Catesby Holmes, one of our colleagues at sister mag Travel + Leisure, weighs in on this unlikely collaboration:

“Naked Chef” Jamie Oliver has teamed up with Match.com in the UK, the original online yenta, to establish a forum for food lovers to meet, mingle and turn up the heat (and not just on their stainless steel ranges). Jamieoliver.com/dating has related articles like "Making the First Meal for Your Partner" and "Food to Make You Fall in Love." Hey, even if you don’t find The One, at least you’ll get a good meal out of it.

Editor's note: Tom Colicchio, the head judge on Bravo's Top Chef (and a Food & Wine Best New Chef 1991), will be blogging every day this week about his road trip from Atlanta.

Since we were planning to stay in DC for the night, Jose Andres encouraged us to have dinner at one of his restaurants. Although minibar at Café Atlantico is the talk of the town in Washington right now, I was in the mood for paella so we opted for Jose's bar and tapas joint, Jaleo.

Jaleo has been open for years and yet it's always festive and buzzing. Two highlights of our meal were a delicious arroz negro paella and lomo iberico, a salt-roasted pork tenderloin. Jose joined us for the second half of the meal, and it was great to have a chance to catch up with a good friend I don't see often enough.

Editor's note: Tom Colicchio, the head judge on Bravo's Top Chef (and a Food & Wine Best New Chef 1991), will be blogging every day this week about his road trip from Atlanta.

The main event on day five was a trip to DC Central Kitchen, a non-profit organization whose mission is to combat hunger and poverty. I've heard a lot about it over the years from my friend Jose Andres, who currently sits on DCCK's board of directors, and I thought that this was the perfect opportunity for a visit.

As someone who has spent the lion's share of the past thirty years cooking food for fortunate people, hunger issues have always held a special importance to me. Lately they have taken on a new prominence in my life, since my wife and I set out to make a film called "Hungry In America," about this nation's hunger crisis.

DC Central Kitchen is part of the solution, producing and distributing 4,500 healthy meals per day to shelters and other social services programs. They recover over a ton of food daily from restaurants, schools, hotels, and farmers markets, but what they can't get donated they buy from area farmers. At this point, 75% of their raw ingredients are locally grown — something most people can't say about their own home cooked meals.

But that's just the beginning. DC Central Kitchen also generates almost half of its $5.2 million annual budget for its programs from a for-profit catering division, Fresh Start Catering. And the organization goes one step further with a 12-week culinary job training program, addressing the roots of hunger by helping unemployed, homeless, and previously incarcerated adults get back in the workforce. Many of the organization's own 73 employees are graduates of the program.

We took a tour of DCCK's 10,000 square foot kitchen with Jose Andres, founder Michael Curtin, and Chief Development Officer Brian McNair. Salaried employees were busy prepping meals alongside a handful of young kids who had come in from local schools as part of an after school program. They were slicing tomatoes and squash, learning a valuable new skill while doing something for the community.

DCCK is a unique and fascinating model for addressing hunger issues, and one that I hope spreads to New York soon.

Editor's note: Tom Colicchio, the head judge on Bravo's Top Chef (and a Food & Wine Best New Chef 1991), will be blogging every day this week about his road trip from Atlanta.

On our way up from the Chesapeake Bay to Washington DC, we were relieved to see rain give way to clear skies. A few days earlier we had cold-called Ray LaSala, the president of the Mycological Association of Washington DC (or MAW, to those on the know), asking if he would take us out foraging for mushrooms when we were in the area. We were now on our way to meet Ray at a regional park south of DC and spend a couple of hours scanning the forest floor for fungi.

I love mushrooms. Since day one my menus at Craft and Craftsteak have included not just one but several different seasonal varieties of roasted mushroom as side dishes, from Hen of the Woods to Chanterelles to Trompette Royals and Bluefoots, to name just a few.

