Food Lovers' Guide to Virginia: The Best Restaurants, Markets & Local Culinary Offerings

The ultimate guide to Virginia's food scene provides the inside scoop on the best places to find, enjoy, and celebrate local culinary offerings. Written for residents and visitors alike to find producers and purveyors of tasty local specialties, as well a

Lorraine Eaton is the food writer and blogger – aka staff epicure – for The Virginian-Pilot, the state’s largest daily newspaper. She was raised in the south by New Yorkers in a home that never knew a grease-splattered stove. Her taste for Virginia food began down the street at her best friend’s house, where shredded pork doused in vinegar and hot sauce was a staple – as luck would have it, her best friend’s granddaddy owned a barbecue company. A childhood filled with crab feasts, pig pickings and oyster roasts provided the perfect foundation for her work today, exploring Virginia’s rich foodways. Her award-winning work has appeared in The Washington Post, Leite’s Culinaria and is included in Best Food Writing 2012, an anthology of America’s best stories and essays on the topic. Her cookbook, Tidewater Table, was published in 2013.

Jim Haag is a Midwest-born bacon lover who had the good sense to relocate to the pork country of Virginia. He’s at home picking blue crabs with his fingers, delicately devouring the finest Southern fare and experimenting in the kitchen. He’s an adventurous cook who had never tasted lemon chess pie until he vowed to win a ribbon with one at the State Fair of Virginia. With his eighth attempt, he brought home the blue. By day, he’s the features editor at The Virginian-Pilot, where he finds himself fortunate to be Lorraine Eaton’s editor. Together, they enjoy the culinary playground of the commonwealth, and he edited Eaton’s Tidewater Table cookbook.