Is regional US food alive and well?

The dish is brought to the table perched on a custom-designed stainless steel egg holder. Our server left us with instructions to dig to the bottom to get all the layers of the tiny treat.

Innovation is great, but our travels proved that some of the best regional fare is also the most traditional: the barbecue of Texas, the burgers of California, chile dishes of the Southwest, seafood of the South and East. And many of the places we discovered en route were third-, fourth-, and fifth-generation restaurants.

Back at Bea’s, in Chattanooga, we ate in a dining room that hasn’t changed much since it opened in 1952. Red-andwhite mosaic floors and large family-style Formica tables fill the room. Each table is capped with a Lazy Susan piled high with plates of all-you-caneat Southern specialties such as the aforementioned fried chicken, pulled pork, biscuits, corn bread, sweet potatoes, collard greens, beans, potato salad and more. Dessert is always cobbler; the only thing that changes is the fruit, depending on the season.

“Why mess with tradition?” asks Crystal, our waitress. “We got a good thing going here. I mean, just you taste this crunchy fried chicken. This is American food at its best.”

We drove through the rolling green of Virginia and stopped for the night in Richmond. Thomas Jefferson grew up nearby, and his presence is felt all over the city. Exploring Richmond in search of local cuisine, I kept asking myself the question posed by Jefferson’s character in the musical Hamilton: “So, what’d I miss?”

The next morning we discovered Perly’s, a hip, Jewish deli with a slight Southern twist. Sunday mornings mean long lines waiting for a taste of Perly’s blintzes, filled with preserved orange and blueberry sauce, and dishes such as the Benny Goodman, two poached eggs piled onto homemade latkes topped with a lighterthan-average hollandaise and house-smoked salmon and salmon roe. Perly’s makes its own pastrami and breads, and reimagines Jewish deli food for this new century.

Then it was on to Maryland, where we got stuck in bumperto-bumper Beltway traffic (on a Saturday afternoon!), and then cruised north to Maine. The first thing we did when we crossed the border into our home state? Drove straight to Bob’s Clam Hut in Kittery, for a bowl of briny clam chowder and an overstuffed lobster roll.

As happy as we were to find such good food all over the country, there really is nothing like the sweet taste of home.