When we met Ray and his three fellow MAW members, all were concerned that we might not have much luck foraging at this time of year. As it turned out, they were right; the only edible fungi that we were able to find that day were a few honey mushrooms. Regardless, we were all glad to stretch our legs and work off at least a little bit of the previous night's dinner. Another bonus was the chance discovery of my first wild paw paw tree, which bears a fruit that tastes a lot like a banana and but grows right in the Mid-Atlantic.

Editor's note: Tom Colicchio, the head judge on Bravo's Top Chef (and a Food & Wine Best New Chef 1991), will be blogging every day this week about his road trip from Atlanta.

When it came time to hit the sheets, Travis and Ryan recommended a local institution just a few minutes down the road, the Hope & Glory Inn. Peggy and Dudley Patteson have taken a 19th Century schoolhouse and converted it into a country inn, complete with private one-bedroom cottages (originally dormitories) out back. We didn't get to spend much time at the Hope & Glory, but it Peggy and Dudley's southern hospitality was a welcome change from the impersonal, big brand hotels that I so often end up in when travelling.

Editor's note: Tom Colicchio, the head judge on Bravo's Top Chef (and a Food & Wine Best New Chef 1991), will be blogging every day this week about his road trip from Atlanta.

By late afternoon, after we had gotten a full tour of the Rappahannock River Oysters operation, Travis and Ryan invited us to stay on for a Virginia-style seafood supper.

Come evening wives and girlfriends started rolling in, along with several regional chefs (and RRO customers) that the Croxtons had invited for dinner. I coaxed my friend Jerry Bryan, chef/owner of the Coastal Grill, to drive up from Virginia Beach to join in the festivities.

We set up shop next to the harbor and had some picnic tables, a big charcoal grill, a fryer, a couple of camp stoves, and enough oysters, blue crabs, beers and bourbon to feed an army. Everybody had a job, from putting beers on ice to boiling the blue crabs to handing out hot cups of the chowder that Jerry had brought with him. The weather was cool, windy, and threatening rain, but nobody minded. This was my idea of a good time.

Oysters were the main event, and despite the number of chefs in attendance, the cooking was handled almost entirely by Ryan and Travis. They grilled both wild and cultivated oysters over charcoal, serving them up with garlic butter and grilled bread. Travis fried oysters according to his own recipe, one that he had been talking up all day as "the best in the world" (it was, in the end, pretty darn good). Jason Alley from Comfort in Richmond brought along a jar of excellent pickled watermelon rind, and David Guas had cookies, brownies, and pecan pie (a personal favorite) for dessert. I couldn't have asked for better hospitality, and I'm looking forward to having the Rappahannock River guys up to New York City to do an oyster tasting with my staff.

Editor's note: Tom Colicchio, the head judge on Bravo's Top Chef (and a Food & Wine Best New Chef 1991), will be blogging every day this week about his road trip from Atlanta.

Our fourth day on the road began with a long drive in the drizzling rain from Chapel Hill to coastal Virginia. Our destination was Rappahannock River Oysters, whose delicious oysters we feature in the raw bar selection at our Craftsteak restaurants in New York and Las Vegas.

We arrived around noon at a little marina at the mouth of the Rappahannock River in Topping, Virginia. Rappahannock River Oysters founders Travis and Ryan Croxton recently bought the place out of foreclosure and are now living my own personal dream, working from an office just steps away from the docks.

No sooner had we said our hellos to Travis, Ryan, and their director of operations, Anthony Marchetti, than they whisked us on board one of their boats to show us their oyster grounds.

The story behind Rappahannock River Oysters has something in common with Anson Mills: it's the tale of a once-abundant local resource driven almost entirely out of production, and the people who care enough to save it. In the 17th century, wild oysters in the Chesapeake were said to be so plentiful that navigating a ship was treacherous. Over time their numbers gradually declined due to overfishing, and by the 1950s, when foreign oysters were introduced to these waters, the viruses they brought with them served a final blow to the local population.

Enter Travis and Ryan, two native sons of Virginia whose grandfather was an oysterman. Eight years back, Travis was working in finance and Ryan in marketing when they discovered that their grandfather's lease on his oyster grounds was about to expire. Looking for a change of direction, they renewed the lease and set to work growing native oysters sustainably. Their mission was to restore native Chesapeake Bay oyster varieties to their former glory, putting them back on the culinary map. How's that for local pride?

