Our Favorite Unique Eats

Unique Eats on CookingChannelTV.com –– food photos of the best restaurants, diners and dives across the United States serving up the most unique eats.

Public's Quinoa Hash Browns and Turkish Eggs

Doused in a chile-infused butter, eggs take on a smoky flavor. Public shakes things up by laying the Turkish poached eggs over a bed of yogurt and chives. The perfect match for this egg? A crunchy slice of sourdough bread, perfect for lapping up the buttery, eggy goodness.

Get the Recipe: Quinoa Hash Browns and Turkish Eggs

Pheasant Sausage Cordon Bleu 

Traditionally, cordon bleu used chicken breast stuffed with ham cheese. Denver institution Biker Jim's isn't about tradition, so they deep fry a pheasant hot dog and top it with black ale Dijon and mango poblano chutney.

Get the Recipe: Pheasant Sausage Cordon Bleu

Jones Wood Foundry's Sticky Toffee Pudding

Tucked into NYC's Upper East Side, Jones Wood Foundry offers classic British sweet and savory dishes like crispy, doughy kidney pie, thick and buttery crumpets, and a sticky toffee pudding for dessert. The pudding –– essentially a dark sponge cake –– is drenched in a sugary toffee sauce and served with a hearty scoop of ice cream.

Get the Recipe: Sticky Toffee Pudding

Momocho's Avocado Leaf Crusted Tuna Taquitos

Momocho switches up fish tacos by using seared tuna sushi in an avocado leaf crust, laid over a bed of braised onions and peppers and topped with a sweet, slightly tart red onion jam.

Get the Recipe: Avocado Leaf Crusted Tuna Taquitos

Public's Coconut Pancakes with Ginger-Lime Syrup

Each dish at Public seems to come with a surprise ingredient. The Black Pudding Waffles have blood sausage tucked in the batter, and the Turkish poached eggs lie on top of a bed of yogurt. Make these pancakes with polenta and coconut milk and serve topped with a ginger-lime syrup, mango cubes, ricotta cheese and roasted coconut chips.

Get the Recipe: Coconut Pancakes with Ginger-Lime Syrup

Biker Jim's Gourmet Dogs' Wiener Wellington

At Biker Jim's you'll find all sorts of hot dogs: beef, wild boar, pheasant and rattlesnake, to name a few. The Wiener Wellington takes a French classic and turns it into a fancy spin on pigs in blankets. Line pastry dough with mushrooms and butter and wrap it around a steak sausage. Drizzle with mustard, the essential hot dog topper.

Get the Recipe: Weiner Wellington

Flip Side Burger's Smokey Burger

What makes a unique eat? Unique ingredients. Flip Side Burger's Smokey Burger comes topped with smoked Gouda cheese, tangy beef brisket soaked in a molasses-vinegar BBQ sauce and pickled jalapenos. Make the trek to this small-town burger joint just outside Cleveland for one of 16 original, mouthwatering sandwiches, or recreate one at home.

Get the Recipe: Smokey Burger

The Clam Shack's Fried Clams

Eating seafood at The Clam Shack in Kennebunk is a quintessential Maine experience. These crunchy cornmeal-crusted fried clams are worth the trip.

Get the Recipe: Fried Clams

Holeman and Finch's Bacon Caramel Popcorn

Holeman and Finch is a gastropub located in Atlanta and a great destination for late-night eats. The executive chef and owner is Linton Hopkins, a native Atlantan. For a unique eat, order the bacon-caramel popcorn off their dessert menu. Or try to make it yourself.

Get the Recipe: Bacon Caramel Popcorn

Locanda Verde's Olive Oil Cake

While Italian food isn't typically associated with brunch, Locanda Verde, an Italian-American restaurant in New York City, serves a brunch menu that will knock your socks off. The coffee cake is a must: It's made with lemon zest, lemon juice and a lemon-infused olive oil for a great brightness. The streusel topping pairs butter and dark brown sugar with salty marcona almonds. The end result is a coffee cake unlike any other you've ever had.

Get the Recipe: Olive Oil Coffee Cake

Locande Verde's Italian Bloody Mary

Bloody Mary and brunch go together like salt and pepper. At Locanda Verde, the tomato juice is made in-house, and it's infused with basil, black pepper and garlic. But it's the garnish that makes the drink: green olives, pepperoncini and a wedge of mortadella.

Miller Union's Creamy Grits Fritters

Another restaurant to check out in Atlanta is Miller Union, serving up decadent Southern favorites like fried chicken and biscuits and these creamy grits fitters. The fritters are like a Southern take on arancini, made up of homemade grits and shredded country ham, with a cube of tangy cheese in the center. The end result is a deep-fried, oozy, salty and delicious bite.

Get the Recipe: Creamy Grits Fritters with Country Ham and Thomasville Tomme

Sweet Rose Creamery's Ice Cream Cones

Sweet Rose Creamery in Santa Monica, Calif., makes all their ingredients themselves on-site, including their paper-thin waffle cones that come in vanilla or chocolate.

