Best place to visit as a foodie (restaurant, sushi)
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Philadelphia is a great city to visit as a foodie. You can't get better Cheesesteaks, hoagies, hot roast pork sandwiches, scrapple, soft pretzels, or water ice anywhere else in the country.
There is also the Reading Terminal Market which is a big tourist spot. It is unlike anything I have ever seen. Dozens and dozens of vendors offering anything imaginable.
Also the Italian Market is an outdoor food market which now not only offers great Italian specialties but food from all cultures. I believe it may be the only market of it's kind in the US.
The restaurant scene is very highly regarded but there are also many street vendors that offer a cheaper but nonetheless excellent alternative.
Portland, Maine is good for a weekend, but it gets repetitive after a while as it's so small that there just aren't that many places to go. They do a good job with local ingredients (Hugo's put them on the map and is still far and away the best), but again, not much variety in terms of ethnic stuff. I lived there for 4 years and experienced it all pretty quickly. It was rated, "best foodie small town" which I think is appropriate and well-deserved, but I can't even put it in the same ballpark as the bigger cities as it completely lacks the variety.
I like the big cities... San Fran, Boston, NYC, Chicago, D.C., Portland OR, etc. Providence RI is one of my favorite smaller cities to visit for food. New Haven CT isn't on everyone's radar yet, but it will be... just watch. They have the best pizza in the U.S. (Sally's... mmmmmmmmmm), and so many other creative restaurants.
Any small city with ethnic enclaves is good too. Mexican food all over the Southwest, Portuguese in Southeastern MA, etc.
It seems like any city in the NE and Midwest, as well as a major city in any other region should do. Even where i live, there is a wide selection of places to eat. It doesn't hurt that we have cultural festivals of all kinds and some thing called a Taste of Syracuse.
For small/mid-sized cities, I recommend my own hometown of Durham as well as neighboring Chapel Hill. These towns have really embraced the local food culture and the diversity of offerings is fantastic. In fact, Durham-Chapel Hill was named the foodiest small town by Bon Appetit in 2008. America's Foodiest Small Town: In the Magazine : bonappetit.com
I was actually going to mention the triangle area also, Raleigh-Durham-CH, as one of the lesser known foodie areas. My wife and I met in the triangle area and lived there for just shy of a year, and one of the biggest things we miss is the Food and restaurants.
Angus Barn, Red Room, Sushi Blues, Grasshopper, La Residence - the happy hours at many of the bars were fantastic, and I think Angus barn is still my favorite steak house.
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Washington DC has a fair share of nice and snazzy foodie resturants also. We've been working our way through the Washingtonian Top 100 DC restaurants list (up to 18 out of the 100), and several of them have been very good - 100 Best Restaurants in Washington (2010) (washingtonian.com)
I also cross check on opentable and aol cityguide for restaurant recommendations whenever I visit a new city.
Philadelphia is a great city to visit as a foodie. You can't get better Cheesesteaks, hoagies, hot roast pork sandwiches, scrapple, soft pretzels, or water ice anywhere else in the country.
There is also the Reading Terminal Market which is a big tourist spot. It is unlike anything I have ever seen. Dozens and dozens of vendors offering anything imaginable.
Also the Italian Market is an outdoor food market which now not only offers great Italian specialties but food from all cultures. I believe it may be the only market of it's kind in the US.
The restaurant scene is very highly regarded but there are also many street vendors that offer a cheaper but nonetheless excellent alternative.
It's my belief that the greater Philadelphia area offers more bang for the buck when it comes to authentic, blue-collar street food, than any other place in the country.
Manhattan may boast the highest concentration of high-end restaurants in the world, and Singapore hawker centers may pack more joy into each square inch, but Los Angeles is the best place in the world to eat at the moment, a frieze of fine dining overlaying a huge patchwork of immigrant communities big enough and self-sustaining enough to produce exactly the food that they want to eat. The famous insularity of Angelenos, our attraction to the pleasures available in our own backyards, may be bad for the civic culture, but the anti–melting pot is excellent for cuisine.
Los Angeles, as urban planners are fond of telling us, is a constellation of a hundred languages and a thousand micro-ethnicities, a complex, Blade Runner–esque metropolis. Does such a postmodern city provide the road map for the future of American food? As a hungry native Angeleno, I can say, We should only be so lucky
"One of the great things about L.A. is the street food and the truck food," said Jesse Williams, who plays Dr. Jackson Avery on Grey's Anatomy, as he snacked. "This is a brilliant idea, from tacos to brisket to fried dough to Hawaiian to ice cream. I think the outpouring of folks is a testament of how good it was--it will probably have to expand."
All in all, a good day for a festival that has a bright future in a city that so desperately needs it. "L.A. is the most exciting city in the world, I've said it and I stand by it," said co-organizer Sonja Rasula. "All the most amazing world class artists and chefs are moving here. It just shows that LA is a hot bed for cultural community."
Yet Los Angeles delis have managed to thrive in a niche market. Acre for acre, Sax maintains that Southern California boasts "more delicatessens of higher quality, on average, than anywhere else in America." He commends Nate 'n Al in Beverly Hills; Factor's in Pico-Robertson; Junior's in West L.A.; Greenblatt's on the Sunset Strip; Art's in Studio City; Canter's in the Fairfax district; and the various Hat locations.
It's not simply a philosophical error but a pragmatic one, in Sax's opinion. If the deli, whether as a hallowed eatery or as the civilian repertoire of American Jewish culture is to be saved, then Los Angeles is the case study. "The more delis that there are, the more people are going to want to eat at delis because it's visible, it's there in their minds," Sax says. "I thought that was the lesson L.A. could teach everyone else."
The truck has become a clear cult hit in Los Angeles, drawing more buzz than any new restaurant. A sister vehicle and a taco stand within a Culver City bar were added to quell the crowds, which Kogi's owner put at about 400 customers a night.
In the last year, new Korean restaurants have popped up on the restaurant strips of Washington Boulevard in Culver City and Beverly Boulevard in West Hollywood. In an area of West Los Angeles dominated by Japanese restaurants, bibimbop has joined the fray.
This week, his team began leasing space in the Alibi Room, a lounge in Culver City, serving up kimchi sesame quesadillas ($7) and hot dogs with kimchi sauerkraut and Korean ketchup. "It has evolved into a socio-cultural thing for me," he said. "It is my vision of L.A. in one bite."
So we have food critics, actors, chefs, authors and event organizers who say the same thing. Can't knock it.
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(one of my favorites). Rochester has one as well downtown
