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Jane Grossman Stern and Michael Stern (both born 1946) are American writers who specialize in books about travel, food, and popular culture. They are best known for their Roadfood books, website, and magazine columns, in which they find road food restaurants serving classic American regional specialties and review them.
Dec 2, 2015 · Jane Stern is one half of the duo behind Roadfood, a book series and website that celebrates local American foodways. She and her ex-husband Michael have been traveling and eating across the country for nearly four decades, documenting and sharing their discoveries.
- Sarah Baird
Jane Stern is a food writer and co-author of Roadfood and 500 Things to Eat Before It's Too Late. She and her husband Michael Stern run Roadfood.com, a website that reviews and recommends restaurants across America.
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Lobster Pie at The Maine Diner
Wells, ME The menu is Maine to the max at the Maine Diner. First, spoon into the world's most buttery seafood chowder. Then dig into the lobster pie, a palate-boggling single-serving casserole that the owner's grandma used to make. It contains plump pieces of lobster—soft claw and chewy tail meat—drenched in butter, topped with a mixture of cracker crumbs and tomalley: sheer lobster indulgence. Conclude your Downeast feast with a plate of the diner's blueberry pie or warm Indian pudding.
Fried Clams at Clam Box
Ipswich, MA The specialty at Clam Box is local, hand-raked clams—from beds in the Essex River, on the North Shore of Massachusetts—breaded in cornmeal and fried until golden. The nuggets are shatteringly crisp, each one big enough to form a super-savory mouthful. A full plate includes an abundance of the native bivalves, along with airy onion rings, French fries, and bright, refreshing coleslaw.
Maple Hurricane Sauce at Polly's Pancake Parlor
Sugar Hill, NH Maple Hurricane Sauce dates back to the hurricane of 1938, when "Sugar Bill" Dexter (Polly's husband) found himself with an apple windfall he didn't want to waste. He boiled chunked apples in maple syrup until the syrup thickened and the fruit turned exceptionally tender. The concoction's intense apple-maple flavor is breathtaking—an ideal topping for pancakes, waffles, French toast, or pure vanilla ice cream.
Aunt Darla's Pimento Cheese at Red Truck Rural Bakery
Marshall, VA As much as we love the cakes and pies at this four-star rural bakery (the Double Chocolate Moonshine Cake is a standout), and as good as the granola is (the best anywhere), what wins our palates is Aunt Darla's pimento cheese. "My aunt Darla is from the Smoky Mountains," proprietor/baker Brian Noyes told us, "so her recipe really is smoky." Yes: paprika-smoky, sultry, and sharp, as well as vividly peppery. What could be better spread across a slice of Red Truck's sunflower seed-d...
Country Ham at Fulks Run Grocery
Fulks Run, VA Fulks Run Grocery isn't really a restaurant at all, but if you head to the small wood-floored market on a Friday, you're in for the special treat that is ham sandwich day. The back table, which serves as the grocery's office for mail-order sales of the hams they cure out back , is cleared off so customers can sit down and eat. The sandwich couldn't be simpler: little more than slices of skillet-fried country ham held between two halves of a boring burger bun. Never mind the bun,...
Hot Chicken at Prince's
Nashville, TN Nashville-style hot chicken has gotten a great deal of attention in the past several years, and there are a handful of restaurants in the city—not to mention around the country—that now specialize in an ultra-hot version. Prince's is the daddy of 'em all, the standard by which all hot chicken should be measured. Unlike Buffalo wings bathed in sticky hot sauce, Prince's quarters and halves are relatively sauceless and ferociously seasoned, down to the bone. The crust, which strip...
Shrimp and Grits at Juniper
Ridge Spring, SC At their worst, grits can be watery, white plate-filler, but South Carolina cooks take them seriously, using stone-ground cornmeal, butter, and milk or cream to create a slow-cooked warm cereal reminiscent of good polenta. At the country-casual but culinarily sophisticated storefront eatery called Juniper, the grits come from Adluh Flour Mills, a century-old establishment in nearby Columbia, and they're topped with a school of peppered shrimp for a complete meal.
BBQ Sandwich With Cracklings at Perry's Pig
Augusta, GA There is no shortage of excellent barbecue in and around Augusta, Georgia, but Perry's Pig makes a barbecue-stacked sandwich that's a cut above all others. It is a motley pile of hacked-up pork, dressed with an electrifying sweet-hot sauce and, if you request it—which you must!—a generous heap of crumbled cracklings. The cracklings are extraordinarily crunchy compared to the soft meat they adorn, and their rich flavor, which Roadfood.com contributor Chickenplucker described as "so...
Baked Oysters at Lynn's Quality Oysters
Eastpoint, FL As a supplier of Apalachicola's best oysters to restaurants throughout the Panhandle, Lynn's serves bivalves at their finest. Of course, you can have them shucked to order—raw on the half shell, they're cool and utterly fresh, a perfect balance of salty and sweet. But we'd urge you to try them baked: Cooked until just warm, they're served beneath a film of melted cheese and copious bits of softened garlic.
