Welcome to our first-ever Best Culinary Towns in the South issue! So, what makes a great “culinary town,” anyway? When we started putting this issue together, we had a lot of conversation about that. In our minds (and we’ve been to a LOT of towns around the South), a town that has an active and engaged food community is just the start. There might be an excellent farmers market, a well-established or up-and-coming restaurant scene, food festivals, tours, and celebrations throughout the year, shops that feed our desires for ingredients, beverages, books, kitchen goods, cooking gear, and, more than anything, a community of people who are actively moving their town’s food culture forward.
In anticipation of this first issue, which features 20 towns (populations under 400,000) from around the South, we and our team of expert writers set out to research every corner of our area of coverage (that’s Washington, DC, down to Florida and over to Texas, in case you were curious), in search of the towns that stand out for their food communities. We started with way more—we looked at nearly 50 towns altogether!—and in an effort to narrow down and home in on the list, we turned to you, our readers, specifically with the goal of determining this year’s best. During two weeks at the start of the summer, we hosted a reader’s poll, asking to you vote for your favorite culinary towns. Thousands of responses, and one heated competition later, we learned that you all absolutely love Lafayette, Louisiana, our Readers’ Pick Winner.
The two runners up, Charlottesville, Virginia, and Alpharetta, Georgia, gave Lafayette a solid run for the money, but in the end, Lafayette pulled ahead thanks to its charm, its Cajun roots, and its community’s passion for their local foodways. Thank you to all who participated and for crowning this year’s “best.”…