The Washington Post - Americas Best Food Cities

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First Diversion Books edition April 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68230-541-6

Tom Sietsema dined, drank and shopped at a total of 271 restaurants, bars and shops while reporting his Best Food Cities in America project. Along the way, he attempted to measure how each city stacks up in terms of creativity, community, tradition, ingredients, shopping, variety and service. Here, in a little more detail, is what he discovered, garnished with short descriptions of the eateries he visited, the best things he ordered in each city, and some of the signature recipes from notable restaurants along his path. Taken together, they form the ultimate guide to eating well in Americas best food cities, whether you are a resident of one of them or just happen to be visiting.

Bon appetit!

Youd best be hungry when dining with Matt Lee, co-author with his brother, Ted, of The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen and other valentines to the South. In his company, youre tempted to order everything on a menu.

Moments after the whiskey list has been dropped off, the rolls freckled with benne seeds have been delivered and an appetizer of smoky chicken wings has landed on the table at Husk, we decide to loosen our belts and surrender to the South.

No way should a customer miss a skillet of warm corn bread veined with Allan Bentons bacon. The experience at Husk, the hit restaurant from acclaimed chef Sean Brock, would also be incomplete without the nubby catfish splayed over butter beans that make our table look like a church social. Pig ears in a frill of lettuce with marinated cucumbers and red onion taste like a banh mi without a bun. Shrimp and grits gussied up with tomato broth, thick slices of andouille and roasted fennel prompt Lee to elaborate on what makes his home town a top food destination, which is why were breaking bread on an atypically gray day in one of the countrys most charming places.

From Husk, set in the peninsular citys historic district, were five minutes away from getting our own fish, says Lee, nodding in the direction of the clean harbor. And were 10 minutes away from a farm.

Eating well is almost a birthright here in the low country, where I recently spent several days eating, drinking and shopping to gauge where this city of about 125,000 residents fits on the countrys food scale. Charleston is my first stop on a tour of American cities that I believe are the best places to eat right now, an assessment defined by many factors: creativity, variety, tradition, access to prime ingredients and more. My odyssey will take me to at least a dozen places over the next nine months, after which Ill digest my experiences and rank the cities.

My aim is to seek out their best efforts, based on suggestions from insiders and savvy locals as well as from personal experience. It doesnt take a microscope to see that part of what makes Charleston so attractive is a sense of preservation that embraces a mayor, Joseph P. Riley Jr., who has watched out for the city for four decades. (Look, Ma! No sprawl!) While I wont go out of my way to look for faults, I wont be ignoring them, either. Indeed, I expect deficiencies and cracks along the way to inform my eventual Top 10 list.

Charleston as a serious restaurant destination is a fairly recent phenomenon. Homes were long where some of the best food was enjoyed, a legacy of professional culinarians having taught slaves to cook for the great townhouses in the 19th century, says professor David Shields of the University of South Carolina.Even if times were bad and money was short, a good meal was never more than a small boat, a cast net, and fishing line away, writes Douglas W. Bostick in The Grand Traditions of Charleston Cuisine.

Exhibit A: Charleston Receipts, first published 65 years ago and the oldest Junior League cookbook still in print. If theres a cookbook more influential and more connected to a city I have yet to read it. The collection of 750 recipes, some dating to Charlestons settlement, is the Carolina equivalent of Joy of Cooking, and its as easy to find as grits at such popular retail destinations as the Charleston City Market and Charleston Cooks, a well-stocked cookware shop. Instructions for the classics benne (sesame) wafers, she-crab soup, Huguenot torte share space with recipes that reflect a local taste for oysters, rice, game and the realities of a city that has endured its share of post-war hardships. (Page 149 tells you how to broil squirrel. No need to parboil, apparently.)

A modern milestone in the citys evolution into a dining haven was its first Food and Wine Festival in 2006, attracting important chefs and food voices from around the country who spread the word that Charleston might be giving New Orleans a run for its money in the South. The festivals first year, 5,000 attendees showed up for a two-day program; last month, BB&T Charleston Wine + Food drew nearly 24,000 participants for a party spread over five days.

Today, the arrival of a Charleston-steeped chef in another market makes headlines. With the introduction of a Husk spinoff in Nashville two years ago, Music City shot to the top of chowhounds wish lists. (Brock spends time in both establishments.) Washington is waiting, impatiently, for the arrival this summer of the Dabney, a farm-to-table creation from Jeremiah Langhorne, an alumnus of the venerable McCradys here (as is Aaron Silverman of the wildly popular no-reservations restaurant Roses Luxury on Capitol Hill). No ones worried about a brain drain in Charleston, though, not when outside talent also wants in: Come fall, John Lewis, the acclaimed pit master of La Barbecue in Austin, expects to be smoking beef in pork country, at Lewis Barbecue. Charleston is where Austin was 10 years ago, says Lewis, who plans to relocate. Its a crazy food scene, but it lacks barbecue, and thats what I do.

Brock calls now the restoration era and an important part of the timeline for Charleston, thanks to the rediscovery of plant varietals and animal breeds that fell out of favor after the Great Depression. Its possible, in other words, for contemporary restaurant-goers to experience the flavors of yesteryear. Proof that not all sesame seeds taste alike (and time travel is possible): the field-fragrant benne seeds produced by Anson Mills.

Having sampled most of the citys all-stars over the years Fig, Im pleased to report, remains as luscious as ever, and if theres a single dish you have to try, its shrimp n grits at the cozy Hominy Grill I zeroed in on Charlestons young crop of restaurants on my most recent visits.