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Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar, in for Alison Stewart. Earlier this week, we did a segment discussing pizza, especially the delights of pizza from New Haven, Connecticut, which is angling to be recognized as the pizza capital of the United States. The descriptions of the clam pie from Frank Pepe's was enough to get team All Of It basically salivating for a road trip.

So, we got to thinking. This summer, where else would we like to travel to where the food is the big draw? While a few of our producers are going on long-haul trips, like to Japan and France, what are some other places that the rest of us could get to by car or by train? Whether it's lobster in Maine or deserts in Brooklyn, we've enlisted Food and Wine editor-in-chief, Hunter Lewis, to provide some recommendations for culinary destinations.

Listeners, we definitely want to hear from you. Have you been wanting to try a new dish somewhere outside of your neighborhood, your city, or even your state? How far have you traveled to sample a particular dish? I would love to hear that. In what city or country have you had the best food experience? Give us a call at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692, and let us know, I would love to hear some of these superlatives. That sounds really cool. To get into the conversation, help me welcome Food and Wine editor-in-chief, Hunter Lewis. Hunter, welcome to the show.

Hunter Lewis: Hey, there. Thanks for having me.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. Basically, you've got the dream job in that you are paid to travel and try food all over the world. What's the last place that you had a really great meal?

Hunter Lewis: Well, in Manhattan, the last great meal I had was at Penny, which is a buzzy new wine bar above Claud downtown. Its pristine seafood, beautiful wine list, and instead of a big, tall towering seafood tower, they give you almost like a bento box on ice of delicious, delicious raw bar seafood.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, wonderful. What are some tips you can share when planning a food trip?

Hunter Lewis: I think the first thing you need to think about is, don't fly by the seat of your pants. Plan early and do your research. Shameless plug, go to foodandwine.com, but you really need to get out there and look on social media, look on Instagram, and figure out what your anchor point is. Not just what town you're going, but what neighborhood do you want to be in. Pick a couple of spots that you really want to go to.

Make reservations in advance if they take reservations or understand what their policy is for waiting online, and build a Google Map. This is something that my wife and I do wherever we go. We anchor that Google map with a couple of spots and then we branch out from there. We really want to get to know a neighborhood and the best way to get to know that neighborhood is through that restaurant or through that farmer's market or through that anchor point that's going to be the entry point into the food culture of that town or that city.

Kousha Navidar: Your point about going on Instagram or Twitter is an interesting one because I've had a hit-or-miss experience with that personally where sometimes it feels like restaurants might just be Instagram-worthy, you know what I mean? Is there a way to differentiate, or is Instagram generally a good place to go, or are there other places that you recommend folks follow up with after they find a place that they're interested in?

Hunter Lewis: The way that we use Instagram for research day-to-day is, anything that looks like a coffee drink or a pastry or an ice cream cone that is just so ridiculously Instagram-friendly and it almost feels like Instagram bait, we stay away from those places, but the places, after years of doing this, you develop this sixth sense and this divining rod and that's not helpful to the lay listener here, but you can suss out the places that feel legitimate. Then you ask around. You follow, you check and see who that restaurant follows, who their farmers are, are there other legitimate food people that follow them too. You can go down the Instagram rabbit hole to vet certain places. That's one way we do it.

Kousha Navidar: That idea of who do they follow and who follows them I think is very, very helpful. Something I haven't thought of before at least. Listeners, we're talking to the Food and Wine editor-in-chief, Hunter Lewis, and we want to hear from you listening right now. We're talking about the trips you're excited to go on this summer to try foods specifically, especially if it's on the East Coast, but hey, we'll take any place if you're excited.

Have you been wanting to try a new dish somewhere outside of your neighborhood, your city, your state? How far have you traveled to sample a particular dish and in what city or country have you had the best food experience? Give us a call at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Hunter, we've got our first call. Let's go to Julian in Northfield, New Jersey. Hey, Julian, welcome to the show.

