Contents
ALSO BY
JANE STERN
AND
MICHAEL STERN
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 2017 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 Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
crownpublishing.com
clarksonpotter.com
CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
This work was originally published in the United States by Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 1978. Subsequent revised editions were published in the United States by Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 1980; Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 1986; Harper Perennial, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, New York, in 1992; Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin 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 Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 2011 and 2014.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Stern, Jane, author. | Stern, Michael, 1946- author.
Title: Roadfood : an eaters guide to more than 1,000 of the best local hot spots and hidden gems across America / Jane and Michael Stern.
Other titles: Road food
Description: New York : Clarkson Potter/Publishers, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016044704 (print) | LCCN 2016044800 (ebook) | ISBN 9780451496195 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780770434526 (paperback) | ISBN 9780770434533 (electronic) | ISBN 9780451496201 (Ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Restaurants--United States--Guidebooks. | Roadside restaurants--United States--Guidebooks. | Automobile travel--United States--Guidebooks. | United States--Guidebooks. | BISAC: TRAVEL / Restaurants. | TRAVEL / Road Travel. | COOKING / Regional & Ethnic / American / General.
Classification: LCC TX907.2 .S84 2017 (print) | LCC TX907.2 (ebook) | DDC 647.9573--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016044704
ISBN9780770434526
Ebook ISBN9780770434533
Cover design by Sonia Persad
Maps designed by Jeffrey L. Ward
Cover icons by Meighan Cavanaugh
Cover illustrations: (map) dovla982/Shutterstock, (texture) ghostlypixels.com
Map texture by ghostlypixels.com
v4.1
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DEDICATED TO
JAMES BEARD and M.F.K. FISHER:
GUIDING LIGHTS
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the tenth edition of Roadfood. It has been forty years since we first wrote a guide to regional restaurantsa project that was hard to get off the ground because, back then, publishers doubted that there were enough decent American restaurants to fill a book. Wow, have things changed!
When we started our lifelong road trip, there were no food blogs and only a handful of food shows on television. There were no James Beard Foundation Awards, and there was scant appreciation for the nations everyday eats. Fellow diners thought we were crazy for taking pictures of our food. Restaurateurs couldnt understand our curiosity. Few outsiders had even heard of Buffalo wings, green chile cheeseburgers, Nashville hot chicken, or Wisconsin butter burgers. Now, those dishes and countless other once-obscure local specialties are on the bucket list of traveling foodies everywhere.
In the beginning, we felt like crusaders, bound and determined to persuade people that regional food was something wonderful and that traveling to find it was a way to literally taste the nation. Mission accomplished! American cuisine, which once got no respect, now is celebrated in books, on television, and throughout the blogosphere. Whether youre talking about regional pies, local produce, or the 1,001 different kinds of barbecue from coast to coast, this countrys consciousness about so many dishes and so many styles of dining has blossomed into ebullient appreciation. Americans have come to delight in a melting-pot cuisine where tradition, creativity, and devil-may-care resourcefulness swirl together to create meals that, like the population, are boundlessly diverse.
What we especially love about finding Roadfood is that it is of the people, by the people, and for the people. Roadfood restaurants are not created by celebrity chefs, nor do they reflect of-the-moment trends. They express the combined passion and talents of cooks and staff, the hard work of farmers and fishermen and bakers and pitmasters, the enthusiasm of patrons, and the grassroots traditions from which they arose.
The purpose of this book is to help you appreciate the glory that is American food. Read it, bring it along when you travel, have cooks around the country sign their write-up, drip gravy on it, turn the pages with glistening fingers between bites of fried chicken.
On the road or at home, please join us at the website Roadfood.com, where passionate eaters come together to share the joys of appetite-adventuring. Users are welcome to post reviews, to participate in discussion forums that include trip reports, to plan meet n greet get-togethers, and to voice opinions about anything food-related. Roadfood.com recently has been redesigned to be especially friendly to anyone using a mobile device, making it easy to findand to report ongreat meals wherever you go.