Do you like food? How about delicious and interesting food? Well, good, me too, and luckily there is a lot of it to be found here in the US. The diversity of the country lends itself to colorful regional specialties.
For example, after the swamp tour in Slidell, LA, my group happened upon Keith's Seafood, a local spot selling cooked seafood by the pound. My friends and I sat outside at picnic bench as the sun was setting, a platter of boiled crawfish, shrimp, corn, and potatoes set in the middle. Afterward, we stopped at a drive-through selling 25 different flavors of frozen alcoholic drinks and bought some Styrofoam tumblers of boozy slushies for later.
In Surfside, Miami, a town that is only a mile long (and only eight blocks wide), I was faced with more than 31 restaurants to choose from, mostly within a pedestrian-friendly three-block stretch. One morning, I had crunchy latkes topped with sriracha cream cheese and thin slices of spicy, seared tuna at Josh's Deli, a Jewish-style deli "done wrong" that put a delicious twist on the Jewish comfort food I am familiar with from my childhood. I also had some delicious eats at Serendipity Creamery and Café Ragazzi, experiences that further cemented the notion that good restaurants serving high-quality food are not something exclusive to major urban centers like NYC.
In Michigan, my friend Zach, who is from Charlotte, NC, frequents a town called Hamtramck. He describes it as "a Polish enclave in the middle of Detroit [and] an area where Polish is still widely spoken." As an individual of Polish descent, "it was always a stop on family trips to pick up Polish staples like duck blood soup," a unique food product that you can't find just anywhere! Some of the best food around can often be found in areas where its residents share a strong cultural tradition.
