Here's How To Plan An Epic Diners, Drive-Ins And Dives Road Trip
Better touch up your platinum spikes and send that Chevy Camaro in for an oil change, because this summer, Guy Fieri fans everywhere can embark on the pilgrimage of a lifetime: Touring all of the greasy spoons featured on Diners, Drive-Ins And Dives. Or at least a decent chunk of them.
There are a few sites devoted to listing every place featured on the Food Network show, often organizing them by state or cuisine, but if you want to hit up the open road Fieddddi-style, there are two sites that do it best.
If You Want A One-Tank Trip, Use This Tool:
Head to Flavortown USA - the website, not the mythical everyplace Fieri coined on his show. FlavortownUSA.com features a Google Map dotted with every Triple-D stop, and you can punch in your address (or a city you're visiting) to find the spots closest to it. Here's what Los Angeles looks like, for example:
Each red marker on the map links to a page showing the full address, website, and contact info for the restaurant in question, so you can make reservations or call to see if the Cajun Smoked Pork Pizza or Jucy Lucy featured on the show is still on the menu. You know, if you're a DDD purist.
Here's the map to use.
If You Want To Road Trip Across America, Try This:
Summer's coming, which means it's time to go Bananaramas and plan your next vacation. Whether you already have a trip planned (say, heading to your friend's rustic-chic destination wedding in Kentucky), or you just need to get the heck outta dodge, you've got to check out TV Food Maps' tool.
Pick your starting and ending location, and set how many miles you're willing to veer off course, and the site will map out a route for you to go. TV Food Maps doesn't limit itself to Triple-D; it also pulls results for restaurants featured in Best Thing I Ever Ate, Food Paradise, Man Vs. Food, No Reservations, Food Wars, Delicious Destinations and more. So, on the downside, you'll have to do a little sifting if you want to focus on one show in particular, rather than simply the best foods ever to grace the small screen.
Or Take Our Ultimate Trip:
After extensively researching both tools (read: spending far longer than we'd care to admit dawdling online), we came up with a game plan to hit up as many Diners, Drive-Ins, And Dives locations as possible.
Should you have, say, two weeks, infinite gas money, and the kind of insatiable hunger that'd make your mom worry you've got a tapeworm, this is the trip - nay, pilgrimage - to go on.
Start in New York.
Why? You can hit up 20 restaurants in the immediate area, working your way through all five boroughs, then into New Jersey.
Hug The East Coast All The Way To Miami.
Cut through Maryland, stop in DC, then through Virginia. There isn't much in the Carolinas - at least not without making a significant detour - but you'll need a breather before hitting up Jacksonville and onto Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Pull out the sweatpants, if you haven't already.
You might want to spend a few days on the beach; there are 25 spots to hit up, if you include the three in Key Largo (Pilot House Marina, DiGiorgio's Cafe Largo, and The Fish House).
Then Go From Miami To LA.
Cut through Orlando as you cross through Florida (get a corned beef sandwich at The Pastrami Project! Polish it off with a ham, egg and pimiento cheese biscuit at Se7en Bites!), making your way through Pensacola and New Orleans.
Texas will feature two key stops - Houston and San Antonio - for Tex Mex, steaks, BBQ and what's been deemed the "world's best buttermilk pancakes" (at Magnolia Pancake Haus).
From there, plan to stop at Tucson, then Phoenix, in Arizona, before making your way to California. Fieri lives in the Golden State, so there's no shortage of stops there. (In fact, there are more places featured there than anywhere else: 156 spots total!)
While there, you can sample everything from Italian deli sandwiches to vegan Ethiopian dishes. Just make sure you don't miss the chile relleno and homemade tamales at Mom's Tamales, as well as the teriyaki burger at Rutts Hawaiian Cafe and Catering.
By this point, you may not want to spend another day in the car - or hit up a diner for at least, oh, one and a half days - so you'll probably want to hit up LAX and fly home. Or you could reverse the trip and try everything on those menus you didn't get to. And pray you still fit into your stretchy pants afterward.
