![]() Can we talk, seriously, about those sunsets that never seem to end, mostly because they almost don't? All that midnight light, unfortunately, is a long way from king crab season, which sneaks in under the cover of late fall and early winter. Summer way up north is pretty much the best. Order a pound, steamed, and then probably another. Begin at Doc's Seafood, a local favorite with two locations in Gulf Shores vacationland. One of the primary reasons you're here is to sample those sweet, sweet, royal red shrimp, pulled straight from the Gulf, and famously difficult to find elsewhere. And while Alabama's coastline may not stretch very far, it manages to accomplish an awful lot. There are barbecue destinations with a lot more fame behind them, but few of them come close to what you'll find here. Same goes for the ribs at Archibald's, an actual barbecue shack in Northport, where you take your spot at the pit-facing counter, the better to observe your host reaching inside to baste the meat from a cast iron pot, in between orders. Here, however, you're definitely in the heartland, and the anchor of many a plate at Martin's in Montgomery, dating back to the 1930s, will be fried chicken for a reason - it is superb. Stop in for chicken, for snapper, and for steaks, prepared Greek-style (think lots of lemon), followed by pie.Īlabama wasn't the only state to fully embrace the South's classic meat-and-three tradition. Rather different, but equally important to Birmingham's food story is the Bright Star in blue collar Bessemer, dating back to 1907, considering itself the nation's oldest family-owned restaurant, and regarded by all as a shining example of the region's unique Greek-Southern restaurant culture. Temporarily closed, but due to reopen this year sister restaurants Chez Fonfon and Bottega remain open. Do embrace his rather extraordinary vision, or do you all but throw the guy out of your office? In the end, were it not for the enterprising chef's own family and friends, there may never have been a Highlands Bar & Grill, which would grow to become one of the South's finest restaurants, with all of the awards to prove it, a designation it holds to this day. There in front of you is a young and enthusiastic Frank Stitt, philosophy major turned culinary obsessive, recently returned home from Europe and full of plans to open a restaurant applying French technique to Alabama produce and tradition. Imagine yourself a banker in early 1980s Birmingham. Get out there while you can - we lost at least a dozen of our favorites since the last time Food & Wine published this list, in early 2020, and anyone with even one eye open knows one thing for certain: it's not getting any easier to run a restaurant. Ultimately, think of this guide as a road map, or at least the rough sketch of one, like it were drawn on the back of a napkin, designed to jog your memory, or to push you toward a greater appreciation of our shared culinary heritage. It draws on years of experience traveling around the country on assignment, as well as the deep back catalog of Food & Wine's annual Best New Chefs and Best New Restaurants franchises, alongside countless feature articles. It represents an attempt at examining each state's unique fingerprint on this vast, remarkably diverse thing that we call American food. This nearly 17,000-word survey features nearly 250 restaurants, from furthest Alaska to sunny South Florida. We're talking about the classic restaurants, which, let us say, for the sake of drawing a line, are the ones opened right around the millennium and earlier (ideally, way earlier.) ![]() And we are still so fortunate, truly, to have so many of those restaurants, and even some of the chefs, with us still, from that long-ago era. There were FOMO-provoking dishes long before social media had them traveling around the world, people planned vacations just to eat (do you even New Orleans?), and America had celebrity chefs and must-see cooking shows, back when it was mostly PBS doing the heavy lifting. We didn't invent restaurants in 2009, after all. Suddenly, any old restaurant would do, from the vintage Jewish delis of New York to the near-ancient pizzerias of New Haven and Trenton. Around 2020, when time slowed down, we found ourselves taking a few deep breaths, for a moment concerned less with what was new and next. ![]() Going back at least to the Great Recession, and nearly to the beginning of the century, cities across the United States have rapidly grown their respective restaurant cultures. ![]() And here we are, just talking about the food. Haven't we seen pretty much everything these last 20 years or so - thrills, spills, twists, turns, all at blinding speed.
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