Ryan and Travis grow Rappahannock River, Olde Salt, and Sting Ray oyster varieties, and while out on the water we got a chance to see the Rappahannocks growing on trays about five feet below the surface. All oysters on the East Coast are the same species, so differences in flavor, shape, and quality all come down to what the Croxtons refer to as "merroir": the impact that salt levels, water temperature, tidal flow, and other factors exert on the oyster, much like how terroir effects a grape. That might make it sound like there's little to distinguish one oyster farmer from another, but the guys at Rappahannock have to decide on the exact best location for their oyster beds, protect them against predators, and keep a watchful eye on salinity and temperature levels. Plus, they set themselves apart by sending out only the best specimens to their customers, and shipping the same day the oysters are harvested for maximal freshness.

Heading back to shore, I couldn't wait to try some of the oysters that had been harvested that day.

Ana Sortun's Oleana restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been one of my favorite New England stops for years—I'd put her carrot jam on practically anything, and pastry chef Maura Kilpatrick's coconut–passion fruit baked Alaska remains at the top of my most-adored-desserts list. So I can't say I was surprised when I fell hard for Sortun's new Middle Eastern bakery and café, called Sofra, while visiting Boston last weekend.

Sortun's Lebanese-style hummus, (which turns out to be just some lovely roasted chickpeas)—served with creamy avocado puree, sweet flecks of shredded beets and spicy arugula (from Sortun's husband's farm) alongside fried pita—is the sort of dish I could have every day. Same goes for the flaky, spiced spanakopita and bread-pudding-like cheesy borek that was sprinkled with smoky nigella seeds.

My only regret is that I didn't try one the any of the stuffed breads—or an orange-blossom-glazed morning bun, or a za'atar-feta brioche wheel. That said, I thankfully did buy a container of muhammara (a hummus-like red pepper–and–walnut puree) to bring back to New York, and I am just waiting for the perfect pita to come along to go with it.

Editor's note: Tom Colicchio, the head judge on Bravo's Top Chef (and a Food & Wine Best New Chef 1991), will be blogging every day this week about his road trip from Atlanta.

Once back in Chapel Hill, we headed straight for Lantern to taste Andrea's food for ourselves.

Lantern is widely known for marrying a farm-to-table philosophy to impeccably produced Pacific Rim cuisine, and Cane Creek is just one of many local farms and fisheries that Andrea features on her seasonally-driven menu. Local shrimp, sea trout, soft shell crab, flounder, mackerel, sea scallops, and a wide array of local vegetables all made it onto our table that night.

Over the course of the meal we also got a chance to see Cane Creek pork deployed in many forms. There was a lemongrass barbecued pork dish, a pork chop with a fried farm egg and spicy local cucumber mint salad, pork belly with 5-spice and pickled pumpkin, and lest any part of the pig be excluded, a head-to-tail pork terrine served with hakurei turnips.

Since the New York Knicks aren’t doing so well these days, I’ve decided that I’m (at least temporarily) a Cleveland Cavaliers fan—especially when I can stop at the B-Spot near the Cavs team store at the Quicken Arena for ridiculously good burgers from Michael Symon (an F&W Best New Chef 1998). Symon specializes in “meat on meat” burgers—like patties topped with fried bologna—and next Monday, I’ll have another place to try them when he opens B-Spot Burgers in Woodmere, Ohio. Maybe I can convince Cavs forward LeBron James to come with me; although he’s a fan of the rib eye at Symon’s signature restaurant, Lola, he hasn’t been to B-Spot yet. “When we’re open, he’s pretty busy,” says Symon.

Until I get to Cleveland, my best shot at a Symon burger is to make one from his cool new Live to Cook book. The Lola Burger is indeed meat-on-meat (bacon) with a fried egg, cheddar and dill pickle slices, all served on a big, fat English muffin.