Whether you seek recipes with rich local history handed down from the Gullah community or crave fresh seafood, you can find it in Myrtle Beach. A revolution in cooking over the last inspired many professional chefs to create “Carolina Coastal Cuisine,” putting their modern spin on traditional Lowcountry dishes. Carolina Coastal derives from the wide array of regionally fished and grown foods. Chefs use local ingredients like Carolina rice, stone-ground grits, shrimp, blue crab, grouper, country ham, peaches and more in traditional recipes from the Gullah community.

My memories of Nana, my paternal grandmother, are vivid. She taught me the proper way to place a single slice of lox on top of a bagel smeared with cream cheese. The trick was to spread the lox out so thinly with the back of a fork that you could see the hole of the bagel and the white of the cheese through it. Lox was a true luxury food in the 1950s and not to be eaten lightly. Nana’s emphasis on frugality was, I now understand, the psychological residue of her experience of multiple life crises – immigration from Poland to San Francisco in the early 20th century, the 1906 earthquake, World War I, the Spanish flu, the Great Depression, and World War II.

In Bali, local communities usually have a ritual or a celebration that community members have to attend. Unfortunately, this can create conflict when a tribe member must choose between attending a ceremony or going to work, but the community ties are so strong they’d rather risk being fired for skipping work than face being left out of their community.

A classically trained chef from the Washington D.C. area, who also lived and cooked in France and once worked at the renowned L’Auberge Chez Francois,  Segal’s philosophy centers around the easy access, culinary joy – and above all – diverse and delicious tastes of food. In her cookbook (also named Once Upon a Chef), published in April 2018 to much acclaim, foodies can discover 100 easy-to-follow, family-friendly recipes that won’t break the bank. 

The book American Foodie does not accept the fact that people are foodies without psychoanalyzing its every facet. It delves into detail about America’s current food obsession and whether food can compare with fine art. Some people think food is to millennials what music was to the baby boomers of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Millennials are now more concerned with health and mistrusting of big brand foods and government. I think the food revolution represents our larger intention of questioning everything. 

When you live in a city that freaks out over a rainbow bagel, and then freaks out when it can no longer get a rainbow bagel, you tend to know a thing or two about our round, doughy friends. Though not as ubiquitous as I thought they would be in New York City, bagels still play a major part in New York living. The hangover bagel. The brunch with parents bagel. The desperate dinner bagel. And the bagels keep on spinning.

But tacos are one ferocious reason for debate. Anyone who’s lived in California at any point usually detests all of New York’s taco options. Others who rely on tacos for cheap and hearty sustenance during or after a night of drinking have their own special spots that serve “the best” breakfast taco to cure their pain. The problem is, most breakfast tacos are amazing after a night of picklebacks and bad decisions. How can we trust these folks to know what good tacos are?

Beth Kaiserman is a food writer and service industry professional in Brooklyn. She is originally from Pittsburgh, Pa. She is a food critic at Highbrow Magazine, where she has written extensively about current trends in the food scene and various "foodie" destinations. Kaiserman explains that she became a writer because " I love exploring new ideas and telling people's stories. Almost everyone I interview has something interesting to say that broadens my knowledge."

Lindsay O’Donnell works in marketing for Whole Foods and writes a vegan food blog. She grew up in Vancouver and lives there now. “Everyone’s a total health nut. It’s really multicultural. There’s a lot of Asian fusion everywhere and seafood and poutine and things like that. Vancouver is definitely like a yoga hippie city.” Instead of showing off their Chanel or Nike labels, O’Donnell said people brand themselves with coconut water, a yoga mat, and knowledge of the latest food cleanse.

While Korean tacos are all the rage, the wildly popular Austin food truck has moved onto something even better – fries, on steroids. The Tex-Mex Korean fusion dish became so popular, it instantly put Chi’Lantro on the competitive food truck map, right up against other mega mobile eateries across the U.S. Now running five trucks in Austin and Houston, owner Jae Kim may come off as some kind of French Fries master.