Follow Delish on Instagram.
Better touch up your platinum spikes and send that Chevy Camaro in for an oil change, because this summer, Guy Fieri fans everywhere can embark on the pilgrimage of a lifetime: Touring all of the greasy spoons featured on Diners, Drive-Ins And Dives. Or at least a decent chunk of them.
There are a few sites devoted to listing every place featured on the Food Network show, often organizing them by state or cuisine, but if you want to hit up the open road Fieddddi-style, there are two sites that do it best.
If You Want A One-Tank Trip, Use This Tool:
Head to Flavortown USA - the website, not the mythical everyplace Fieri coined on his show. FlavortownUSA.com features a Google Map dotted with every Triple-D stop, and you can punch in your address (or a city you're visiting) to find the spots closest to it. Here's what Los Angeles looks like, for example:
Each red marker on the map links to a page showing the full address, website, and contact info for the restaurant in question, so you can make reservations or call to see if the Cajun Smoked Pork Pizza or Jucy Lucy featured on the show is still on the menu. You know, if you're a DDD purist.
Here's the map to use.
If You Want To Road Trip Across America, Try This:
Summer's coming, which means it's time to go Bananaramas and plan your next vacation. Whether you already have a trip planned (say, heading to your friend's rustic-chic destination wedding in Kentucky), or you just need to get the heck outta dodge, you've got to check out TV Food Maps' tool.
Pick your starting and ending location, and set how many miles you're willing to veer off course, and the site will map out a route for you to go. TV Food Maps doesn't limit itself to Triple-D; it also pulls results for restaurants featured in Best Thing I Ever Ate, Food Paradise, Man Vs. Food, No Reservations, Food Wars, Delicious Destinations and more. So, on the downside, you'll have to do a little sifting if you want to focus on one show in particular, rather than simply the best foods ever to grace the small screen.
Or Take Our Ultimate Trip:
After extensively researching both tools (read: spending far longer than we'd care to admit dawdling online), we came up with a game plan to hit up as many Diners, Drive-Ins, And Dives locations as possible.
Should you have, say, two weeks, infinite gas money, and the kind of insatiable hunger that'd make your mom worry you've got a tapeworm, this is the trip - nay, pilgrimage - to go on.
Start in New York.
Why? You can hit up 20 restaurants in the immediate area, working your way through all five boroughs, then into New Jersey.
Hug The East Coast All The Way To Miami.
Cut through Maryland, stop in DC, then through Virginia. There isn't much in the Carolinas - at least not without making a significant detour - but you'll need a breather before hitting up Jacksonville and onto Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Pull out the sweatpants, if you haven't already.
You might want to spend a few days on the beach; there are 25 spots to hit up, if you include the three in Key Largo (Pilot House Marina, DiGiorgio's Cafe Largo, and The Fish House).
Then Go From Miami To LA.
Cut through Orlando as you cross through Florida (get a corned beef sandwich at The Pastrami Project! Polish it off with a ham, egg and pimiento cheese biscuit at Se7en Bites!), making your way through Pensacola and New Orleans.
Texas will feature two key stops - Houston and San Antonio - for Tex Mex, steaks, BBQ and what's been deemed the "world's best buttermilk pancakes" (at Magnolia Pancake Haus).
From there, plan to stop at Tucson, then Phoenix, in Arizona, before making your way to California. Fieri lives in the Golden State, so there's no shortage of stops there. (In fact, there are more places featured there than anywhere else: 156 spots total!)
While there, you can sample everything from Italian deli sandwiches to vegan Ethiopian dishes. Just make sure you don't miss the chile relleno and homemade tamales at Mom's Tamales, as well as the teriyaki burger at Rutts Hawaiian Cafe and Catering.
By this point, you may not want to spend another day in the car - or hit up a diner for at least, oh, one and a half days - so you'll probably want to hit up LAX and fly home. Or you could reverse the trip and try everything on those menus you didn't get to. And pray you still fit into your stretchy pants afterward.
Follow Delish on Instagram.
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