food witness protection program

Somewhere along the way we collectively decided that food needed aliases.

Take the humble hot dog.

Nobody seems interested in calling it what it technically is: a frankfurter.

Instead it becomes a Coney Dog, a Nathan's, a Dodger Dog, a Fenway Frank, a Red Hot, a Wiener, a Chili Dog, a Footlong, or whatever regional identity it has adopted for the day. The poor thing has more nicknames than a career criminal.

Then there are hamburgers.

What do we call them?

Burger.

Cheeseburger.

Smashburger.

Patty melt.

Slider.

Steamed ham if you're from Springfield.

But unlike the hot dog, the burger never really picked up a collection of colorful aliases. Nobody walks into a restaurant and says, "I'll have one beef disc between bread, please."

The burger somehow escaped the nickname industrial complex.

Tacos aren't much better.

A taco is just... a taco.

Sure, there are street tacos, fish tacos, breakfast tacos, birria tacos, hard shell tacos, and soft tacos. But nobody has successfully convinced the world to call them something completely different.

Imagine the confusion.

"Hey man, want to grab some pocket sandwiches?"

You mean tacos?

"Yeah."

Just call them tacos.

Then we arrive at the sandwich category, where all rules disappear.

A grilled cheese becomes a sammie.

A sandwich becomes a sando.

A submarine sandwich becomes a sub, a hero, a hoagie, a grinder, a wedge, a torpedo, or occasionally a poor boy.

Depending on where you live, two people can be discussing the exact same sandwich and sound like they're speaking entirely different languages.

"Let's get grinders."

"Oh, you mean heroes?"

"No, I mean hoagies."

"No, those are subs."

Meanwhile the sandwich sits there wondering what crime it committed to deserve seven separate identities.

Food nicknames aren't even practical.

Nobody has ever shortened "sandwich" to "sammie" because they were in a hurry.

There was no emergency.

No one was running through an airport yelling, "I don't have time to say sandwich!"

We do it because it's fun.

Food is one of the few things in life that we spend an unreasonable amount of time talking about. We nickname it. We argue about it. We defend regional terminology as if national security depends on it.

And honestly, I kind of love it.

Because if someone walks up to me and says they're bringing a Fenway Frank, a hero, a grinder, a sammie, and a dog to the cookout, I know exactly what they're talking about.

Mostly.

I still have no idea what to call a taco other than a taco.