2016: A taste of food, dining coverage

Over the next few weeks, the AJC revisits the stories that our subscribers valued the most this year. We’ve put them all in one place for you to explore and share with your friends and family. In addition we’ve pulled together other specials like our features on holiday entertaining, photos of the year, and holiday travel just to name a few. This week’s focus: food. Atlanta is a food town through and through. Whether you’re in the mood for ramen or ribeye, there are options aplenty and those choices widened even further in 2016.

This year, the AJC’s dining team ate a lot of eggs to bring you the Best of Brunch, the theme for our popular Spring Dining Guide. We also scoured the burgeoning dining scene in Gwinnett to launch our first online-only, countyspecific dining guide this summer.

Week after week, we shared our latest favorite dish from an Atlanta restaurant – that is, when we weren’t testing recipes for biscuits, picnics and no-cook dinners, all popular among our home cook readers.

In 2016, you especially enjoyed getting to know the faces behind the food, like our widely read profile of Paul Lubertazzi, owner of Paul’s Pot Pies in Marietta. You also showed us that, like the AJC’s food and dining writers, you too reminisce about Southern food and drink favorites, be it Hummingbird cake or Budwine.

The influx of reader letters came in the form of laughs — like when we gave you the inside story on this dining editor’s failed health inspection of her kitchen and her failed attempts to assimilate to certain Southern foods — but also poignant disagreements of opinion, such as when dining out with children.

What we all cheered together was Atlanta’s own Staplehouse being named best new restaurant in the nation.

BECKYSTEINPHOTOGRAPHY.COM Paul Lubertazzi is owner and chef at Paul’s Pot Pies, located on the square in Marietta.