After a year of research, debate, and help from many of you in your home regions, I’ve finished a national map of 78 U.S. food regions. Each area is based on distinct culinary traditions shaped by geography, culture, and history, from Gullah and Tex-Mex to Monroe BBQ and Crucian cuisine.
I’d love your feedback: Did I miss something obvious? Should a region be renamed, removed, or split further?
A version of this map’s headed to print next year as part of a national cultural atlas, so this is the last round of tuning before it gets locked in.
Edit- just tried to reupload this in higher resolution. I went as high as Reddit would allow. Sorry if it's still fuzzy. DM me or look at links in my profile and I'll point you to a higher-res version
Posted by piri_reis_
38 Comments
I recently made a simplified version of this map, but a lot of people kept asking for (and even buying) the text-heavy museumy one, so I posted that first this time.
I’ll share the simplified, more visual version next week for those who want just the clean regional view.
A lot of these regions were refined based on feedback from Reddit, food historians, and restaurant menus. I’ve tried to keep things grounded in actual cooking traditions, not exclusively ingredients or restaurant trends (though there’s some of that in there too). That’s why some regions were merged or cut entirely.
Still open to feedback! If you see something from your region that feels mislabeled or missing especially niche city dishes or overlooked Indigenous, immigrant, or regional foodways I’m still taking input on this. Thanks to everyone who contributed sources, recipes, or their own on the ground experience in the past!!!
Would have taken a decade or two to travel to each of these regions and map it myself.
Amazing map, not to be ungrateful but the work already done but I’d love to see a list of quintessential restaurants that goes with these cuisines.
Do you have a way for me to download this in high quality? I want a way to read it without having to swipe through the photos. I tried saving the full picture but the text was too blurry to read in that quality.
It’s a super fascinating map. I want to explore it!
A+ stuff! Studied geology back in college, and maps like this just hit different
We should force all Americans to state their regional cuisines when they apply for visas if they want to travel to the EU.
I’d say you nailed it for Minnesota.
The only problem is that there’s a ton of overlap. All three of those cuisines are standard things you’d find in a dinner lineup if you’re cooking like grandma does.
Incredible work!!! Map junkies from around the world are going appreciate this…
Weird one, but there are probably pockets of non-European cuisine in smaller cities with an unusually high diaspora of one group. For example, Peoria, IL has a fairly large and districtive Lebanese food culture.
For Monterrey Bay, I would honestly throw in tacos in some capacity. Fish tacos, asada, etc. It is super vague but the major towns there (Santa Cruz, Monterrey, Salinas, etc.) have major Hispanic populations which have contributed majorly to the local cuisine.
Great map! What are the two blue counties in very extreme Southern Illinois? They’re not labeled.
These kinds of maps are usually garbage but this one looks really good (for the areas I’m familiar with). Great work!
People will talk shit about US food culture, but I’ll argue to the death that Acadian cuisine will beat many countries alone.
French cuisine is often seen as the premier cuisine in the world, and Acadian/Cajun is an evolved version that is further influenced by both Native American and African cultures as well as local ingredient differences, resulting in a more soulful, spicier version of rural French culinary culture.
I live in one of those islands. When I moved here I was astounded at how different food stuff was compared to where I moved from. Despite being only 4 hours away.
I remember seeing a version of this months ago and I nerded out over it then, and continue to do so now after all the refinements. Congrats on the publishing deal!
This is phenomenal! Now I’m really hungry. 🤣
Congrats man! Have u published this already? It is really a full-time project. As a European I find this incredibly useful when I’ll visit US.
OP, I do know for a fact Bay County in MI should be 32, and not 50. The area is heavily Polish, and this may spill to surrounding countries
Is the full image available for download anywhere?
Must have been a lot of work. For a not-so-popular topic for maps I can totally feel OP’s passion and dedication to it.
>A version of this map’s headed to print next year as part of a national cultural atlas, so this is the last round of tuning before it gets locked in.
Do you have a title or ISBN yet? I’d love to keep an eye out for it.
Stuff like this is why I love Reddit so much, Great work man!
Vegas still has buffets, but after Covid, a lot of casinos got rid of them. I’d say, even more celebrity restaurants opened up.
I’d love to buy this as a poster
Unexpectedly accurate. Username checks out
I’d like to take this moment to once again remind you all how much I hate reddit’s forced image viewer.
Love that you mentioned Northern Alabama cuisine with white sauce! Unknown to many but man is it good on some chicken. In my college history course on Alabama History we had a mini lesson all about white sauce, its origin, and how it was culturally significant during the period of conception.
Region 31 is fascinating to me, I had no idea that subculture existed. Thanks for your work on this, it’s fascinating!
Great work
Nothing to add but good fucking work, you should feel proud.
You could add northern neck ginger ale to region 6.
Glad to see “New Mexican” recognized as a distinct cuisine. If anyone is wondering, *christmas-style* means green and red chile sauces used in/on the same dish, as opposed to one or the other, being chosen.
Pretty accurate, grew up in North Jersey (26) and been living in Philly area (70) for 25 years with lots of knowledge of NYC area (65) and Jersey Shore (6) and this is accurate AF
This is really cool to read through, my only critique is the Soul Food category is far more common than this map shows, soul food is less regional and more cultural IME. You can pretty much guarantee that if there are black people living somewhere, soul food is being cooked but it wouldn’t necessarily be reflected in restaurant menus because people are eating it in their homes. For example, I grew up on soul food in Kansas, my hometown didn’t have any soul food restaurants but my family cooked it so it was a huge part of my diet growing up.
I now live in Chicago and there’s a lot of soul food restaurants on the South and West sides of the city, a product of the Great Migration. Black Chicagoans debate the best fried chicken spots heavily (Harold’s vs Uncle Remus vs Sharks) and most black people in the Chicagoland area eat soul food. Not sure this can even be quantified in map form but it *does* make me wonder what a Chicagoland area food map would look like. Thanks for sparking this conversation!
this is the shit that is wanna see!
One minor punctuation error on number 53: it currently reads “Pinot noir, Cabernet, Sauvignon goat cheese” it should be “Pinot noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, goat cheese”. Sauvignon goat cheese sounds awesome though.
I’ve lived in many areas of the US (mostly west coast and Midwest) and this is shockingly accurate. Amazing work OP, I’ll definitely be getting a print.
Amazing! Thank you for this. I’ve lived in 5 of the areas listed across the country and found it all to be accurate on the map. My dad was a foodie who loved traveling the US. He passed away last year and looking at this map really made me have one of those “I wish I could show him this” moments.