spot on our national menu.

But if you really want to find America's true flavor, check out some of the regional specialties that have never caught on outside their own geographic bases or garnered widespread notoriety. These small, localized food subcultures--like Sheboygan's bratwurst outlets--may not be as famous as, say, the crab feasts of Baltimore, but they're every bit as interesting and tasty. In fact, because these less conspicuous food scenes have largely been ignored by the tourist crowd, their trademark dishes have not been corrupted, compromised or watered down like so many of their more celebrated counterparts.

My favorite overlooked food scene centers around Binghamton, N.Y., the only place in the U.S. where you'll find spiedies, an excellent dish available at bars and restaurants all over town. Spiedies ("spee-deez") are meat cubes--usually pork, but lamb, beef and chicken are sometimes used--that have soaked in a mixture of oil, vinegar, herbs and spices known as spiedie sauce. After marinating at least overnight--and often considerably longer--the meat is skewered, grilled over charcoal and served with a piece of squishy Italian bread, which you then use as a mitt to remove the hot cubes from the skewer. The result is a simple and remarkably tasty sandwich.

Spiedies are generally acknowledged to have originated with Binghamton's once sizable Italian immigrant population, although historical specifics are sketchy. In any case, ground zero for spiedies today is Sharkey's (56 Glenwood Ave.; 607-729-9201), a well-worn venue with a lively bar up front, some homey booths in the back and, in an odd decorating touch, a horseshoe crab mounted on the wall. The menu features everything from pizza (awful) to pierogies (pretty good), but serious chowhounds go to Sharkey's for the spiedies, which are Binghamton's best. Figure two or three skewers per person to start--but the marinade is so potent that spiedie addiction soon kicks in, at which point you'll find yourself flagging down a waitress to bring you some more.

A food with a more readily traceable pedigree can be found in northern Michigan, particularly in the Upper Peninsula: the pasty (rhymes with "nasty" but doesn't taste that way). Pasties are large pockets of pastry dough filled with a hearty stew of beef, potatoes, onions and rutabaga. They're an extremely satisfying, filling food, the kind that goes down particularly well on a brisk afternoon.

Pasties originated in Cornwall, England, where they've been a local staple for centuries, and came to northern Michigan in the late 1800s with the Cornish miners who emigrated to work in the U.P.'s iron and copper mines. Although pasties can occasionally be found elsewhere--I recently saw a HOT PASTIES sign in the window of a roadside joint in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., for example--the best place to have them is still the U.P., where they're as ubiquitous as pizza in New York City. One of the top venues is Lawry's (2381 U.S. 41, West Ishpeming; 906-485-5589), but virtually any of Michigan's scores of pasty shops will do you just fine.

No discussion of regional American food would be complete without a mention of barbecue. But while a near-fanatical legion of partisans has developed around each of the major 'cue camps (beef brisket in Texas; vinegar-soaked pork in North Carolina; tomato-based sauces throughout the Deep South), western Kentucky is often left out of the debate--which is a shame, because the area is home to one of America's better-kept secrets: barbecued mutton.

The mere thought of mutton is usually distasteful to American palates, but the barbecued version found throughout western Kentucky, and especially around Owensboro, fits perfectly into southern smokehouse tradition. The flavor is sharp but not gamy, and the slow pit-smoking process turns the tough meat tender. A particularly good place to sample this overlooked link in the barbecue chain is the Moonlite Bar-B-Q Inn (2840 W. Parrish, Owensboro; 502-684-8143), where a huge buffet also features barbecued beef and pork, providing a chance to see how the mutton's flavor stacks up against the more traditional meats. While you're at it, you can sample a bowl of another underrated Kentucky specialty: burgoo, a thick soupy stew that includes an assortment of meats and vegetables in a tomato-based sauce--just one more reminder of America's rich gastronomic diversity.

Paul Lukas, winner of a Lowell Thomas Award from the Society of American Travel Writers, had one of the best meals of his life during that visit to Sheboygan.