When you’re a food lover, the best thing about traveling to a new city is exploring its cuisine. I fell in love with the underrated cuisine of Amsterdam our first visit there, and since, it’s become one of my favorite food cities thanks to its diversity and ingenuity. We asked five local chefs where they like to travel and eat, and which restaurants they think define those cities. —Kristen Wile

Chef Jamie Barnes, What The Fries food truck
Favorite food town: Myrtle Beach, S.C.
The restaurant that defines it: The Original Benjamin’s Calabash Restaurant, which Barnes calls “touristy, inexpensive, seafood, and excessive.”

Chef Chris Coleman, The Goodyear House
Favorite food town: Charleston, S.C.
The restaurant that defines it: “I think Obstinate Daughter comes close,” Coleman says. “It’s married local seafood and produce with European technique and influence to create a menu that is warm, inviting, and comfortable.”

Pastry chef Jossie Lukacik, Sweet Spot Studio
Favorite food town: Rockville, Md., thanks to the quality and variety of international cuisines. “Rockville is very much a melting pot,” she says.
The restaurant that defines it: China Bistro, which serves heaping plates of dumplings.

Chef Drew Dodd, N.C. Red
Favorite food town: Nashville, Tenn., “mostly for sentimental reasons.”
The restaurant that defines it: Arnold’s Country Kitchen. “It’s a microcosm for Nashville. The clientele and restaurant itself have changed drastically, but it still has the soul that made it what it was.”

Chef Blake Hartwick, Bonterra
Favorite food town: Charleston, S.C.
The restaurant that defines it: McCrady’s. “It’s a melting pot of what I grew up eating and love eating,” Hartwick says.

 

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