Aside from high gas prices, nothing puts a crimp in summer road trips like a pile of lukewarm fries and greasy wads of chemically enhanced chicken.
Fortunately, The Food Section has a fix for that.
We’re enormously excited to debut our eating guide to Interstate 40 exits in North Carolina. A follow-up to our popular Interstate 95 exit-by-exit independent restaurant guide, I-40 Exit Strategy was produced in partnership with Greenville, South Carolina’s Good Printed Things. That means that unlike its digital predecessor, our latest project is a physical map which you can stash in your glove compartment before setting off for the beach or mountains this summer.
Readers who’ve been with The Food Section for a few years may recall we picked up a James Beard award for our I-95 exit coverage, but that’s not what we like best about ferreting out memorable culinary experiences hard by the highway. Instead, we consider this type of food journalism important because it demonstrates that hyperlocal traditions and idiosyncratic entrepreneurs still flourish in a world ruled by algorithms, even if every interstate exit looks superficially the same.
When we say we strive to make our subscribers’ meals more meaningful, we’re not kidding.
As such, our I-40 exit listings are free for paying subscribers to read online. We’ll roll them out at a pace of five entries each day this week, but they’ll forever remain a part of the archive that’s a perk of paid subscriptions.
That sounds to me like reason to celebrate—specifically, at Rosebud Cocktail Lounge in downtown Raleigh next Wednesday, June 10. Later this week, we’ll tell you more about launch party plans, along with sharing the map’s backstory and introducing you to the publisher and illustrator who were essential to its creation.
In the meantime, paid subscribers can check out the first set of I-40 Exit Strategy listings here. As for non-paying readers, you’ve got two choices: You can subscribe to The Food Section for instant access to the map, or you can purchase the printed version.
Either way, I suspect it’s going to be a fantastic summer (aside from high gas prices.)
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