A shovel scrapes across a sheet of hot steel at an oyster roast in South Carolina, and a fresh pile of oysters lands on the table. There are no plates, no forks, and no waiter, just a knife and experienced locals. These are some sure-fire ways to embarrass yourself at your first South Carolina oyster…
California has more than half of the Grocery Outlet stores in the nation, close to 280 locations from San Diego to Redding. That’s a lot of aisles. Prices that run 40% to 70% below regular grocery stores keep shoppers coming back. Nevertheless, it’s easy to make mistakes. These are the errors that cost shoppers Grocery…
The longest part of a Market Basket deli order shouldn’t be realizing there was a faster way to get it. Yet Massachusetts shoppers routinely wait for items they could grab immediately, overlook special options, or show up too late for the order they need. These deli counter mistakes can cost shoppers time, limit their choices,…
A burrito tumbling into a deep fryer at Tucson’s El Charro Café in 1922 is supposed to have given Arizona the chimichanga, curse word and all. Almost every visitor manages to order a chimichanga by name. Almost none order it the way locals do. These are the Arizona orders that trip up visitors every single…
Walk into a restaurant outside the Chesapeake region advertising “Maryland-style” seafood, and the meal rarely tastes like what a native Marylander is used to. These are the Maryland foods other parts of America keep getting wrong. 1. Maryland Crab Cakes What holds a Maryland crab cake together? Jumbo lump blue crab does nearly all the…
The Wednesday breakfast crowd at the Cracker Barrel off I-81 in Troutville has the same faces many weeks, parked in the same rocking chairs before the doors even open. One regular walks straight past the check-in screen by the door and heads for a table anyway. She’s been coming since before the porch had its…
For close to ninety years, a Publix shopper paid the exact same price as the person standing behind them in line, no matter who they were. Some of what changed since then made shopping easier. Some of it just costs more. These are the ways Publix changed while Florida shoppers weren’t looking. Note: This is…
Drive across the Ohio state line in almost any direction, and a whole category of restaurant signs disappears from the road. The chili spot vanishes. So does the burger drive-in with the double-decker sandwich, and the regional pizza chain down the street from it. These are Ohio restaurants many parts of the country have never…
Golden Corral lost about 185 locations during the pandemic, and the version of buffet dining many people picture went down with a lot of them. But that’s not the case for all buffet restaurants in Florida. These are the Florida buffets that people go out of their way for fresh-carved turkey or a dessert table…
Would you guess that Duke’s Mayonnaise, the jar many South Carolina pantries keep for sandwiches, also turns up in dessert? To many out-of-staters, that sounds like a joke. But in South Carolina, some of the tastiest food traditions are the ones that seem like they shouldn’t work, yet somehow do. 1. Dousing Pork in Mustard…