Julian: Thank you. I have two observations. The first is, never tell anyone that this restaurant has the best food they will ever eat because usually, based on that expectation, it is not. My second observation is, when I think back about my great restaurant experiences, they all involve the company I was with and what we did, and what we talked about. Of course, the food was also excellent, but I've never had a memorable meal with people where I did not enjoy the company.

Kousha Navidar: Julian, thank you so much for that call. I want to read out a text that we just got. It says sometimes the best food isn't super pricey. Tacoway Beach, formerly Rockaway Taco had the best taco I've ever had. It was a 40-minute drive. Hunter, when you're looking at places, how much do you consider price being correlated to quality?

Hunter Lewis: All the time. It's not price equals quality. I think we all are searching for high, medium, and low. I think that there's a disconnect between price equaling quality. There are great pizza spots and slice joints in the city where you're not going to be paying more than $15 for a full meal. I think that there are some taco spots in the city that don't get enough love and we should be actually paying more for that taco, but there's an expectation because it's a taco that it should be less than $5 a taco.

I wouldn't go through that trap of equating price to quality, but I think getting back to the journey and the discovery and better understanding a neighborhood and that food culture, think about that in the high, medium, low way. If you're going to be in a town for more than a couple of nights, check out the tacos, check out the pizza spots, check out the barbecue, the lobster rolls, but also, do schedule reservation and think about fine dining or fine casual as a part of that journey too.

Kousha Navidar: Speaking of pizza, we got a caller here that I think has some opinions on that. Let's go to Alan in Montclair. Hey, Alan, welcome to the show.

Alan: Hey. Thank you so much. First of all, road trips for food are the best. I do want to say I think for pizza, you don't need to go to New Haven, you don't need to go to Chicago, which is really quiche, not pizza. I got to tell you, Pizza Suprema, I never would have thought, right in the shadow of Madison Square Garden, 31st and 8th has the best, in my view, slices I've ever had because there are some things that I just think any place in New York City, most pizzerias just blow out of the water anything else.

Here are some other gems that I've found along the way. There's a place on Long Beach Island, New Jersey, called the Holiday Snack Bar, which has these homemade cakes and the best little hamburger you've ever had. Then come to Maine for any roadside lobsters there.

Kousha Navidar: Alan, thank you so much for those wonderful tips.

Hunter Lewis: We're going to sign this guy up for a job.

Kousha Navidar: Right? Alan, coming in with the hot takes of delicious bites. Love that. Let's go to Chris in Manhattan. Hey, Chris, welcome to the show.

Chris: I just wanted to say I took a trip to Acadia National Park. The camping there was great, but the lobster rolls were phenomenal. The first night, we got cooking for ourselves and after that, we were like, let's just go eat out at the restaurants. Great time. Great food. Highly recommend it.

Kousha Navidar: Wonderful. Chris, thanks so much for that. You mentioned lobster rolls. Hunter, let's go outside of New York, and go to Maryland for a bit. You've highlighted Maryland for blue crab, which is a fairly easy drive and an even easier Amtrak trip. What's unique about blue crab and how does the taste differ from other kinds of crab?

Hunter Lewis: Well, I think blue crab is, it's synonymous with the East Coast for the Atlantic Ocean. The Maryland area used to be just completely a bounty of blue crab. Unfortunately, because of overfishing and other issues, a lot of that blue crab is being brought up from the Southeast Atlantic and also from the Gulf. There's great crab to be had all over Maryland. We love Bill's Terrace Inn in Essex which is about a 20-minute drive from downtown Baltimore. Perfectly steamed crabs, very well seasoned. That's definitely one of the tops on our list.

Of course, with all of these places, if we're talking about pizza like you were mentioning earlier this week, steamed crab in Maryland and Baltimore, in particular, you're always going to create some kind of argument. I think that the debate over the food is the best part about it.

