Where you’re on the Blue Ridge Parkway or following any Appalachian roads, you can get pretty hungry. The Appalachian Regional Commission, based in Charlestown, W.Va., has produced the Bon Appetit Appalachia mapguide, which includes 283 of the Appalachian Region’s most distinctive food destinations, including 21 in West Virginia, and is available as an insert in the summer 2014 issue of Food Traveler Magazine. Sites featured include local farms, farmers markets, farm-to-table restaurants, wineries, craft breweries, and other culinary destinations.
The mapguide is available as a more detailed interactive feature at www.visitappalachia.com. The online mapguide offers an expanded list of more than 650 Appalachian food destinations.
Fancy tomato meal
Love tomatoes? Look at this menu for an upcoming dinner: Gazpacho shot, pickled shrimp and farro salad, big tomato carpaccio with celery leaf and field peas; braised summer greens, sliced and seasoned heirloom tomatoes and stewed corn.
For the second course, crispy Carolina trout, quinoa cake, pecan-basil pesto, tomato jam. The main course, herb roasted chicken, charred tomato-jalepeno cornbread panzarella, lemon-Madeira tomato jus. The post amuse: Lamb ball, tomato gravy, goat feta. Dessert, sun-gold tomato marscapone chessecake, torched meringue, candied bacon.
The local flavor dinner with Winston-Salem Journal food editor on July 28 at Milner’s restaurant is $55 per person.
The season for Southern
Speaking of Southern food … at least two magazines out now are celebrating all tastes Southern. The cover of Our State features Southern Food: Six Classics That Define Us, with a photo of boiled peanuts, country ham, pimento cheese okra, honey suckle and Pepsi-Cola.
On Garden & Gun (still the most puzzling magazine title), there’s a big plate of country ham, fried eggs, tomatoes and some sort of oniony-looking relish. It’s the Southern Food Issue.

Thirst for US craft beer grows overseas
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Helping to quench a growing thirst for American craft beer overseas, some of the United States’ largest craft breweries are setting up shop in Europe, challenging the very beers that inspired them on their home turfs.
It’s the latest phenomenon in the flourishing craft beer industry, which got its start emulating the European brews that defined many of the beer styles we drink today. The move also marks a continuing departure from the status quo of mass market lagers or stouts, demonstrating a willingness of American breweries to explore — and innovate — old world beer styles from Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom.
The U.S. craft beer scene is so fresh and dynamic, Europeans are becoming as excited about it as Americans, says Mike Hinkley, co-founder of San Diego-based Green Flash Brewing Co. “Even though they’re used to all these amazing European beers, now there’s just more variety.”
U.S. craft beer exports grew six-fold during the past five years, jumping from about 46,000 barrels in 2009 to more than 282,500 barrels in 2013, worth an estimated $73 million, according to the Brewers Association, the Colorado-based trade group for the majority of the 3,000 brewing companies in the United States. Of course, it’s still a fraction of overall production; U.S. craft brewers produced a total of 15.6 million barrels last year.