Sweet Rose Creamery S'mores Pie

The ice cream chef at Sweet Rose Creamery is Shiho Yoshikawa, and one of her popular desserts is the s'mores pie. It's an ice cream take on the classic campfire treat. She fills a graham-cracker crust with chocolate ice cream and then freezes it. It gets topped with a homemade marshmallow cream which is bruleed. The end result is creamy, sticky and scandalously good.

Get the Recipe: S'mores Pie

Stanton Social Sliders

Stanton Social in New York City serves up bite-sized sliders made with Kobe beef. Softened butter, Kobe beef, Worcestershire and soy sauce get blended together to form the patty. The slider is topped with a mixture of ketchup, mustard and barbecue sauce, then finished off with aged cheddar.

Voodoo Doughnuts Captain, My Captain

Voodoo Doughnuts located in Portland, Ore., offers up some unique takes on the breakfast staple. Top it with some cereal for two breakfasts in one.

Voodoo Doughnuts Double Bubble

They also use flavor dust to jazz up some of their doughnuts. This secret ingredient is made of drink mixes and comes in all different colors. The Double Bubble doughnut is dusted in bubble gum dust and served with a piece of gum in the hole for an after-doughnut treat.

JCT Kitchen

JCT Kitchen in Atlanta, Ga., has a traditional take on the meat and three (sides), and the chef insists one of your sides should be their macaroni and cheese. He uses a high-quality white cheddar and Benton's bacon from Tennessee for a tangy, rich mac and cheese that has an incredible smoky flavor.

Crepe Amour Carnivale Crepe

Crepe Amour in Washington, D.C., use a traditional French recipe for their thin, crisp flour pancake. One of their most popular dessert crepes is the carnivale crepe. It's loaded up with freshly sliced strawberries and bananas and hazelnut chocolate spread, folded and then dusted with powdered sugar. It gets topped with even more chocolate-hazelnut spread, and then strawberry sauce on top of that.

Village Whiskey Garces' Burger

The Village Whiskey in Philadelphia lets guests build their own burger. Chef Jose Garces' favorite burger is topped with bacon, crab salad and a fried egg. It's breakfast, lunch and dinner in one.

Slappy Cakes Classic Buttermilk Pancakes

Slappy Cakes in Portland, Ore., is a do-it-yourself restaurant. Choose any type of batter plus your toppings, and then make your own pancakes on your personal griddle. Go with the classic buttermilk batter, mix in some blueberries and top it off with lemon curd.

Screen Door Chicken and Waffles

The Screen Door restaurant offers up good Southern eats in the not-so-Southern city of Portland, Ore. Indulge in their buttermilk-battered fried chicken with sweet-potato waffles for brunch.

The Spice Kit Korean Ssam

The Spice Kit in San Francisco serves up Korean Ssam sandwiches that are almost like a Korean burrito. Instead of just wrapping the ingredients in lettuce, they add rice paper to help keep everything together.

The Spice Kit Pork Bun

And don't forget to try their pork bun. A freshly steamed bun is loaded with pork belly, hoisin sauce, pickled cucumbers and scallions.

Maureen's Kitchen's Oatmeal

Maureen's Kitchen's oatmeal recipe is almost 60 years old. The oatmeal gets baked in the oven and comes out like a cakey oatmeal cookie. Warm milk is poured over it to create a porridge.

Pine State Biscuits Reggie Deluxe

The signature sandwich at Pine State Biscuits in Portland, Ore., is the Reggie Deluxe. It's a buttermilk-biscuit sandwich with fried chicken, eggs and three slices of bacon, topped with gravy. It is also a marvel of modern (food) engineering and architecture.

Humphry Slocombe Proscuitto Ice Cream

Humphry Slocombe likes to explore the savory side of ice cream. Their prosciutto ice cream is a marriage of the two best things on Earth: pork fat and butter fat. A ham bone is roasted, then the fat and juices are added to ice cream along with fennel and black pepper. Once infused with the flavors, the ice cream is strained and run through an ice cream machine. The result is a white ice cream imbued with the flavor of pork.

Humphry Slocombe Peanut Butter Curry Ice Cream

Another unique take at Humphry Slocombe is their Peanut Butter Curry Ice Cream. A peanut butter ice cream base is scented with a golden curry for an ice cream that's sweet, a little spicy and packs a wallop of peanut butter.

Umami Burger

Umami Burger in Los Angeles riffed off of the combination of cigars and beer to create their Manly Burger. Smoked salt is worked into the patty and the whole thing is topped with cheese made out of beer, plus bacon and fried onion strips.

The Sentinel BALT

Forget the BLT. The Sentinel in San Francisco is serving up a BALT: a sandwich of basil, avocado, lettuce and tomato (with a little goat cheese thrown in). It's light, fresh-tasting and fatty in a good way (think omega-3s).

Mile End

Mile End in Brooklyn, N.Y., makes everything in house, by hand, from incredibly sourced ingredients. Their smoked meat sandwich is unique among deli sandwiches. It's 7 ounces of pure brisket that's been brined, rubbed, smoked and steamed. The recipe for the rub took owner Noah Bernamoff two years to develop.

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