Kousha Navidar: What's your favorite way to eat blue crab?

Hunter Lewis: You got to eat it with your hands. Once you crack it, you got to dig in. It's an investment of time. Best way to eat it is with a cold beer with your friends and family outside in a picnic table, preferably late in the day, and getting your hands and your mouth dirty.

Kousha Navidar: I love that. We're here with Hunter Lewis who's Food and Wine editor-in-chief, and we're talking about your travels that center around food. Listeners, where is the next great destination you're excited to go, especially if it's along the East Coast to try some good food? What are some of your favorites? What are some places you're excited about? Give us a call, send us a text. We're at 212-433-9692. What city or country have you had the best food experience? Give us a call. We're at 212-433-9692.

There's an interesting text that came through here that I'm going to read. It says, "State fairs. Hitting the Minnesota State Fair more specifically this year, always the best foods. Corn on the cob, fried bacon on the stick, cheese curds, onion rings, pronto pups." State fairs. My experience with state fairs, Hunter, generally, is the very large Turkey leg that I get two bites out of and I'm like, "All right, that's more than enough." Do you have any experience with finding great food at state fairs?

Hunter Lewis: I think about state fair food as stunt food. It's the fried butter, it's the, hey, step right up and get your big Renaissance fair Turkey leg that you mentioned. Not my favorite place to go for food, but for people-watching, absolutely.

Kousha Navidar: Thank you so much for that text. Let's talk to Maggie in Oradell, New Jersey. Hey, Maggie, welcome to the show.

Maggie: Hi, thank you so much. This is so exciting because yesterday I went to a new restaurant in Hoboken, and it's called the Antique Bar & Bakery. It looks like a funky old-fashioned bar, but it has a hot fire pizza oven, but it has extraordinary dishes. One was an escargot with a tomatoey pesto sauce that was fabulous. I've never had anything like it. Then they also had a roasted cauliflower with cheese on top that was also wonderful. The flavors were marvelous.

Then the final thing was that they had a bread pudding that comes out looking like a huge-- it's enough for four people, and it had a caramel sauce, hot caramel sauce that you pour over it, basically to die. I highly recommend it. Hoboken, New Jersey is a wonderful little town to wander around in, but this is a very special restaurant.

Kousha Navidar: Maggie, thank you so much and shout out to Hoboken. All the food that you described tastes so good. I mean I imagine it tastes so good. It sounds so good. I'm going to read a couple more texts. One says, "It has always been my dream to do an oyster farm road trip all the way up to Nova Scotia from New York. I hope to do it someday soon."

Here's another text. It says, "Anything to say about chance happenings. Sometimes I feel that my Google Maps list and Instagram accounts and editorials curate but also limit possibility of stumble-ins. My entire Google Maps is full of green dots from posts and articles I've read, but I have no understanding of what could possibly lie in between them. Then there's the restaurant fatigue that comes from all the recommendations, especially in New York City. What are your tips for discovering a good restaurant for yourself?" Hunter, it's an interesting question. I'm sure you have some ideas behind that.

Hunter Lewis: Such a good question. I think we're all inundated with lists. At Food and Wine, we make plenty of them and we vet them and when we say something's the best, we mean it. I think that you can get so hung up with your Google Map, you can get so hung up with the list, you can get so hung up with FOMO that you're not keeping your antenna up. I think as travelers, I like to consider myself more of a traveler than a tourist, you're going into a place with your antenna up. You want to soak in that culture, you want to learn, you want to have fun, you want to spend time with friends and family, and so you got to keep that antenna up and you have to ask questions and you got to be curious.

One of the things I love to do when I go into a place for the first time is I like to go to the farmer's market and I like to see who's there and I like to see where the lines are and why there might be lines for a particular vendor. I like to talk to those farmers and ask who's buying their produce and what restaurants they like to go to. That's another way into the food culture of a city too. Don't be afraid to ask around. I think the old way in the city was, you ask your cabbie and they knew where to go. Ask the farmers, ask other chefs and restaurateurs. Ask your server, where are they going. Ask your bartender. They'd love to tell you. Everybody's got an opinion in New York City.

