The Outer Banks, the Ozarks, Route 66… if you’ve heard of them, your knowledge may have passed through the lens of Hollywood. However, unlike the TV shows, the American South is vast and diverse, united by a language yet distanced by geography. To truly know the states, you have to be there.
For one thing, they’re more sophisticated than some films may have you believe. Around the Missouri plateaus, esteemed chefs are melding Appalachian and indigenous flavours for discerning diners from St Louis to Springfield. And winemakers are plumbing the vineyards for Europeangrade Chardonels to serve alongside. Meanwhile, over the river in Kentucky, bourbon is being elevated by speakeasies and small-batch craft distilleries: they call it ‘urban bourbon’.
Arkansas is often overlooked in the race to discover the South. Yet just west of Little Rock, you can sink into an ancient thermal spring, then virtually disappear into the wild hickory forests and mountain trails, peeking over the clouds for a reminder of just how inconceivably vast and undeveloped the US can be.
Next door but a world away is Mississippi, a haven for Southern blues and a countrymusic stalwart to rival Tennessee. You can’t drive 10 minutes on Highway 61 — the so-called Blues Highway — without a turnoff for a legendary juke joint. In Tennessee, meanwhile, the locals have turned their attention to the abundance of wild ingredients and put them to work in time-honoured recipes tweaked for new generations. Leave Nashville for the Great Smoky Mountains and sample Appalachian cooking in a classic red barn plucked from a Grant Wood painting.
Travellers have flocked to the coastal South for generations, but few can say they’ve explored the dunes of the wispy-thin barrier islands, or paddled over the briny bay to slurp North Carolina oysters straight from the sea bed. Fewer still have embarked on a seafood safari in the backwaters of Alabama.
