© Courtesy of Tom Colicchio
Dinner at Jaleo

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.

© Courtesy of Tom Colicchio
The Hope and Glory Inn

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.

© Courtesy of Tom Colicchio
With Chef Robert Wiedmaier and wild oysters on the grill

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.

© Courtesy of Tom Colicchio
A Day with Rappahannock River Oysters

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.

© Courtesy of Tom Colicchio
Dinner at Lantern

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.

© Courtesy of Tom Colicchio
Visiting Cane Creek Farm

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 we had eaten our fill of BBQ we headed an hour west to Snow Camp, NC to pay a visit to Cane Creek Farm. When I knew we were going to be driving through North Carolina I got in touch with Andrea Reusing, the chef/owner of Lantern restaurant in Chapel Hill. Andrea is highly regarded for both her skills in the kitchen and her commitment to local sourcing, so I knew she would have great ideas about who was worth a visit. She suggested Cane Creek Farm right off the bat, and offered to meet us there.

Eliza Maclean is the proprietor of Cane Creek, and it's an understatement to say that she's a busy woman. The farm is maybe best know for its pigs (Ossabaws, Old Spot Gloucestershires, Farmers Hybrids, and an Ossabaw/Farmers Hybrid mix that Eliza has named a Crossabaw), but Eliza also raises Black Angus and Red Devon cows, goats, sheep, chickens, ducks, and turkeys, as well as two children. The cattle and much of the farm's sprawling 570 acres came as a result of a merger between Cane Creek and Braeburn Farms in 2007.

So what makes Cane Creek exceptional? It's sustainable agriculture at its best. Eliza practices rotational grazing, which any of you who have read a Michael Pollen book know means moving different species of animal through the same parcel of land in succession to mimic a natural ecosystem. The land stays healthy and the animals get what they need from it, which means minimal artificial inputs from we humans. Eliza's sheep, cows, and goats are all entirely grass-fed, and her pigs feast on grain-based food, supplemented by whatever they can root around for in their pasture.

All this means lots of happy animals (you can tell it just by looking at them), but also a lot of work on Eliza's part to bring each food item to market. I wish everyone who complained about the price of organic free-range eggs could see this place in action.

After seeing an operation as thorough and well-run as Cane Creek Farm, as a chef you can't help but feel like you have a responsibility to put as much care into cooking an animal as Eliza put into raising it. "Head to tail" cooking may be trendy right now, but I also think that the best way to truly honor the animal is to leave no part of it unused.

On a recent visit to Chicago I swung by Xoco, superchef and F&W Best New Chef 1988 Rick Bayless’s new fast-food joint. I enjoyed the tortas (Mexican sandwiches)—especially the braised short ribs with caramelized onions, jack cheese and pickled jalapeños, a kind of Mexican steak-and-cheese. But I was even more impressed by the service. When my husband and I got there at noon on a Saturday, the line was out the door. But no one was grumbling, because you could help yourself to free sparkling or still water on tap. Once we got to the counter, we ordered drinks—Intelligentsia coffee for him, hot chocolate for me (made from Mexican cacao beans ground on-premises)—and waited for the OK to place our food order (you can't order until there is seating available). A host then walked us to our seats, and the tortas were delivered to our table 10 minutes later. The system wasn’t perfect—there were a lot of empty chairs around us as the kitchen scrambled to keep up—but there was no searching for a table while balancing food on a tray, and the vibe was serene. How often can you say that about a fast-food restaurant?

© Courtesy of Tom Colicchio
Shrimp & Dinner at The Wreck

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.

We left the banks of the Stono River and crossed Charleston to reach Shem Creek just in time to see Captain Magwood and his crew finish sifting through the day's catch on board his hulking shrimp trawler.

The domestic shrimp industry has really suffered in recent years as cheap imports from Asia make it hard for local fisherman to make ends meet. Whether you know it or not, much of the shrimp you've eaten in your life has been foreign, frozen and transported thousands of miles before it reaches your plate. But try eating a shrimp fresh off the boat like this and you'll taste the difference.

Matt and Ted couldn't let us leave Charleston without trying The Wreck Of The Richard and Charlene, a quirky dive of a restaurant that they view as one of the best places to sample some of the very shrimp that we saw coming off of Captain Magwood's boat. The Wreck (named in honor of an old shrimp trawler that Hurricane Hugo put ashore on the restaurant's current site) looks like the classic fried seafood shack that you find just about anywhere up and down the eastern seaboard from Florida to Nova Scotia. It serves up fresh-caught shrimp, oysters, scallops and crab, as well as well-executed hush puppies and "hominy squares," which are sort of like a croquette made of grits.

© Courtesy of Tom Colicchio
Robert Stehling's Braised Oxtail Ragout

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.

Back in Charleston that morning we made a beeline for a local favorite of mine, The Hominy Grill. The Hominy specializes in Southern classics like fried green tomatoes, she-crab soup, and--as its name would suggest--really, really good grits. Everything is prepared from scratch and as many of the ingredients as possible are local. Shrimp and grits is probably The Hominy's signature dish, but Ted Lee's personal strategy is to order from the specials board, which is where Chef Robert Stehling really has his fun. I followed Ted's advice and ordered from the chalkboard a braised oxtail ragout over cheese grits, topped with a poached egg. I was not disappointed.