"Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride."

August 23, 2015 8:33 AM

If cuisine drives (or helps) you decide your travel plans, USA Today's list of food favorites covers Best Farmers Market, Best Food Trail, Best Food Factory Tour, Best Al Fresco Dining Neighborhood and Best Local Food Scene. All those lists are pretty self-explanatory, except for the food trails, which aren't even fully described in the more verbose slideshow of the top 10. And of course there are more than 10 food trails in the US (not to mention abroad), so let's dive in.

We'll start by linking and briefly describing the top 10, in the same order as ranked by USA Today:

1. New Mexico's Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail (97 locations around the state; direct PDF link to the map and list of locations)
2. Mississippi Gulf Seafood Trail (53 restaurants over 360 miles of coastline, with the option to filter the list by food type and region; direct link to the print list of 50 restaurants)
3. Louisiana's Cajun Boudin Trail (12 locations around the state; direct link to the map
4. Indiana's Hoosier Pie Trail (17 stops, no map to see all at once; Wikipedia entry for sugar (aka Hoosier) Pie)
5. Summerville, South Carolina's Sweet Tea Trail (the number of sweat tea-related stops is unclear)
6. Kentucky Bourbon Trail (map of 10 locations, and PDF version)
7. Cayuga County, New York's Finger Lakes Sweet Treat Trail (direct link to trail PDF with 17 stops)
8. Oregon Cheese Trail (the state is divided into 5 regions, with 18 locations in total)
9. Vermont's Beer Brewery Trail (a Google map with locations for almost 40 breweries who are part of Vermont Brewer's Association)
10. Texas BBQ Trail (link to the locator map that highlights four regions in the state)

Of course, this is only a small selection of the total number of food "trails" around the US (and you probably noted by now that the term "trails" is used loosely, and could easily be replaced with "map," as the locations are rarely along any sort of liner path). With that, here are a smattering of additional food trails:

• Indiana Foodways has nineteen culinary paths, including the Hoosier Pie Trail, though not all are so focused on Indiana-specific cuisine
• There are Three Winston-Salem Moravian Culinary Trails, celebrating the region's Moravian Cookies, Moravian Chicken Pie, and Moravian Sugar Cakes (and there are recipes for each)
• Southern Foodways (previously, twice) has a number of food trails, part road trip, part oral history
• I Love Alabama Food has five regional food tours
• Boston has three Yummy Walks, aka walking food tours, including Foods of the Freedom Trail, North End Little Italy Food Tour and Boston Seafood and Chowda Tour
• In addition to the Sweet Treat Trail, Cayuga County also has the Finger Lakes Cheese Trail with 13 locations mapped
• The Arizona Salsa Trail is one of the most linear of trails, with 13 locations along (and near) US-70
• Two years ago, HuffPo put together 8 proper food trails, stringing together 4 to 5 locations by food theme, including Texas Barbecue Trail, Missouri Wine Trail, Hoosier Pie Trail, Vermont Cheese Trail, (Southern) California Tacos Trail, Maryland Seafood Trail, Michigan Coney Trail, and Kentucky Bourbon Trail
• Three years ago, NPR put together a three-point trail of California Tacos, again in Southern California
• If you want a guided experience, there are a number of guided food trails in Ireland
• There are also guided food trail treks in India

And there are more to discover on your own, or you could always ask the MetaFilter hive brain, as done for this Taco Road Trip 2011.

(Title quote from Anthony Bourdain)

posted by filthy light thief (13 comments total)

"Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park."


Filthy, full of junk food, and periodically showered in vomit?

I mean, you're not wrong...
posted by leotrotsky at 8:39 AM on August 23, 2015 [11 favorites]

Hmm...I'm in the Cayuga County/Finger Lakes area right now...cheese and treats for me! :D
posted by sexyrobot at 9:11 AM on August 23, 2015

Ha ha, I hate the Boulder farmers market. I sort of dislike Boulder to begin with, but it's also ridiculously overcrowded and unless it's improved since I was there, you have to get there pretty early because the fresh produce would sell out and there'd just be prepared foods and flowers and stuff left.

I go the extra distance to Longmont just to avoid the USA Today Readers' Choice Best Farmer's Market.
posted by ernielundquist at 9:26 AM on August 23, 2015

I'm side-eying USA Today, too, because putting Hershey at #4 in the factory tours is ... ridiculous. On the other hand, I went an indoor winter version of the Madison Farmer's Market once, and the cheese opportunities were the very very good kind of ridiculous.

That said, I'm super excited by a lot of the bonus links here, and am adjusting future road trip plans accordingly.
posted by julen at 9:46 AM on August 23, 2015

I'm partial to the breakfast burrito byway, myself.

Although NM's claiming of the breakfast burrito is just another testament to the unstoppable arrogance of...those people.
posted by mrdaneri at 10:23 AM on August 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

But do your breakfast burritos come with green chile? If not, you're doing it wrong really missing out.



"Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park." Filthy, full of junk food, and periodically showered in vomit?

Filthy, full of junk food, and periodically showered in vomit?

I mean, you're not wrong...

Well, amusement parks are a number of things, from traveling carnivals to Lego Land parks. Just like bodies, they're not all the same.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:56 AM on August 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

In all fairness, the Hershey "factory tour" isn't the actual factory, just a mockup. Still, quite fun. It's not even all that far away, I should go again, maybe drag some friends along, it's always more fun that way.
posted by Blackanvil at 11:10 AM on August 23, 2015

Best and most important and, as far as I can tell, pre-dating most of these food trails by a couple decades: the North Carolina BBQ Society Barbeque Trail.
posted by ardgedee at 11:15 AM on August 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Funny. They seem to have missed Wegmans entirely, as they aren't 1–10 on every list here.
posted by DoctorFedora at 12:35 PM on August 23, 2015

When I moved to Colorado, I was so disappointed with the Boulder Farmers' Market. The selection was poor, it was small and cramped, and the prices were ridiculous. I can't believe anyone would call it #1 in the country.

Go to the farmers' market in Ithaca, NY. There's a farmers' market that's #1 in the country. It's without a doubt the best I've ever been to, and I've been to several on this list.

Honorable mention to Tendercrop Farms in Newbury, MA. While not quite a farmers' market (because it really only serves one farmer), I would rather shop there than the Boulder market any time.
posted by fremen at 2:12 PM on August 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hi-larious. They listed a Seattle Farmer's Market (University District) that isn't even the best in Seattle. The best farmer's market in Seattle is...is...well, you know what it is.






its Ballard



let the PNW fresh local organic arugula flame wars begin!
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 2:38 PM on August 23, 2015

As is the case with the rest of life, Seinfeld has this covered.
posted by cmoj at 3:22 PM on August 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

If only there was a TV show hosted by a troll doll that could go to all these places.
posted by GuyZero at 3:50 PM on August 23, 2015