Cherry Pie at The Cherry Hut
Beulah, MI At the Cherry Hut, a (nearly) century-old farm stand and eatery in the heart of Michigan cherry country, you'll find virtually every cherry-based product imaginable. During the height of the season, the kitchen churns out 500 pies a day, using local cherries and just enough sugar to balance, but not overwhelm, the fruit's beguiling tartness. Piled into a flaky lard crust, each serving is one-quarter of a full-size pie—and yes, you'll eat every last bite, especially if you go all in...
Crunchies at Rip's Tavern
Ladd, IL Of the many outstanding fried-chicken joints in the Illinois River Valley, Rip's is our favorite, serving quarters—light or dark—encased in a thick, exceptionally crisp crust. While waiting for the chicken to fry, diners get a cardboard tray of "crunchies," a Rip's exclusive. These are hot morsels of batter retrieved from the cooking oil with a broad, long-handled screen, similar to Southern cracklings or, more to the point, Jewish gribenes, glistening with silky fried chicken fat. W...
Tenderloin at Nick's Kitchen
Huntington, IN Iowans won't be happy that we chose a place in Indiana as our favorite source for breaded pork tenderloin sandwiches—a beloved specialty throughout a wide swath of the heartland, from Kokomo to Omaha. Yes, there are great ones in Iowa, but our go-to is at Nick's Kitchen, where they were arguably invented about a century ago. The pork is moist and cream-sweet; its breading is brittle-crisp; the formation of mustard, pickle, lettuce, and tomato is picture-perfect. Here you have t...
BBQ Brisket at Louie Mueller
Taylor, TX In Texas, beef rules, and as satisfying as a ribeye steak may be, brisket can be even more lavish. It basks in the smoke of smoldering live-oak wood long enough to become as tender as warm butter. The exterior, blackened by all its time in the pit, has some crunch and an even more concentrated flavor; the interior fibers literally melt on your tongue. Many restaurants in and around the Hill Country do a fine job of it, but none better than the revered Louie Mueller, a temple of bar...
Green Chile Cheeseburger at Santa Fe Bite
Santa Fe, NM No one knows what genius first configured the green chile cheeseburger, a hamburger topped with chopped hot green chilies and cheese, but the irresistible combo has become a New Mexico signature dish. It finds its apotheosis at Santa Fe Bite, where 10 ounces of freshly ground chuck and sirloin are cooked to your specs, smothered with vibrant green Mesilla Valley chilies and melted cheese, and piled into a fluffy-crumbed, house-baked bun. It may not adhere to food-pyramid proporti...
Chicken-Fried Steak at Clanton's
Vinita, OK A slab of beef that's breaded and fried like chicken is too often a diner disaster, but Clanton's Cafe, one of the original diners along old Route 66, turns out a beautiful chicken-fried steak—tender cube steak enveloped in a thin, crisp crust, topped with a peppery cream gravy. Dennis Patrick, who runs the restaurant with his wife, Melissa (great-granddaughter of original chef Sweet Tator Clanton), told us that the secret behind his perfect beef-to-crust ratio is a dip in an egg-b...
Dungeness Crab at Freshy's Seafood Market
Mercer Island, WA Dungeness crab can be doctored up in all sorts of wonderful ways, but when it's absolutely fresh, it's best unadulterated. At Freshy's, a former gas station turned seafood market and café, a Dungeness crab cocktail is nothing more than a boatload of big, pearly-white hunks of sweet, tender meat. Of course, cocktail sauce and tartar sauce are available, as is aioli, but this crab, redolent of clear ocean waters, needs absolutely nothing to improve it. On the other hand, it wo...
Latte at Moore Coffee
Seattle, WA Yes, decorative latte art is now common to coffeehouses pretty much everywhere, but it really is an advanced craft in Seattle, and a fine art at Moore Coffee, where baristas effortlessly transform the surface of your drink into an amazing likeness of a feline or canine face, a heart, a tulip, a bunny, or a butterfly. Beyond their beauty, Moore's caffeinated beverages are potable masterworks, especially such exotica as the horchatalatte (using sweetened rice milk), Mexican mocha (w...
Halibut and Chips at South Beach Fish Market
South Beach, OR At seafood joints all along the Oregon coast, "fish and chips" means more than one thing. Fry-kettle chefs offer salmon, tuna, oysters, calamari, and—best of all—snow-white halibut. The roadside eat-in-the-rough spot known as the South Beach Fish Market does it best, the creamy flesh of the halibut retaining all its moisture inside a golden tempura coat faintly laced with garlic. Good as the accompanying French fries are, onion rings are the must-eat side dish, each basket con...
- Jane And Michael Stern
Jane and Michael Stern are James Beard Award-winning authors of Roadfood books, website, and magazine columns. They share their expertise on American regional cuisine, food and travel, and iconic dishes in Serious Eats.
Roadfood is a culinary project by Jane and Michael Stern, who have been writing about America's best local eateries for over 40 years. Learn about their history, books, awards, and how to find their recommendations on the road.
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JANE STERN—neé Grossman—and Michael Stern were born, respectively, in New York City and Winnetka, Illinois. They met and married while doing graduate work at Yale, having had their first date at Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana; soon after, they published the first edition of their landmark American travel guide, Roadfood .
