Are you planning a trip to the United States this year? While exploring the country, you’d surely want to indulge in its cuisine.
A variety of fantastic food awaits you here! With several American cities having exciting culinary offerings, finding out the creme de la creme is surely challenging.
Here are America’s 7 best food cities for 2020:
1. Portland, Oregon: Offering affordable and excellent food made from the most natural ingredients, Portland, with its well-known farm-to-table culture, is certainly a foodie trap! Also giving Portland its edge are cool restaurants, artisanal cafes, farmer’s markets, craft breweries, and urban wine distilleries.
Enjoy high-quality food carts, creative doughnuts, some of America’s exclusive pizza, and, last but not least, Portland’s world-class craft beer, complementing the tasty cuisine. The city’s vivid street food setting is full of gourmet fooders selling buttermilk-battered chicken, hazelnuts, a variety of burgers, fusion cuisine, and fresh seafood.
For caffeine lovers, there’s no shortage of independent roasting machines and small coffee shops. Indulge in Portland’s rich coffee culture, sipping delicious, flavored lattes and several types of espressos, including Americanos, made from world-famous beans.
Make sure to dine at some of the city’s famous restaurants serving pork burgers, tapas, lemon-garlic sauce, oysters, and specialty doughnuts. Choose from their menus of craft cocktails including the traditional margarita as well as creative drinks blended with Mexican rum.
2. Houston, Texas – A remarkably diverse dining station boasting an equally amazing cocktail scene, Houston has something for everyone. The Texas city is full of chef-driven eateries serving global cuisine as well as exotic food carts offering inexpensive, quality bites.
Houston’s symbolic cuisine includes Kolache which are semi-sweet pastries with fruity jam or meat toppings, fajita burger, slowly-cooked beef breast cuts, barbecued chicken, soup dumplings, and chilaquiles which are crispy tortilla chips cooked in salsas.
Explore the countless bars in the city and relish authentic, Texan cocktails such as the vodka-based Chilton, the fruity Hatchback, and the tequila-based Ranch Water. These boozy creations will keep you asking for more, making your trip to Houston truly memorable.
Some of the city’s best restaurants serve egg custard tarts, creamy and cheesy cinnamon rolls, Thai curry, Greek specialties, Peruvian cuisine, and excellent Cantonese. Privately-owned food trucks operating day and night across Houston sell amazing, Mexican-style tacos, grilled chicken, Korean-style beef, and waffle sandwiches.
3. Charleston, South Carolina – With a multitude of inexpensive, hole-in-the-wall eats as well as upscale eateries, the port city of Charleston is certainly a foodie paradise. The city’s traditional “Lowcountry” dishes are the most exciting feature of its cuisine. These are classic recipes, partially influenced by international cuisines like the English, the Carribean, and the Mediterranean.
You’ll simply love the traditional shrimp cooked with butter, tomato pie, roasted oysters, garlic crab, cornbread, and South Carolina’s official snack, i.e. boiled peanuts. Don’t miss out on the city’s original, delicious, toasted sesame cookie called the Benne Wafer. You’ll get some of the world’s best street food at the city’s food truck festival held on specific dates throughout the year.
Several restaurants in Charleston serve mouth-watering seafood dishes like succulent shrimp sandwiches, she-crab soup, and lobster rolls. With an interesting boozy history of sailors drinking rum on arriving here, Charleston offers unforgettable, tasty cocktails such as Erik Estrada, a mildly sweet, frozen colada.
4. New York City, New York State – Offering around eight thousand restaurants and an incredibly varied food scene, New York City is sure to expand your culinary boundaries!
Look forward to savoring bagels, salt-cured salmon, black-and-white cookies, waffles, baked potato, Waldorf Salad, and burgers. Don’t miss out on the city’s classic, creamy, and sugary cheesecake.
Known for defining food trends, New York City’s restaurants offer artisan French cuisine, seafood, pickled herring, steak, and high-quality egg cream. The city’s street food scene is equally exciting, with its countless food halls and market squares selling mouth-watering food. Make sure to visit open-air markets such as the Chelsea Market and the Essex Market to sample different types of food.
5. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – A mix of rapidly-evolving and classic restaurants, Philadelphia certainly offers an interesting food scene. Some of the classic dishes are the Philly cheesesteak, hoagie which is an Italian meat roll stuffed with cheese and vegetables, Philadelphia Pepper Pot which is a meat and tripe soup cooked with vegetables, and pretzels which are crisp, knot-shaped, and salty biscuits.
How about washing all these treats down with a Philly Special, a beer cocktail with a shot of whiskey? Step into the city’s popular restaurants for crab fries, bacon grease popcorn, strawberry lavender doughnuts, hummus, dumplings, and pork sandwiches.
Philadelphia also has countless food halls and markets offering quick service in the form of ready-to-eat delights to spontaneous and extra-hungry eaters. You’ll find a large variety of street food here, ranging from Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine to sushi to fancy corndogs.
San Francisco, California – A truly innovative foodie paradise, San Francisco offers excellent restaurants as well as the classic farmers’ markets that created the trend for fresh and regional ingredients. While in this west coast city, look out for Cioppino which is seafood cooked with herbs and wine, sugary cookies prepared from flour and vanilla oil, and Crab Louie which is a crabmeat salad dressed with red chilies. Also, don’t miss out on Chicken Tetrazzini which is chicken and pasta stew cooked with flavored sauces, and Hangtown Fry, a bacon-and-oysters-stuffed egg omelet.
Try out the city’s noted restaurants that serve caramelized shrimp, eggplant sandwiches, and Chinese-American, Scandinavian, and Indian Gujarati cuisines. How about wine-tasting in the vineyards of the iconic Napa Valley? If you’d like to drive a jeep through the forested valley, make sure the jeep roof rack is sturdy enough to carry additional cargo like camping gear.
6. Chicago, Illinois – Impromptu fusion menus, award-winning restaurants, and an intense liking for fresh produce define the food scene of Chicago. Enjoy deep-dish Chicago pizza, the local hot dog made entirely of beef, creative Korean-American cuisine, and Dutch-Indonesian delights.
Also, don’t miss out on Chicago-style popcorn sold by the city’s Garrett popcorn stores. You’ll surely love this cheddar-and-caramel-flavored popcorn. Complement your meals with the brandy-based Chicago cocktail, dating back to the nineteenth century. You can also relish other iconic drinks like oatmeal shake, martinis, mulled wines, Jeppson’s Malort, and classic Chicago sodas.
You’ll find Chicago-style pizza and hot dogs at haute-cuisine restaurants as well as at stands throughout Chicago. With lively multicultural neighborhoods in the city, you’ll surely eat plenty of exotic foods in no time! Chicago also has numerous coffee roasteries and cafes offering drip coffee, and several types of cappuccinos and lattes.
Conclusion
So, now you know some of America’s best food cities. Good enough to kickstart the new year with a culinary trip to one or all of these lands!
