Foursquare knows all your dirty little secrets, something every traveler ought to know too before setting a toe into another state. Yep, the local search mobile app claims to have mined data and found the most prevalent vices in each U.S. state that travelers can sample as they make their way across the country.
California, here’s your top indulgence. We are the biggest consumers nationwide of:
Animal-style fries at In-n-Out
(Trumanlo)
OK, maybe the Golden State eats so many animal-style fries, that is, French fries smeared with cheese, grilled onions and Thousand Island dressing, because you can get them only in five states. (Outside of California, In-N-Out operates in Arizona, Texas, Nevada and Utah.)
Still, hard to believe that on the vice scale the peach-colored-with-green-bits fries outranked this dish that turned up at the Orange County Fair this year:
Deep-fried peanut butter stuffed pickle
(Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
Most of the vices from coast to coast involve food and spirits, though Las Vegas did rate gambling as its No. 1 vice (duh).
In South Carolina, it’s peach beer. In New York, it’s picklebacks, a shot of whiskey that’s followed with a shot of pickle brine or bite of a dill pickle.
Foursquare mapped the state-by-state no-nos and added a quiz aimed at matching the vice with the state. The map also tells you the best place to find each state’s vice too.
Check out the How to Indulge in Every State map and take the challenge.
Here’s an example: “Bakeries in South St. Louis are where this home-town treat—typically flat or slightly sunken, and topped with powered sugar—is thought to have originated in the 1930s or ’40s.” If you guessed this overly-sweet sweet and clicked on Missouri, you’d be right.
Gooey butter cake
(Amanda / Wikimedia Commons)
How did Foursquare come up with the data? It says in a statement that “a vice was loosely defined as an alcoholic drink, fattening food, dessert, or borderline controversial preference.” The popularity of the item and an algorithm were part of the mix too.
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