Note:  This is a work in-progress, and if you have some redneck fast food recommendation, I'd love to hear from you.  Just send an e-mail to with the subject line "redneck cuisine".

I have published before on redneck fine dining, but I left out the whole area of redneck fast food. 

Most rednecks love fresh squirrel

A Redneck Wedding cake

Fark has a great discussion of the best burgers in the northeast (check out the funny pictures!), but they omitted the great redneck burger joints south of the Mason Dixon line.  The best redneck chow is hard to define, as there are many criteria, but some common denominators include:

• Good Price - Good redneck chow is inexpensive
   

• Greasy - Good redneck cuisine must be fried, with good grease retention.
   

• Spicy - Good redneck chow has some "kick", usually with red of green chili

We also also seeing redneck fusion cuisine.  The North Carolina chain "Crispy Creme" has taken the nation by storm, and we now see that crispy creme doughnuts have joined the redneck basic food groups as a grain product, and it's no secret that they make great hamburger buns:

While there are thousands of great redneck dine dining establishments, here are a few that have impressed me the most.

Southern Redneck cuisine

Redneck chow originated in these parts, but besides the staples on barbeque, we also see some great redneck fast fooderies.

In memoriam:  Big Dicks - Once a Louisburg North Carolina landmark, Big Dick’s Drive-in was on South Bickett St. in Louisburg for decades.

A vintage 1950’s style drive-in restaurant, it was last real vestige of a lost age of redneck fine dining.   Dick’s was famous for their hot dogs, but everybody remembers their motto "If you like hot dogs, you'll love Dicks".  The favorite menu items was the “Big Dick” a foot-long hot-dog served with coleslaw, chili and mustard, a real feast. For generations, guys took their dates out for a Big Dick.

Char Grill - The absolute best hamburgers and cheeseburgers in Raleigh:

The Varsity - The most legendary of all southern redneck dining establishments, the original Varsity of a historical landmark in Atlanta.  There motto is Whatliya Have?" and it is absolute delicious.

California Redneck Cuisine

California has lots of rednecks too, and there are many choices.

My all time favorite is Tom's #5 (the most famous one is at the Santa Monica wharf), but they have Toms #5's through LA.  They have an amazing chili, so rich that you can almost mold figures with it, with a rich greasy taste in a pasty consistency.  Combine this with their little green hot peppers and you have redneck ambrosia.

For redneck hot dogs, look no father than Pinks on La Brea Ave..  It has wonderful food at great prices and it's always crowded, even at 3:00 AM.

Pinks is also a great place to watch for movie stars and celebrities, especially those from redneck ancestry.  Below is a Pinks chili dog, a thing of beauty:

New Mexico Redneck cuisine

New Mexico is heavily populated with rednecks and they have a spectacular array of redneck dining options. 

Blake's Lotaburger is a wonderful place where thin beef patties are skillet fried to crunchy goodness and served up with fresh Hatch Green Chile. Lotaburger's are located all over New Mexico, from Taos, to Alamogordo, and you will always find a fresh greasy treat there. There is just something about how they grill the bun in the hamburger grease until it's toasty warm, and that combined with their freshly ground beef fried until crispy, it just melts in your mouth. Everything is very fresh and high quality.
The original Owl Cafe was in San Antonio New Mexico (home of Conrad Hilton), and it was wildly popular with the German scientists on the Manhattan project who were building the world's first atomic bomb at the trinity site nearby. Known for their wonderful green chile, there is now an Owl Cafe in Albuquerque.  And don't; forget their green chile cheese fries, a redneck gastronomic orgasm.

New York Redneck cuisine

Nick Tahou's is by far the best redneck chow in Rochester New York, especially their legendary garbage plate, a redneck cuisine phenomenon has has spawned dozens of imitators.  It's not really a hamburger, per se, but a mish-mash of goodies all mixed up together for your dining pleasure.

The original garbage plate at Nick Tahou's

I also recommend Empire Hot's "Trash Plate" and Gitsis Texas Hots for the tried-and-true trash plate flavor that discerning rednecks demand..

 

Related redneck notes

See below for my related redneck lifestyle tips: