Restaurant Week is coming up in Washington, D.C., and the city will be able to prove its chops (pork, anyone?) to locals and tourists alike. But at Post Opinions, our colleagues are from all over, so we wondered where else we should we be looking for our next bite. Here are the answers: What American city has the most underrated food culture?
Theodore R. Johnson: Raleigh, North Carolina
Two decades ago, Raleigh, North Carolina, became the nation’s flavor of the month. Its sudden appearance atop rankings for America’s “best places to live” brought people from all over to the state capital. The result is a New South cuisine that’s as distinctive as Carolina barbecue.
The barbecue there is pit-cooked pulled pork seasoned with cider vinegar and hot peppers, a centuries-old tradition that evolved from Indigenous, Black and European cooking techniques. The city’s menu is filled with Southern comforts from collards with hot sauce to fried chicken for which even the salt must be seasoned.
But newcomers — immigrants, retirees, educated households from distant metro areas looking for affordable living — brought culinary variety and quality rare for a city of Raleigh’s size. Cuisine from every corner of the world has a place there. Michelin-recommended restaurants and James Beard awards are easy to find. So are drive-throughs with Southern gravy biscuits or a dozen glazed doughnuts — look for the landmark Krispy Kreme Hot Light.
The innovation is the cherry on top. In Raleigh, you can find soul rolls — mac and cheese and smoked oxtail in an egg roll — and banana pudding candy apples. You may come for the barbecue, but it’s everything else that makes you want to stay.
León Krauze: Los Angeles
Let’s get one thing straight: Los Angeles is the best food city in America.
I’m not sure the city’s food can still be considered underrated. But to me, any other answer is unfathomable. Los Angeles is diverse, imaginative, daring and fun. It brings together a range of culinary influences that is hard to match anywhere else.
Take one example, from my own Mexican palate. A decade ago, annoyed by the suggestion that New York had better tacos than Los Angeles, food critic Bill Esparza set out to prove otherwise. What he found was a cornucopia of Mexican delights. Esparza showed that in Los Angeles you can find extraordinary tacos representing virtually every region of Mexico, something that can hardly be said of any single city, even in Mexico itself.
Esparza’s experiment could easily be repeated with Korean, Japanese, Thai and an almost endless list of other cuisines. That is Los Angeles.
So if you want to eat exceptionally well, head to the great city of Southern California.
Mizanur Rahman: Houston
I’m not used to a waiter responding to my food order with: “No, don’t get that.”
A few months after I moved to Houston in 2007, I popped into Himalaya, an Indo-Pakistani restaurant in the city’s Mahatma Gandhi District. The waiter, I realized later, was chef-owner Kaiser Lashkari. He instructed me to get the lamb biryani. So I did. I fell in love with the dish’s vibrant spices and impossibly tender meat.
Foodies are familiar with Houston’s dining prowess — though my friends across the country are always surprised by the remarkable array of options.
We’ve got world-class barbecue, of course. The brisket at Pinkerton’s is worth the occasional long line. You want creativity? Try the crawfish egg foo young at Agnes and Sherman. Craving the best cacio e pepe outside Rome? Coltivare, hands down. Can I interest you in some West African fare? The Golden Bowl at ChòpnBlok, with its jollof jambalaya and sweet plantains, is a fight-over favorite for my two teenage daughters. Nostalgic for that time you visited Mexico City? Cuchara will transport you back with its chilaquiles and tacos.
San Francisco may have legacy and New York City cachet, but Houston has Crawfish & Noodles, where you can get your hands messy with Viet-Cajun cuisine. I have literally licked my fingers.
Chloe Coleman: Columbus, Ohio
Other American cities can have their pizza and barbecue. Columbus, Ohio, has ice cream — specifically, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams.
Jeni’s pints might be available at your local Whole Foods, but consider visiting the city where it all started. Jeni’s first official location opened in 2002 in Columbus’s North Market — Ohio’s pocket-size version of Philly’s Reading or Toronto’s St. Lawrence. The founder, Jeni Britton, even used to work the scoop herself.
Get a cone and browse the stalls: The market is just big enough to keep you occupied until you take your last bite. And Jeni’s is not alone in the greater Ohio ice cream scene. Graeter’s and Velvet are also native pints that made it big, and there are many other quality hyperlocal brands.
Goat cheese with red cherries was the first Jeni’s flavor that shook my young taste buds, and it can lift me out of any bad mood to this day. Luckily, I can have a taste of home at the Jeni’s scoop shop here in D.C.
Lillian Barkley: St. Louis
It’s easy to forget St. Louis, landlocked near the middle of the country and surrounded by bigger, younger cities. But the Gateway to the West’s deep-rooted history means there’s been ample time to cultivate a food scene that’s all its own.
It’s a boon to the city and a curse to me. I spend each visit home planning meals around everything I struggle to find anywhere else.
St. Louis is best known for barbecue pork ribs, but pork steaks are the hidden gem. They’re thick like a rib eye, fork-tender, smoked and glazed with a sweet, tangy sauce. My favorite is at Doc’s Smokehouse, across the river in Illinois.
Don’t be fooled by chain-restaurant imitators. Toasted ravioli is best in St. Louis, especially on The Hill. Ravioli are lightly breaded, deep-fried, dusted with parmesan and served with sweet marinara sauce. The filling should be beef, not cheese (Provel, maybe).
With the largest Bosnian population outside of Bosnia, St. Louis has several options for burek, cevapi and pljeskavica — particularly the much-lauded Balkan Treat Box. The portions are hearty, fitting right in with Midwestern comfort food.
And if you have room for dessert, gooey butter cake is decadent but unfussy. A certain Columbus-born ice cream shop’s flavor can’t compare — go to Schnucks for the real thing.
James Desio: Washington, D.C.
When tourists think of D.C.’s food culture, steak houses filled with K Street lobbyists and government officials might come to mind. Visitors may have heard of half-smoke eatery Ben’s Chili Bowl or Old Ebbitt Grill. But the District can go toe-to-toe with any other American city.
D.C. has the most Michelin-star restaurants per capita in the country, according to a 2024 report from Chef’s Pencil. Globally, it ranks behind only Paris and Kyoto. The Dabney. Albi. minibar. There are world-class restaurants in neighborhoods across the city.
There’s also more to the food scene than fine dining fit for diplomats and dignitaries. The D.C. area has the largest population of Ethiopians in the United States, and they have created a unique food culture unlike anywhere else in the country. Find me another American city where you can walk 10 minutes in any direction and find top-notch injera, doro wat and shint tibs.
Craving a banh mi or pho? Head to the Eden Center in Northern Virginia, the largest Vietnamese commercial center on the East Coast. There’s also Mumbo sauce. Peter Chang’s culinary empire. The list goes on and on.
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