Meet The Team / Mark Ellwood

Few cities can claim foodie credentials of Boston's caliber – after all, its go-to nickname is a nod to one of its staple foodstuffs: Beantown. And those no-nonsense baked beans are a tip off to the matter-of-fact approach to menus that most locals take. "It comes from the whole Yankee Puritan side, taking pleasure in making do, not wasting, using up – it has permeated a lot of our food traditions here," explains Georgia Orcutt, who works for Oldways a Boston-based organization that promotes traditional, non-processed food. She cites scrod as a key example: on fish menus, it will be listed alongside salmon or cod. But scrod is simply "whatever fish anyone can get their hands on as catch of the day" – no Bostonian fisherman would waste any fish once caught. "It's a combination of needing to be frugal for survival, for the Pilgrims, and that Puritan work ethic," agrees food writer Susan Nye, "That thriftiness has existed in Boston for centuries – my dad has a funny story about how his friends would come back from Christmas to university with bags filled with their grandmothers' leftovers." That Yankee frugality continues to ricochet round the restaurants here – and it's never been more timely, as Orcutt notes. "The Boston way of cooking – how can you use up something rather than waste it? It's coming back big time in this economy."

Lactose intolerants should skip Milwaukee: this is a city where milk and milky treats dominate local palates and menus. And with good reason, according to Theresa Nemetz of Milwaukee Food Tours. "Originally, the farms in Wisconsin focused on wheat production – the German immigrants had originally come to grow that," she explains, "But then there was a famine because insects ruined that crop, and they turned to dairy because it was a much safer product. " The rich, fertile land was a boon for cattle-rearing, too, adds Wisconsinfoodie.com's Arthur Ircink. "The glaciers had come through here, we're on this natural lake, we have this crazy seasonal cycle – all that makes the dairy thrive."

The milk mountain around Milwaukee led to twin local obsessions: cheese and fudgey chocolate. The Germans who settled in Wisconsin's reassuringly familiar terrain revived their old world artisanal churning skills. "Cheese runs through our veins," Ircink adds, "People here would eat cheese curds with milk for breakfast in the morning. In taste tests, some cheesemakers in Wisconsin beat the whole countries of England or France." For many newcomers, it's a shock how pungent and flavor-packed cheese from Milwaukee might be compared with supermarket brands. "Often when we do tours with students, they're so used to Kraft cheese that when you introduce them to an aged cheddar, they don't even like it," Nemetz warns.

The German dairy farmers supplied cream to a slew of local bakeries, too, and with one on almost any corner, those bakers became experts at turning out sweet treats like fudge and chocolate. Nemetz confesses a guilty fondness for a local delicacy that combines both Milwaukee's dairy-based staples: Chocolate Fudge Cheese – cream cheese with a ribbon of fudge through it. "It has that sweet tooth and wonderful rich, rich cheese that people love."

Read about Milwaukee's cheese, chocolate and more, after the jump.

If one thing defines Chicago's tastes, it's meat. "Our food is hearty and fatty and greasy and doesn't leave you hungry after eating it," says local food blogger Marcee Manglardi. Steve Dolinsky, the ABC 7 reporter dubbed the Hungry Hound, agrees. "This is not a vegetarian town at all – they're the sad step sister here." It's all thanks to the city's history: the south side of Chicago hummed with meat processing and packaging plants, the Union Stock Yard known as the Yards, from the 1860s until the 1970s. For much of that time, it processed more meat than any other place in the world; the only perk for the immigrant workers in those often-grueling conditions was the cheap offcuts they could take home – leading to the city's obsession with hot dogs and beef sandwiches.

The reason Chicago became such a meatpacking mecca was simple: it was the nexus of the country's railway system during the industrial boom years of the 19th century. Hogs and cattle could be brought in cheaply and easily for processing – and that wasn't the only thing. "People joke about flyover country, but Chicago was never that – it was fly-through country. Because we were a hub, every good product came through here: you can read menus from the 1940s, and there were oysters on there," notes Dolinsky, "Chicago was always a must-stop if you were going across the country – every celebrity on their way between New York and LA dined at the Pump Room."

That historic openness and access to ingredients is the reason, he believes, that Chicago today is synonymous in America with Rube Goldberg-like molecular gastronomy. The love children of Einstein and Julia Child, Grant Achatz at Alinea and Homaro Cantu at Moto break rules by turning shrimp cocktail into an atomizer that's squirted into your mouth, or goat cheese turned into 'snow' using a paint sprayer. Of course, since it's Chicago, they don't skimp on meat in their menus either: only here, it's welded together with a 'meat glue' or flash-frozen on a contraption Achatz himself invented known as the Anti-Griddle.

Read on about Chicago's meaty offerings and more, after the jump...

It wasn't a rash of espresso-guzzling Italian immigrants or even an enterprising chancer like Starbucks founder Howard Schultz who turned Seattle into America's coffee HQ: it was the weather. The damp, London-esque climate here has been an overpowering influence on its food scene, according to Seattleite Ethan Lowry, co-founder of urbanspoon.com. "Our notoriously grey weather, coupled with those long, dark winters - we're one of the most northern cities in the continental US - means we need things that are pick-me-ups. Coffee was a natural fit."

Food writer and cookbook author Cynthia Nims agrees. "Sitting down over some great coffee was one of those things you could do easily on a misty winter day," she laughs. Lowry goes further, suggesting that Seattle's warm, unfussy vibe is also meteorological. "In so many cities, there's the option to sit outside. But here, there's a dearth of outdoor cafes and a cozy feel to a lot of Seattle's restaurants," he says. The city is as ingredient obsessed as San Francisco, yet without its showoffish snobbery - chanterelle mushrooms or Dungeness crab, both staples here, were foraged casually rather than farmed and marketed to foodies. Nims sees the influx of Scandinavians as underscoring that understatement, in all aspects of local life.

Read on about Seattle's coffee, salmon and more, after the jump...

Long before Alice Waters turned the Bay Area into a global gourmet hub, San Francisco was a food-obsessed city, even if the often-repeated boast that the city has more eateries per capita than anywhere else is iffy at best (exact stats aren't available).

"It's the weather. Unlike Southern California where they can go frolic on the beach – we're trapped inside our houses a lot, so we entertain, we eat and drink together," suggests Laurel Mays, managing editor of 944 magazine. And the ease of access to high-quality ingredients, which Waters so emphasizes, has been a source of local pride since the start. "That access to amazing ingredients, whether wine country or produce from the [Salinas] valley or seafood, that's catapulted our cuisine onto another level," agrees Marcia Gagliardi, who writes a weekly column on the local food scene.

Eating out is part of the DNA of San Francisco: when Gold Rush miners descended en masse, holed up in rooming houses without their kitchen-savvy wives, they paid for home cooking at impromptu cafés and the city's boom in restaurants had begun. "You hear so many stories of older San Francisco restaurants being boarding houses where the guys would smell the food the wife was making upstairs, she would start cooking for them and suddenly, they had a restaurant," Gagliardi notes. "It's the same now – the big tech community of young, single, unattached people go to restaurants each night to meet and mingle," Laurel Mays chuckles.

Read on about San Francisco's classic treats, after the jump...