New York is much more than New York City, which is so culinarily roiling that it can be difficult to discern what dishes and dining experiences are unique to it, or at least at their very best in it. Beyond Gotham, New York State is a rich lode of clearly discernible regional specialties. Buffalo itself has several, well beyond its wings. These include roast beef sandwiches on kummelweck rolls (“beef on weck”), spectacular candy shop/ice cream parlors where everything is made from scratch, and a culture of yummy charcoal cooked hot dogs. Hot dogs are big throughout upstate, where they come as white hots (“porkers”) or red hots. Red hots are the basis of the legendary Garbage Plate of Rochester, and also are served under a sort of Bolognese sauce in and around Plattsburgh, where they are known, somewhat mysteriously, as Michigans. Other upstate foods worth a detour include grilled skewers of marinated meat around Binghamton, where salt potatoes are the right side dish; marinated charcoal cooked Cornell chicken in the Southern Tier; and creamy, spicy chicken riggies around Utica.
New York Road Trip: Watertown to Niagara Falls This tour will take you on a five and a half hour drive along America’s Great Lakes Seaway Trail. Beginning in Watertown,...
The color of New England's autumn foliage attracts seasonal visitors to the southern foothills of the Berkshires, but year around, it is an excruciatingly beautiful land: rolling hills, stone...
Is there another dish as diverse as pizza? It can be an utterly simple tomato pie – nothing but sauce on crust – or it can be a multi-meat...
Original Northeastern Tomato Pies The original tomato pies in cities of the Northeast were simply flatbreads topped with crushed tomatoes, spice and maybe a few anchovies or a sprinkle of...
East Coast Classic Neapolitan Pizza Showdown Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey all lay claim to the best pizza in America, maybe in the world. We want you to be...
Great Soft Serve There is so much inferior soft-serve ice cream (aerated, chemically-flavored), that soft-serve in general has a bad reputation among ice cream lovers. But there are exceptions, soft-serve...
Variety in the Big Apple What is the true taste of New York City? Yes, you can dine on the cuisines of the world (especially in the boroughs) and if...
Airport Food Food in airports is better than it used to be, but when we arrive by plane, we can't get out of the terminal fast enough. By rental car,...
Texas Hots in New York Texas hots do not exist in Texas. Unique to New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, the curiously addictive franks were first created a century ago...
Unique Regional Dishes After 40 years and 5 million miles spent on the road looking for America's best regional food, we've assembled a list of the quintessential, must-eat food in...
Throughout New York City, countless storefront joints sell pizza by the slice; and some of it is pretty good. But if you are looking for a whole pizza pie...
Twelve champion chocolatiers, from the Oregon coast to downeast Maine.
The only possible happy exclamation incited by corned beef hash spooned from a can is "Arf!" But freshly chopped and sizzled to a crisp, crowned with poached eggs eager...
Every deli serves a roast beef sandwich, but a handful of U.S. restaurants make roast beef sandwiches that go beyond mere lunch meat on bread. The most memorable are...
Of the many eating tours Roadfood.com has sponsored to delicious destinations around the U.S., one of the happiest was a restaurant crawl through Rochester and Buffalo, New York. Here...
The northeast has four main kinds of clam chowder. Manhattan is tomato-red and full of vegetables, rarely served northeast of New York City. South Coast, a specialty of Connecticut...
Donut devotion as fervid as the commitment devotees have for barbecue. Everybody has a favorite kind. From robust cake sinkers to featherweight glazed, styles vary dramatically. In our experience,...
"Drive-in" has come to mean just about any cheap-eats restaurant with car-friendly parking. A genuine drive-in is a place where customers park and are waited on and eat in...
Steamy hot, soft and supple, perfumed by spice and smoke, infused with the dripping succulence of animal fat, pastrami is the most voluptuous of delicatessen meats. Great pastrami sandwiches...
Although ice cream tends to be more butterfatty, frozen custard tastes richer because it traditionally is made with egg yolks. Even when eggs are not part of the formula,...
Many restaurants serve steak, but some places are dedicated to it. Although no great steak house is cheap, some of the best are extremely informal (like Doe's Eat Place...
There's no point getting into a flame war over which American hot dog is best. It's impossible, because the nation's hot dogs are so diverse. However, we will go...
The Phoenix restaurant scene is white hot. New, creative, cutting-edge, top-dollar restaurants open all the time. What about those of us who prefer less pretentious eats and casual meals?...
From the German word "kummel," meaning caraway seed, and weck, meaning roll, a kummelweck, or simply "weck,"resembles a Kaiser roll. But bakers crown it with a mantle of seeds...
Close cousin of Rhode Island's New York System and Coney Island hot dogs everywhere, the Michigan hot dog is a small frankfurter in a soft bun topped with vividly...
Everybody knows Buffalo for its chicken wings. Many love its beef on weck. To that formidable duo, add candy. No city has more compelling sweet shops. Family-run confectioners, large...