Kousha Navidar: We're talking to Hunter Lewis who is the editor in chief of Food and Wine. We are talking about where to go if you are interested in traveling for some good eats, give us a call, send us a text. We'd love to know a story that you've had about how far you've traveled to sample a particular dish. We haven't heard a call like that come in yet. I would love to hear somebody who went really far to try one thing and how it worked out. Give us a call, send us a text. We're at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Hunter, I want to talk about DC for a quick second. You mentioned that this area has really emerged as a culinary scene. What was the catalyst for that, you think?

Hunter Lewis: DC is a food city. It's a food city on the rides. It doesn't get nearly enough love. I think Philly's certainly got some shine lately and well deserved. There's some great restaurants in Philadelphia, but Washington, DC has an incredible culture. It's incredibly diverse. It's got all these different inputs and immigrants from all over the world. I think you can't talk about a trip to DC without first talking about Ben's Chili Bowl. It's been a go-to spot for half smokes, half beef and half pork smoked sausage for decades.

It's a place that's been central to the Civil Rights Movement. Leaders and presidents and celebrities all go there, and it's still going strong. The Ali family, they're wonderful people. First stop in DC has got to be Ben's Chili Bowl, but I'm really into the upstarts. I'm really into what Food and Wine best new chef Rob Rubba's doing over at Oyster Oyster. It's an incredible vegetarian-focused restaurant where he's very focused on sustainability and eliminating food waste. I cannot wait to go to Pascual, which is Isabel Coss's new restaurant with her partner Matt Conroy, wood-fired Mexican fare.

We're featuring Isabel in the next issue of Food and Wine. She's also a Food and Wine best new chef. There's a whole youth culture of chefs who come up in the city, who've cooked elsewhere, who've found that it's easier to operate in Washington, DC than maybe other major cities. The level of cooking there right now is really, really high. It's put on pause during the pandemic, but love the energy that's pouring into DC right now.

Kousha Navidar: Folks, we're talking to Hunter Lewis who is Food and Wine editor in Chief. Food and Wine, of course, the magazine and the website, the publication. We're talking about your experiences traveling for food and where you're excited to go this summer to travel and to eat specifically. We've got Olivia from Farmingdale, Long Island. Hey, Olivia, welcome to the show.

Olivia: Hi.

Kousha Navidar: Hi. Oh, do you have a place that you're excited to go?

Olivia: Yes. A place my mother actually introduced me to. There is a small chain of restaurants on Long Island, three locations that I know of. Maybe there's more I don't know. It's called The Shed. There's one in Huntington, one in Plainview, and one in Sayville. It's just standard American bistro food, but they do it, I think, better than anybody else on Long Island and the price is very reasonable. I would say it's the best calamari I've ever had on their appetizer menu.

All of their burgers are great. Very comfortable environment. The staff is great. You can sit at the bar and order food and you feel very comfortable sitting there. I actually had a friend who I think worked for one of the chefs and said that he was a fantastic chef to work for, ran a very professional kitchen, and I guess it shows with the food that they're producing because I will go to The Shed any day of the week for a good meal.

Kousha Navidar: Wonderful. Olivia, thank you so much for that call and for that shout-out. It sounds like we have somebody who might be able to take us a little further away from the United States. Let's go to Jacob in East Harlem. Hey, Jacob, welcome to the show. Hey, Jacob, can you hear us?

Jacob: Yes. Can you hear me?

Kousha Navidar: Yes. Hi, welcome.

