Stern Jane - Roadfood: an eaters guide to more than 1,000 of the best local hot spots & hidden gems across America

The Lexicon of Real American Food

Confessions of a Tarot Reader (by Jane Stern)

500 Things to Eat Before Its Too Late

Roadfood Sandwiches

Two for the Road

Elegant Comfort Food from the Dorset Inn

The Loveless Cafe Cookbook

Southern California Cooking from the Cottage

Cooking in the Lowcountry

The Famous Dutch Kitchen Cookbook

Ambulance Girl (by Jane Stern)

Carbones Cookbook

Harry Carays Restaurant Cookbook

Louies Back Yard Cookbook

The Durgin-Park Cookbook

The El Charro Cookbook

The Blue Willow Inn Cookbook

Blue Plate Specials and Blue Ribbon Chefs

Chili Nation

Two Puppies

Eat Your Way Across the USA

Dog Eat Dog

Happy Trails (with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans)

Way Out West

Jane & Michael Sterns Encyclopedia of Pop Culture

American Gourmet

The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste

Sixties People

A Taste of America

Elvis World

Real American Food

Roadfood & Goodfood

Where to Eat in Connecticut

Square Meals

Goodfood

Horror Holiday

Friendly Relations

Douglas Sirk (by Michael Stern)

Auto Ads

Amazing America

Trucker: A Portrait of the Last American Cowboy (by Jane Stern)

Copyright 2014 by Jane Stern and Michael Stern

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.clarksonpotter.com

CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House LLC.

This work was originally published in the United States by Random House LLC, New York, in 1978. Subsequent revised editions were published in the United States by Random House LLC, New York, in 1980, Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, in 1986, Harper Perennial, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, New York, in 1992, Broadway Books, a division of Random House LLC, New York, in 2002, 2005, and 2008, and by Clarkson Potter/ Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, New York, in 2011.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-7704-3452-6
eISBN 978-0-7704-3453-3

Book design by Caroline Cunningham
Maps designed by Jeffrey L. Ward
Cover design by Daniel Rembert
Cover photographs: (ribs) Stephen Walls/iStock, (sky) soleg_1974/iStock, (sign) onepony/iStock, (horizontal sign) chrispoundsphotography/iStock, (arrow) Car Culture/Getty

Second Clarkson Potter/Publishers Edition

v3.1

I t was almost forty years ago that we coined the term roadfood to describe local eats around America. At the time, we felt like crusaders, trying to get people to pay attention to what we considered a neglected national treasure: regional food. My, how times have changed! We now sometimes wish people didnt pay quite so much attention to itparticularly on those occasions when we must wait in line forty minutes to get a cheeseburger from a once-obscure diner that has been discovered by the media.

In the restaurant business, success isnt always a good thing, especially for humble places unprepared to handle it. You know the sad scenario: A quiet gem of a restaurant appears on TV. It gets so flooded with curiosity seekers that the regular customers who were a part of its personality cant get in. Business is so good, new cooks are hired. The menu is streamlined down to what the guy on TV talked about. Shortcuts are taken, the dining room is expanded. No doubt about it: Some of the charming one-of-a-kind eateries we have written about over the years are now multiple-location empires and their food has gone to pot. To the degree that we have set that process in motion, we apologize. Apparently our enthusiasm has been contagious. On the other hand, some favorite places have expanded with care and intelligence; their original locations are still listed in this book, along with notes about their expansion.

For all the media brouhaha about the subject, and foods seeming omnipresence in the blogosphere, the joy of traveling Roadfood-style hasnt changed all that much. As seen in the Roadfood.com Trip Reports forum, dedicated eaters plan their itineraries meal by meal and continue to enjoy the experience that we have enjoyed from the beginning: finding oneself in a restaurant very different from anyplace near home, eating food unique to the region, meeting local peoplecustomers and stafffor whom the restaurant is part of their life, their community, their identity. This new edition of Roadfood includes an Honor Roll of the 100 restaurants that we believe epitomize that experiencethe crme de la crme of regional dining all around the country.

Roadfood is about finding good food, of course. But to us, that food in a cultural vacuum, however good it might taste, is not very interesting. What makes it really delicious is all of its connectionsconnections to the people who grow it, cook it, serve it, and eat it; connections to the places that have nurtured it and given it a regional identity; connections to the history from which it arises, which in Americas case is an adventure of immigration, adaptation, invention, and audacity. Just as one mans diet can give you a vivid picture of who he is, Americas diet is a grand national portrait.

W e urge you to visit each and every one of the 900-plus restaurants in this book: We have included them because we think their food is great and the experience of eating in them is memorable. One hundred of those restaurants are starred with an asterisk to indicate that they are, to us, extra-special. We have come to love them because we believe that each is a unique expression of something wonderful about American food and foodways. A few are relatively new, but most have stood the test of time. This is the Roadfood Honor Roll.