IT’S no secret – we New Yorkers are adventurous eaters. And why not. Name a style of food and you’ll find it somewhere in the five boroughs, even if it means taking two trains and a bus to get to it. It’s a good thing for the traveler, then, that America’s culinary landscape hasn’t been this engaging since our forebears fell for spaghetti and meatballs.
We set out to see who’s cooking what, and found 10 regional scenes guaranteed to have you high-tailing it to the nearest bridge or tunnel.
HOUSTON
What’s cooking: Vietnamese
Why: When Vietnamese refugees left their war-torn country after Saigon fell in 1974, hundreds of thousands eventually settled in the U.S., in places like Los Angeles, New Orleans and Houston. By 2004 that number had grown to more than 1.5 million. Approximately 150,000 have made Texas their home, and Houston now has more than 100 restaurants serving the local population.
Where to eat: The city’s first Vietnamese restaurant – and still one of the best – is Mai’s (3403 Milam St.), founded in 1978. It’s open until 4 a.m. daily and attracts downtown office workers, immigrants and trendoids alike. The menu is a combination of meat-topped vermicelli salads, fever-inducing yellow curries and meal-size soups.
Many of Houston’s humbler Vietnamese spots specialize in pho, the rice-noodle soup topped with thin-sliced beef that cooks as the steaming bowls are ferried to the table. You can find pho parlors throughout the city, but in Little Saigon, Pho Saigon (2808 Milam St.) ladles a superior product, based on a long-simmered broth. Another inexpensive Vietnamese treat is banh mi, a baguette sandwich layered with various kinds of pork, pickled veggies and fronds of cilantro. Try them at Thiem Hung (2108 Pease St.).
PORTLAND, ORE.
What’s cooking: Old-fashioned feasts
Why: The Slow Food movement, which celebrates local foods and small producers, is a growth industry in this progressive town, which features no less than 12 farmers markets. (From now through February, keep your eyes peeled for Dungeness crabs.)
Where to eat: Modern, elegant and understated with a sophisticated menu, Castagna (1752 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd.) features local and seasonal ingredients, including free-range meats. Go for the agnolotti with celeriac, parmesan and chives. Minimalist Navarre (10 N.E. 28th Ave.) serves delicious, creative “small plates” (think tapas) and more, plus 60 wines by the glass. Ninety percent of its food comes from 47th Avenue Farms, a small farm within city limits. Try the “bird,” a Spanish-style chicken. For a quick bite, head for Pearl Bakery (102 N.W. Ninth Ave.), where delectable artisan breads and sweets are made from organic, small-producer ingredients. Drink responsibly at Carlton Winemakers Studio (801 N. Scott St., Carlton), a co-op of nine area winemakers located in a “green” building. Here, the focus is on all-organic processes.
CHICAGO
What’s cooking: The best Mexican food north of the border
Why: A century’s worth of immigration has left the metropolitan area with a Latino contingent numbering in excess of 1 million, largely from Mexico.
The result? A hyper-sophisticated local scene, ranging from some of the best street food this side of Juarez, to artful high-end dishes.
Where to eat: If there’s another U.S. department store serving up tortas (sandwiches) and huaraches (a very distant cousin to pizza) in its food hall, we’d like to know. The legendary Marshall Field’s flagship in the Loop (111 N.
State St.) now features Frontera Fresco, a casual taqueria owned by Rick Bayless, the city’s pioneer of nuevo cocina mexicano. Less authentic but no less popular is De Cero (814 W. Randolph St.), a chic West Loop taqueria
owned by the people behind one of the city’s hottest sushi bars. Getting the real deal, however, requires a bit more effort. Taqueria Puebla’s excellent cemitas, a sandwich unique to the restaurant’s namesake city, are worth the trip (3625 W. North Ave.). Don’t miss a Sunday morning tour of the chaotic New Maxwell Street Market, a year-round, outdoor affair held just south of the Loop along Canal Street. Make room for huaraches at Rico’s.
ANCHORAGE
What’s cooking: Bean and brew
Why: Seattle could learn a thing or two about roasting and brewing from their neighbors to the north. Alaska’s big city, population 272,687, has nearly a dozen microbreweries and two spectacular coffee roasters – that’s a lot of
stimulation per capita.