Jacob: Hi. Thanks for having me. Glad to be on. I recently traveled to Copenhagen and I feel like Copenhagen was a foodies dream just because every restaurant there had a tasting menu compared to New York was very affordable, and everything was so fresh and local. We went to this one spot called Baka d' Busk, which was a vegetarian restaurant, though, I highly recommend even those meat eaters that they check it out. It was incredible what they were able to do. Every time they bring over a plate, they describe where it came from. They even talked about this old woman that they knew who does their foraging and gets all their greens and their spices. Everything was to die for.

Kousha Navidar: Wonderful. Jacob, thank you so much, and thank you for introducing the international perspective there. Hunter, while I was listening to Jacob, I was wondering, is there a place that you're excited to go next, outside the United States, for your next food adventure?

Hunter Lewis: Everywhere. I cannot wait to get to Vietnam and Southeast Asia. The next trip I'm taking abroad is going to be down to Sicily, and to Mount Etna, in particular. Very, very excited to learn more about the wines that are produced in stratovolcano.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, wonderful. We're getting some more calls in about some places outside of the United States. Let's go to Nicole in Tarrytown. Hey, Nicole, welcome to the show.

Nicole: Oh, hi. Thank you so much. About 15 years ago, I had the privilege of traveling to Argentina with a group of high school students. We took a one-day trip to Uruguay from there. I asked the cab driver, "What should we eat?" I took my small group of kids to a restaurant to try chivito, which is this set of fries with a steak, and then ham, and cheese, and two fried eggs on top. It's surrounded by a lot of really delicious side like maybe pickled cabbage or I don't really remember the size as much, but it was so huge. I had to definitely split that with someone else. I highly recommend trying it. I've never had it ever since then, but I'll always remember it.

Kousha Navidar: Wonderful. Nicole, thank you so much. I want to see if we can sneak in Rayon from Manhattan. Rayon, hi. I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly. Welcome to the show.

Rayon: Hi. Yes, you are. Thank you for taking my call. Just listening to the conversation, I've had a lot of traveling that I do are related to food. One of the ones that I can very memorable is the one in Cambodia, where a lot of their protein products in their cuisine is basically insects and things that they find locally. I had an opportunity to try out a new-age restaurant over there, where they're offered fried tarantulas, locusts fried, and they were like sauteed worms.

It was quite intriguing and I tried fried locusts, which was very crispy and very delicious. Having it with a little chilly because it's South Asia, you have to have some aspect of it a little spicy, and that was great. Then also frog legs. I also tried frog legs as well. Let me tell you, it does taste like chicken.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, wow. Rayon, thank you so much for that. Hunter, have you tried locusts before?

Hunter Lewis: I've tried locusts. I'm into the crunchy bugs.

Kousha Navidar: Wonderful. Is there a place that you know of that people can try crunchy bugs without going to Cambodia? Is there a place locally?

Hunter Lewis: Yes. I think there's all over Queens and Brooklyn. If you go to the right restaurants and the right markets, you're going to come across everything from crispy ants to and now people are trying to figure out what to do with cicadas because apparently they're going to be a bigger thing this summer.

Kousha Navidar: We have a producer on our show who is dead set on cooking cicadas and I am dead set on trying it when they finally do it. I'm trying to see if that'll happen. We've got about, I'm looking at the clock, about a minute left. If somebody wants to go on a food adventure, but they don't know how to start, they don't know where to start, real quick, Hunter, how would you suggest they get started?

Hunter Lewis: Well, pick your place first. You got to at least make one decision, but pick your place. I would personally start through that market. Figure out what the great markets of that place are. Go early in the morning, make that the start of your journey. If you're not going to do the research, at least have that one anchor spot and I think a market is a great, great window into not just a neighborhood's food culture but into a city's food culture. Because you've got all these different vendors and farmers coming from all over that area coming to that one place and that's a great place to start.

Kousha Navidar: Wonderful. We've been talking with Hunter Lewis who is Food and Wine's editor-in-chief. We've been taking your calls. It's been such a pleasure. Hunter, thank you so much, and happy travels.

Hunter Lewis: I enjoyed it. Thank you.

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