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The Twin Cities Gateway is one of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metro area’s best kept secrets. Each of the nine communities that make up Minnesota’s Twin Cities Gateway—Anoka, Blaine, Coon Rapids, Fridley, Ham Lake, Lino Lakes, Mounds View, New Brighton, and Shoreview—has its own unique vibe. They also have something in common: great restaurants.
It could be said that food is our most important love language. “Mother Nature isn’t just a circle of life, it’s a circle of love—and one to be most revered,” says Sylvia Ganier, who works diligently on her organic farm in Nashville, Tennessee. Cultivating food is labor-intensive work with a low monetary yield; it’s ultimately a labor of love.
To help support local restaurants in our hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, we’re giving away a $100 gift card. Break up the monotony of your pandemic dining routine with a little help from Foodie Travel USA. Whether you’re ready to dine in or crave to-go or curbside pickup options, these Atlanta restaurants are consistent foodie favorites. Take your pick among this mouthwatering list of options:
Trendy desert towns like St. George and Moab get all the accolades in the Beehive State, but another southern Utah paradise is fast rising to acclaim: Kanab. Tucked along the Utah-Arizona state line, this American West classic offers homegrown hospitality that harkens back to its cowboy roots. Long a filming site for Western films, today Kanab is famous for its thriving arts scene, inventive cuisine, and outdoor adventures.
This Valentine’s Day most of the world’s lovers are planning on staying in, but that doesn’t mean you can’t dream of a tropical island escape. With a little planning ahead, you can even enjoy an exotic tasting tour of the Hawaiian Islands. Tease and tantalize taste buds with Hawaii’s finest flavors—with enticing options like Oahu-made chocolate, elixirs from Kauai, and wine made of grapes grown on a fiery mountainside—to feel swept away in the sensations of tropical breezes and salty waves even while at home.
My adopted home state of North Carolina is a food lover’s fantasy land. There’s more outstanding barbecue than you can shake a rib at. Everywhere along the coast the fish shacks, oyster bars and sushi restaurants make the most of what’s caught on the line and in the net. Forests and fields deliver surprises to chefs from the mountains to the sea. And the beer scene—we can’t even go there right now, but do yourself a favor and come thirsty. Most of all, come hungry. Come to Wilmington hungry. This city in the southeastern corner of the state has a food scene that’s got its fair share of names and accolades, from James Beard Award nominees and winners to a AAA Four Diamond restaurant to faces you might recognize from Bravo’s Top Chef and a raft of up and comers. Break out the bib, put on your loosest pants, and get ready to feast. These are the eight must-eat restaurants in Wilmington (right now).
California’s San Francisco Bay Area was sweating out a week of uncommon triple digit temperatures in the summer of 2020. And things were about to get much, much worse. In the pre-dawn hours on August 16 a very rare series of dry lightning strikes illuminated the skies, sending massive chunks of electricity to the ground and setting off small brush fires. Within days, a series of 650 wildfires had ignited across Northern California, eventually destroying approximately two million acres and hundreds of homes and structures in just over two weeks.
There’s a refreshing sense of freedom that comes with dining outdoors—the combination of scrumptious food and bright sunshine satisfies hunger as well as the soul—pandemic or not. While much of the country retreats indoors to avoid cold weather, Jacksonville, Florida always seems to have perfect al fresco dining weather, even in the midst of winter.
If the pandemic has driven your home cooking into a rut, venture into tastier territory with a virtual cooking class. Right from your own kitchen, virtual cooking classes are an antidote to fatigue. Find inspiration and gain know-how to transform your meals into a flavorful and exotic culinary journey. Here’s a delicious round-up of some upcoming virtual cooking classes for home cooks of all experience levels.
If your mental image of a dairy farmer is someone perched on a three-legged stool to milk cows by hand, visit Hillcrest Farms for an update. The first robotic dairy farm in the state of Georgia is now giving tours at its fourth-generation farm in Dearing, a small community in McDuffie County near Augusta. Take part in a 90-minute tour and you’ll come face-to-face with cows, learn how the high-tech approach to milking has been implemented and how the cows have reacted (spoiler alert: they’re happy!), learn something new, spend time with nature, and bring new meaning to the phrase ‘farm-to-table.’