Where to drink: Visitors find that most shops in town are supplied by one of two roasters: Kaladi Brothers, which just launched a slick new space Downtown at the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts (621 W. Sixth Ave.) or Café del Mundo, Kaladi’s earthy predecessor, based out of a friendly Midtown shop (341 E. Benson Blvd.). For something a little stiffer than caffeine, look no further than the Moose’s Tooth Brewing Co. (3300 Old Seward Highway), which serves up pints of its award-winning stouts and ales at a great pub in Midtown.
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
What’s cooking: Cheese
Why: Northern California already produces the country’s best wines. Now it finally has appropriately exquisite fromages to accompany them, thanks to a combination of stricter land-use laws and increased government support
boosting the quality of the region’s farmstead cheesemakers.
Where to eat:The venerable Cowgirl Creamery (80 Fourth St., Point Reyes Station) offers Friday tours of its cheesemaking facility 40 miles north of San Francisco. At tour’s end, there’s a tasting. Try the Humboldt Fog goat cheese from Cypress Grove Chevre. In Healdsburg, the Cheese Shop (423 Center St.) will soon run classes covering everything from tasting to pairing. Plenty of San Francisco restaurants are excellent for sampling regional wares; Cowgirl co-founder Peg Smith recommends Quince (1701 Octavia St.) and Jardiniere (300 Grove St.).
ATLANTA
What’s cooking: NewAm, with soul
Why: Now firmly entrenched in the local scene, the concept of New South cuisine is quite simple. Take the classics, buy some fancy plates, toy just a little with technique and ingredients, and voila – what was once heavy and bad for you now tastes fresh, fantastic – and just as bad for you. Today, menus in Atlanta are far more wideranging, but the South hasn’t died – even the most cosmopolitan spots sneak in a pinch of comfort amid Niman Ranch this and carpaccio that.
Where to eat: Brunch at the Woodruff Arts Center’s new Table 1280 (1280 Peachtree Road) is a sophisticated affair. This showpony of a restaurant features food as good as the place looks. Sunday brunch stars classy classics like ham and cheese biscuits and local trout served with apples and pecans.
The folks at Aria in Buckhead (490 E. Paces Ferry Road) have rejected the usual molten chocolate cake, using the ubiquitous Valrhona to create a gorgeous chocolate cream pie. It’s a handsome complement to gems like celery root soup served with black truffles. It’s enough to make you skip ancho-rubbed ribs and the berry crumble at Midtown fave The Globe (75 Fifth St. N.W.) – but don’t.
WASHINGTON, DC
What’s cooking: Excellence
Why: Formerly the domain of stuffy French restaurants and smoky steakhouses, a dining revolution has been
gearing up here for almost a decade. Where to eat: Where to begin? Maybe at Thomas Keller protégé Eric Ziebold’s incredible CityZen (1330 Maryland Ave. S.W., at the Mandarin Oriental), or Yannick Cam’s reborn Le Paradou (678 Indiana Ave. N.W.) – oh, those lobster purses. Or even just a liquid dinner at IndeBleu (707 G St. N.W.), a Euro-restaurant-meets-nightclub where the blackberry mojitos outshine the somewhat ill-advised French-Indian food.
Lately, we’ve been ditching the district altogether for Alexandria, Va., where Dublin transplant Cathal Armstrong cooks all over the map at Restaurant Eve (110 S. Pitt St.). Sit on the casual bistro side and let the friendly staff bring out whatever they like; it’s all spectacular, from the mussels in green curry appetizer to the birthday cake, served “just because.” Whether it’s as good or better than pastry chef David Guas’ pecan tart at Acadiana, a new mod Cajun joint on Mount Vernon Square (901 New York Ave. N.W.), is hard to say – we’d need to do a lot more research.
MIAMI
What’s cooking: Fabulous Floribbean
Why: Ever since the likes of Norman Van Aken got the notion back in the ’80s to “nouvellize” staples like mofongo, fried plantains and arroz con pollo, South Florida has become home to a style of fusion often called “Floribbean.”
Where to eat: At Carmen the Restaurant (700 Biltmore Way, Coral Gables), the ropa vieja of the chef’s native Puerto Rico is given a makeover with fresh and hot spices to give the top-grade shredded beef more intensity and bite.
Other dishes to try include the update on the classic Cuban lechón asado at Douglas Rodriguez’s new OLA on Ocean (425 Ocean Drive, Miami Beach), and the free-range jerk chicken at Ortanique on the Mile (278 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables).