WHAT: A 40-seat restaurant in Richmond’s 200-year-old Union Hill neighborhood, where German meat markets once thrived. WHY: Inspired by the local history, chef and co-owner Brittanny Anderson singles out German cuisine (which we don’t see enough in restaurants, in the South or across America) as a backdrop for her varied, deeply considered repertoire. Her kitchen is as likely to prepare grilled green garlic topped with crumbled North African merguez as it is schnitzel over choucroute garnie, and it’s all sublime. — B.A.

WHAT: A 400-square-foot red brick building in a small Shenandoah Valley town. The virtuosity of chef-owner Ian Boden makes his tiny restaurant the very definition of destination dining. WHY: Boden’s culinary career has taken him to Vermont; New York; Charlottesville, Virginia; and eventually to Staunton, where he fell hard for a mountain woman with deep local roots. In his snug cafe of a dining room, he serves a daily changing a la carte menu whose dishes teeter between Appalachia and the world beyond the region. Plates like turnip kraut with black garlic and sour cream, pork pierogi in caramelized milk sauce, and banana pudding that is both miso-salty and memory-sweet are evidence of his rich journey. — Ronni Lundy

WHAT: Indian-style street food that neatly incorporates Southern produce and techniques in a Bollywood-inspired space. WHY: Too many Indian restaurants in the South have yet to fully move beyond the tikka-masala-and-garlic-naan usuals. Owner Meherwan Irani (who opened Chai Pani in Asheville in 2009; there’s a second location in Decatur, Georgia) and his team have a fresh take on Indian food that’s approachable and exciting. Look for smart takes on flavorful chaats and other shareable plates, alongside desi staples like rotating vegetarian and non-veg thalis that emphasize traditional favorites (butter chicken, saag paneer, Parsi red curry). — Sonia Chopra

WHAT: The birthplace of the modern Southern culinary movement, sparked by founding chef Bill Neal (who died in 1990) and carried on with heart and intelligence by longtime chef Bill Smith. WHY: If you eat shrimp and grits at only one restaurant in America, make it this one. Smith, who is among the food industry’s most outspoken advocates for the rights of immigrant restaurant workers, also has a roster of annual specials that loyalists anticipate with marked calendars: His honeysuckle sorbet, for instance, only available in May and early June, literally freezes the essence of spring. — B.A.

WHAT: A paean to the Cal-Ital aesthetic (gorgeous produce and warm flavors, sunny decor, casual but ultra-informed service) that flawlessly translates to the Southern dining landscape. WHY: Husband-and-wife team Joe and Katy Kindred worked at top San Francisco restaurants before opening their own place in a converted brick storefront in Joe’s tiny hometown, 20 miles north of Charlotte. Katy composes a killer wine list. Joe makes improbable, transcendent pasta dishes, like strozzapretti in a sauce of eggplant, country ham, chiles en adobo, and vanilla bean. It’s worldly cooking, but sitting beneath the pressed-tin ceiling and breaking into billowing milk bread feels like you’ve pulled up a chair to Sunday supper. — Jennifer V. Cole

WHAT: A beachy take-out shack in (landlocked) Durham, just outside the rejuvenated downtown. Long lines stretch from the window where diners place their orders, but the wait is unquestionably worth it. WHY: Chef Ricky Moore grounds his cooking in his eastern Carolina upbringing. Seafood caught that morning arrives from the coast just after dawn; Moore sets his specials accordingly. It could be croaker, mackerel or bluefish, oysters, clams or shrimp, all either fried or griddled (your choice). Grab a seat at one of the outdoor tables; Moore’s “good” tea (sweetened with simple syrup over crushed ice) rounds out the picnic experience. – V.B.

WHAT: The 70-year-old paragon of eastern Carolina-style whole-hog barbecue. WHY: Driving through the town of Ayden, 88 miles east of Raleigh, it’s impossible to miss Skylight’s building, mounted with a likeness of the United States Capitol dome. The whole-hog barbecue tray, Skylight’s time-honored specialty, starts with a cardboard boat full of chopped, long-smoked meat, every part of the pig tossed together and seasoned with vinegar, hot sauce, salt, and pepper. A slab of dense, creamy corn pone comes stacked atop the pork, and that’s topped by another checkered boat, this one full of creamy coleslaw. Together the trio is icon, sculpture, and pure joy. — B.A.

WHAT: A modern exemplar of Gullah cuisine (the 300-year-old Lowcountry cooking tradition with deep ties to African coastal rice culture), served in a two-story brick building painted purple and sky blue. WHY: Albertha Grant started the restaurant in 1980 and died in 2007; her three daughters now run the business, filling trays with foods that typify their heritage. Sultry okra stew rich with garlic and pork is a signature. So are stewed gizzards and chicken necks with velvety lima beans, tomato-stained red rice, and fried pork chops marvelous enough to risk staining your clothes. — J.V.C.

WHAT: The polestar of chef, cookbook author, and Top Chef judge Hugh Acheson’s Georgia restaurant cadre. He opened Five & Ten, his first venture, in 2000 in a lovably scruffy space before relocating it to a genial Colonial Revival–style bungalow in 2013. WHY: Executive chef Richard Neal winningly carries on the easy-to-love aesthetic established by Acheson — a culinary style that plucks ideas from the French and Italian canons but still lands squarely in the South. A recent dazzler: buttery cornmeal porridge, a shade soupier than breakfast grits, covered with a sustaining tangle of collards, chard, kale, beets, and pickled hedgehog mushrooms. — B.A.

WHAT: A transformed Greyhound bus station showcasing both a gleaming Streamline Moderne interior and the remarkable culinary talents of Mashama Bailey. WHY: Memories of her childhood summers in South Georgia inspired Bailey to leave Manhattan in late 2014 and lead the Grey’s kitchen. Her self-described “port city Southern food” summons Savannah’s centuries-old spice trade. Serrano chiles set blaze to smoked collard greens, chermoula brightens grilled broccoli, and za’atar adds lemony zest to bison meatballs. — Adrian Miller

WHAT: A barbecue restaurant like no other, reflecting Atlanta’s love for smoked meats while also evincing the city’s Korean culinary riches. (The metro area is home to one of the country’s fastest-growing Korean-American communities.) WHY: Look no further than the spicy Korean pork sandwich, the magnum opus of chef-owners Jiyeon Lee and Cody Taylor. Gochujang chile paste imparts sweet heat to pork rib meat, which smokes over hickory and pork before being chopped, topped with kimchi coleslaw, and served on a potato bun. — B.A.

WHAT: The Sichuan jewel of Buford Highway, Atlanta’s famous corridor of restaurants serving cuisines from every corner of the globe. WHY: Ri Liu is a masterful classicist, the kind of chef who carves dragons out of carrots, transforms a hunk of pink pork belly into a glazed mahogany square, and turns the most basic white fish into something fiery and menacing (and also entirely delicious) with layers of chopped red and green chilies. Service is notoriously slow, but patience yields a wealth of intricately balanced dishes, many depth-charged with Sichuan peppercorns. — Jennifer Zyman

WHAT: Airy dining rooms filled with knotty wooden tables. Punchy, potent cocktails sipped alongside grit fritters flecked with country ham, or hummus made from red peas and benne seeds. Servers wearing pale blue cotton shirts and sincere smiles. Dishes like apple- and sorghum-glazed quail with dirty rice or rabbit braised in Dijon and cream that, in their elemental goodness, bring you back to yourself. Sounds great, right? That’s Miller Union. WHY: Chef and co-owner Steven Satterfield is a quiet virtuoso — the kind of chef to whom farmers rush to deliver their first-of-season asparagus and peaches, the kind of honest soul around which community blooms and flourishes. — B.A.

WHAT: A playful, exciting, and unexpected ascendant in Miami’s buzzing Wynwood Arts District. Alter’s cramped, stripped-down space in a former warehouse departs from the town’s unending voracity for glitz, but locals and visitors eagerly wade into the melee. WHY: The South never really embraced modernist cooking; the success of chef and co-owner Brad Kilgore’s breakout hit is the deserving exception. Whirling with global flavors, his vibrant creations (poached egg dressed in scallop espuma and truffle pearls as one example) are so exquisitely constructed that cleaning your plate feels like an act of vandalism. — Lee Klein

WHAT: An exuberant array of traditional Cuban foods and fresh juices, vended from stalls squeezed into a tropical fruit market. Portions are huge, prices are modest, and the mojo-marinated lechón asado is killer. WHY: To lunch at outdoor tables alongside the bustling crowds, with your Styrofoam container of comida, is to take a colossal bite of the Miami-Cuban cultural and culinary experience. El Palacio has multiple locations, but the original on Flagler is the one to visit. — L.K.

WHAT: The bounty of the Gulf, in its freshest and finest expression. WHY: Beachside restaurants across the South often (distressingly) serve fish flown in from elsewhere. This dock-chic treasure, though, offers the true local catch. Chef Bill Briand’s unremitting support of area fishermen and oyster farmers yields dazzlers such as roasted Bon Secour oysters buoyed by garlic-leek butter, or curried grouper collar packed with silky flesh and swathed in a cloak of tomatoes, charred peppers, and mint. —J.V.C.

WHAT: A family-run restaurant — its walls covered with paintings and photos of cultural icons like Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, and Malcolm X — established by Tyrone Bully in 1982. It’s the kind of place where you might notice cooks coming out of the kitchen to strip collards and mustard greens or peel sweet potatoes at a prep table just off the main dining room. WHY: Bully’s sets the benchmark for soul food. Its repertoire consists of definitive classics like smothered turkey necks, chitterlings, oxtails, rice and gravy, and macaroni and cheese. Don’t miss those wonderful greens, and be sure to finish your meal with blackberry cobbler. — A.M.

