Reader Vince Gilcrease writes to say that this is a very sad day for Louisiana, and in particular for New Orleans: the Hubig’s Pie factory burned to the ground this morning.
Hubig’s pies are a Crescent City icon. They say they’ll rebuild, but still, what a blow! 
First the Picayune stumbles badly, and now Hubig’s burns down. New Orleans is not a town that takes well to these sorts of things.
Louisiana people, do you have any Hubig’s memories to share? How about readers who live elsewhere: what everyday foods like this do you consider to be local icons, the loss of which would be a non-trivial emotional blow?
Cal reader 
Beth 
Doug W 
Rod Dreher 
Mike P. 
Ethan C. 
pjsmoov 
SusanMcN 
This strikes me as interesting on a lot of levels. I assume this pie is not great pie in a “culinary” sense, where someone would be selling it for a lot of money in a restaurant with well-established reputation.
So how, then, does something like this make the leap from “junk” to “beloved local icon”? In what sense do such things differ as “food,” and in what sense do our standards for judging them change? What of the food scold who tsk-tsks that the crust is not flaky in the way it ought to be, or that the filling is too cloying?
Also, what loyalty do local folks owe to such traditions? Should everyone just eat what they like? Or in some sense, is it possible to say that someone who eat’s pie from a package should eat THIS pie from a package if he’s from New Orleans?