A Bucket List for the Hungry and Restless

Before there was Chowhound, or Google Maps, or gastro-truck Twitter feeds, there was Jane and Michael Stern. For more than thirty years, the pavement-pounding duo has been charting a course across America in search of the country’s native culinary treasures, like Connecticut’s gooey steamed cheeseburgers, Mississippi’s coffee can hot tamales, and Minnesota’s bursting fresh-berry pies. In that time, they have authored more than 40 books together, including the seminal good-eats guide, “Roadfood;” today they manage a website by the same name, pen a James Beard award-winning column for Gourmet magazine, and offer a weekly audio chronicle of their adventures in eating on American Public Media’s The Splendid Table. The Sterns’ latest book, “500 Things to Eat Before It’s Too Late,” draws decades of their discoveries together into one streamlined bucket-list for the grease-loving and hungry. Perfectly sized to the glove compartment, “500 Things” should be essential reading for any summer road-tripper — and so, with a weekend of holiday travel on the horizon, it seemed like the perfect time to call on Mr. Stern for a few last minute tips.

We’re coming up on July 4th. If you could pick one place in the country to celebrate the holiday, and one thing to have on your plate, what would it be?

I would go whole hog and attend a weekend pig-pickin’ in North Carolina. The whole process of cooking the pig is actually older than Independence Day, and it’s just the sort of community ritual that reminds you how much food defines a person’s sense of place and belonging. Also, the simple duet of whole-hog pork and smoke, abetted only minimally by seasonings (sauce optional) is delicious, especially when accompanied by good corn bread and slaw.

After 30+ years of exploring America’s native foods, it’s a given you and Jane both love good grub, but it’s also clear from how you talk (and write) about what you do that what you really treasure is good food eaten in its “natural setting.” How much does place effect a meal for you?

Well, as I was just saying about the pig-pickin’, food in a vacumn, no matter how delicious, isn’t all that interesting to Jane and me. Food eaten alongside those who grow it, prepare it, and enjoy it everyday is sustaining for soul as well as body. That is why we’re not all that interested in a cajun restaurant in Chicago or Texas barbeque in New York. Tasty as they might be (though usually they are not), the experience of the food is all wrong: wrong setting, wrong dining companions, wrong accents on the staff and — in the case of rural foods served in the city — prices that are incongruous.

You’ve divided your new book into regions, each one packed with information and temptations. If you had to pick a favorite dish from each one (New England, Mid-Atlantic, South, Midwest, Southwest, and West) what would they be?

Ok, here goes:

NORTHEAST: Pancakes and maple syrup at Polly’s Pancake Parlor (672 Route 117, Sugar Hill, NH)

MID-ATLANTIC: Pastrami Sandwich at Harold’s New York Deli (3050 Woodbridge Ave., Edison, NJ)

SOUTH: Hot Chicken at Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack (123 Ewing Dr, Nashville, TN)

MIDWEST: Cherry pie at the Cherry Hut (211 N. Michigan Ave., Beulah, MI)

SOUTHWEST: Pico de gallo at Pico de Gallo (2618 S. 6th Ave., South Tuscon, AZ)

WEST: Fish taco from The Cottage (7702 Fay Ave., LaJolla, CA)

It’s summer, the season for backyard bbqs — so I’m going to ask you to pick sides: hot dogs or hamburgers? Why? And where do you go to you find your favorite of each?

I relish a great hamburger, but hot dogs are my passion. Not only because I like the way they taste, but because they are a food that has defied national homogenization. Consider: you can get the same hamburger coast to coast, but a Chicago-style hot dog is completely unlike a West Virginia slaw dog, which bears no resemblance to a Sonoran dog, nor to a New Jersey ripper nor a Rhode Island hot weenie, nor to a Cincinnati Coney Island. Everybody is loyal to the hot dog with which they grew up, and although my truest devotion is to a Chicago-style dog, at this exact moment in time, I am yearning for a charcoal-cooked footlong from Ted’s of Towanda, New York — topped with mustard, onions, a pickle wedge, and Ted’s sensational hot sauce. My favorite hamburger is at Hodad’s in Ocean Beach, California. It’s a gorgeous patty loaded into a bun with a virtual salad of condiments and served with excellent milkshakes.

Much of what of include in the book is no-holds-barred, old-fashioned “American” food — apple pies, clam chowder, lobster rolls, biscuits, bbq, and the like. But you also include a couple of picks that reflect a more recent immigrant influence, like the Chilean grilled meat sandwich called a Chacarero, in Boston, and the taco trucks of Oakland, California. Are there any other “new” American regional foods or trends you’re excited about that didnt make it into the book?

We missed the boat by not including the Korean tacos of Los Angeles — they are getting a lot of press now and are a wonderful example of how American cuisine is all about hyphenation with others from around the world. Also, we need to further explore Hmong food, mostly in Minneapolis, to see if and how it has blended with local ingredients and food customs.

“500 Things” is meant to be a guide, of course — but you also encourage your readers to get out on the road and do their own wandering, to find their own “must-eats.” Can you offer any rules of thumb or advice to novice food explorers?

When in doubt, just remember these hints:

1. Get off the main road and travel through small towns as much as possible.

2. In a strange restaurant, look at the food on other people’s plates. The locals probably know what’s good.

3. Bone up in advance. Know what the regional specialties are, so you don’t completely miss them on a menu. For example, “hot beef” seems so innocuous, but in the northern Midwest, it’s a specialty not to be missed. Also, in Plattsburg, New York, if you see “Michigan” on a menu, you need to know that a michigan is that city’s unique take on the chili dog — and a great dining experience.

4. Don’t only eat in restaurants: look for small groceries that sell ready to eat food (like the boudin of southern Louisiana), food trucks, farmers markets, gas stations, produce stands — because it in those types of places that you can get a real taste of where you are.

Finally, one question about the book’s title: Does the demise implied in “Before It’s Too Late” belong to a) the reader or b) the food? And if it’s the latter, how concerned are you that the sorts of regional delights that you and Jane chronicle are becoming endangered in America?

To some degree, corporate homogenation does threaten local specialties, but that effect is counterbalanced by Americans’ ever increasing awareness and appreciation of regional specialties. The title of the book has both meanings — but mainly, “too late” refers to our fear that the food police and nutrition nannies will try to eliminate many of these beloved foods or tax them out of existence or brainwash people into thinking they are evil.