WHAT: A clubby, wood-lined saloon and oyster bar in a college football town that also supports some notably sophisticated dining options (many of them run by Snackbar owner John Currence). WHY: Currence and executive chef Vishwesh Bhatt launched Snackbar in 2009 as a brasserie whose dishes meandered through France, the South, and Bhatt’s native India. But in the last few years Bhatt has wandered even further in his cooking, to outstanding effect: He braises lamb shanks in fragrant Persian spices, and riffs on bibimbap using fried catfish and Mississippi brown rice grits. — B.A.

WHAT: A low-slung corner spot in Treme where you’ll get the best gumbo and fried chicken in town. WHY: This institution began life in 1941 as a bar; since then, it’s hosted civil rights leaders, famous musicians, at least two U.S. presidents, and generations of devoted New Orleanians. Leah Chase took charge of the kitchen in 1946 after marrying Edgar “Dooky” Chase, Jr. (who died in 2016). She earned a towering reputation for Creole cooking with her standard-bearing versions of beloved staples like shrimp with lima beans and her Lenten specialty, the meatless stew of greens and spices known as gumbo z’herbes. — L. Kasimu Harris

WHAT: The painted crawfish emblazoned across the front door of this sprawling, communal restaurant says it all: This pilgrimage-worthy operation is only open during prime Louisiana crawfish season, usually from January to late May. WHY: The boiled, peppery crawfish served at Hawk’s have meat that’s extraordinarily sweet, thanks to the particular way Anthony and Jennifer Arceneaux keep them in clean-water tanks. Plowing through a three- or five-pound order underlines the thrill of experiencing a regional delicacy at its physical and spiritual source (in this case lush Acadiana, in Southern Louisiana). — B.A.

WHAT: The firstborn among Donald Link’s Crescent City empire, and a restaurant that pulls off several balancing acts simultaneously to stand at the epicenter of New Orleans dining, steadfast but never dull. WHY: Chef de cuisine Rebecca Wilcomb knows how to deliver NOLA-style succor with her cooking; the dishes, like the sounds from a second-line band, are at once profound and buoyant. Her spin on carbonara using fresh-made spaghetti, guanciale, and fried-poached egg reveals an Italian lilt to the menu, but the classic, always-righteous gumbo and the coconut custard pie with buttermilk Chantilly cream bring the flavors bounding home. — B.A.

WHAT: The quintessential modern New Orleans restaurant, housed in an 1800s-era Creole cottage on a Garden District street corner. (As the name implies, a grocery once occupied the space.) WHY: Chef Justin Devillier, who runs the restaurant with Mia Freiberger-Devillier (the two are married), cooks as an homage to the past while also looking to the future; his approach puts him at the forefront of the city’s dining scene. He references French cuisine and traditional New Orleans fare for consummate dishes like sherry-spiked turtle Bolognese and paneed rabbit flanked with spaetzle and mustard greens, not to mention a terrific burger. — L.K.H.

WHAT: The airy dining room of a 36-acre resort perched on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. WHY: Chef Shelley Cooper does her mountain grandmother proud with the likes of roasted cauliflower soup with crisped country ham, oxtail-and-duck-stuffed cabbage rolls, and sorghum-syrup sweet potatoes dotted with local blue cheese. Stay the night in one of the lodge’s cozy cabins, and grab a bag of the jerky-like Benton’s bacon that Cooper coats with benne seed, sorghum, and chile to fortify a glorious hike. — R.L.

WHAT: The most splendid manifestation of the steam-table meat-and-three, a cafeteria style of Southern restaurant that particularly thrives in Nashville. WHY: Owner Kahlil Arnold has a special knack for coaxing flavor from humble ingredients. Customers shuffle through the line (which, at lunchtime, often stretches out the door) toward regional wonders: fried chicken, turnip greens, creamed corn, fresh peach pie. A meat-and-three line has been called the great equalizer to the welcome table; Arnold’s draws everyone from policemen to preachers to John Prine. — Jennifer Justus

WHAT: A renovated ranch house turned into a slick pizzeria; the kind of pie shop, though, that also serves sweetbreads doused with buffalo sauce and romaine salad amped with chicken skins and pecorino. WHY: Chef-owners Andrew Ticer and Michael Hudman combine the heritages of Italy and the American South with exceptional finesse. Pizzas topped with combinations like pork belly, egg, celery leaf, and sugo pull focus, but don’t miss inspiring brainstorms like gnocchi formed from biscuit dough. — Evan Mah

WHAT: The creator and perfector of Nashville-style hot chicken. WHY: As hot chicken’s cayenne flames continue to blaze across America, it’s imperative to savor it at the source. André Prince Jeffries, whose great-uncle Thornton Prince III perfected the dish in the 1930s, currently oversees the family business. When you reach the end of the ever-long line, make your choice: plain, mild, medium, hot, and x-hot, and (lord help you) xx-hot. Even mild and medium can quickly induce sweat and tears; any fierier is straight masochism. — B.A.