The best food region in the country? Esquire says it’s Virginia

Esquire Magazine’s inaugural Food and Drink Awards dubs Virginia the “best food region” of 2014.

Instead of explaining how Esquire reached that conclusion, we’ll just quote them:

Look at Virginia on a map. How is it not an established food paradise? The oldest region in the country. One of the biggest. Loaded with wealth and power, enclosing the nation’s capital.

Vast mountain silences and endless meadows pierced by broad and powerful rivers, all emptying into the biggest, most complex bay system in the country.

And yet, the occasional ham excepted, it has never gotten its proper due. It’s time. The Old Dominion has seemingly overnight exploded into one of the country’s greatest gastro regions.

Esquire singles out several Virginia restaurants, a vineyard and a brewery for reasons the Old Dominion gets its best food region award, though there’s only one D.C. connection: Richmond-based Rappahannock River Oysters, which has a location at Union Market and whose co-founder is part-owner of Shaw oyster bar Eat the Rich.

Of Eat the Rich, Esquire gushes “… a craft-cocktail bar in D.C. that serves oysters alongside virtuosic classic cocktails — sours and flips and sazeracs — and sets the whole thing against a carefully curated vintage punk soundtrack.”

You can see Esquire’s 2014 Food and Drink awards, and zero in on Virginia’s honor, here.

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