Lorelai Dunn

Maine is the only state in America that features a picture of cooked food on its license plate. On a white background behind the tag’s blue numbers and above the red word “Vacationland” is a boiled lobster with two meaty claws stretching upward and five little legs splayed out on each side. Lobster is the … Continue reading The Lobster Roll Honor Roll

By Jane and Michael Stern Originally Published 2009 Gourmet Magazine One essential characteristic of any worthy hamburger is democracy of spirit—it should be accessible to all and not cost an arm and a leg. That’s why our list of the nation’s best burgers doesn’t include the foie-gras-filled one at DB Bistro Moderne, in New York … Continue reading 20 Burgers to Eat Before it’s Too Late

By Jane and Michael Stern Originally Published 2009 Gourmet Magazine In central Texas, kolaches outshine doughnuts. Just north of Waco, the small town of West (known for clarity’s sake as “West Comma Texas”) is the state’s kolache capital, where descendants of Czech immigrants make little square pastries that hold a dollop of fruit rimmed by … Continue reading Czech Please

By Jane and Michael Stern Originally Published 2009 Gourmet Magazine You can pay a hundred bucks for a Philly cheesesteak at Barclay Prime, on Rittenhouse Square, sit in a plush leather armchair, and nibble Kobe beef, lobster, and shaved truffles off a parmesan brioche. Or you can drop $7.50 for its down-to-earth cousin and eat … Continue reading Say Cheesesteak

By Jane and Michael Stern Originally Published 2008 Gourmet Magazine If you have time for only one meal in Minneapolis or Duluth, we strongly urge you not to go to Hell’s Kitchen, which has a location in each city. It is the best place in either town, among the great restaurants of the Midwest, and high on … Continue reading Circles of Heaven

By Jane and Michael Stern Originally Published 2008 Gourmet Magazine In 1901, there were fewer than 7,000 cars on America’s roads. Just 40 years later, Duncan Hines’s guidebook Adventures in Good Eating was pinpointing hundreds of gems worthy of a detour. Here are 11 that were already on the map at the time of Gourmet’s inception in 1941. … Continue reading Still Saucy After All These Years

By Jane and Michael Stern Originally Published 2008 Gourmet Magazine A visit to Price’s Chicken Coop is the fried-chicken-eating experience of a lifetime. Once inside the door of the little South End storefront, two thirds of which is dedicated to cooking and the rest to ordering, the first decision you need to make is which … Continue reading Birds of Paradise

By Jane and Michael Stern Originally Published 2008 Gourmet Magazine Texas is brisket territory, but it is no lone-meat state. Pit-cooked sausage is also required eating, especially in the barbecue shrines south and east of Austin. Peppered, coarse-ground beef is packed into pork gut that is porous enough to suck in flavor from woodsmoke as … Continue reading Cue the Smoke

By Jane and Michael Stern Originally Published 2008 Gourmet Magazine Thank the aquifer below the New Jersey Pinelands for the best submarine sandwich on earth. Its pure water—the pH lowered by the cedars growing above it—is what makes the bread on which the sub is built so precisely right. “It’s the softest, cleanest water anywhere,” … Continue reading On a Roll