"You're in a new town and you don't want to eat at a fast-food chain, but so many restaurants are listed in the Yellow Pages, what's a body to do? You can ask a local where to go, or you can take along Magellan Press' Where the Locals Eat."
Ambassador Magazine, 5/98
"Travelers usually wind up eating in a particular restaurant by default," says Lee Wilson. "It's on their route, or close to their hotel, or maybe it's a chain they know from home. We want to help people avoid routine for routine's sake."
The aid Wilson proffers is the 1,200-page Where the Locals Eat," at $19.95 the only guidebook to encapsulate in one volume the best indigenous fare in more than 1,000 U.S. cities and towns. While other directories list only diners, gourmet chow or famous chefs' favorites, Wilson's points wayfarers twoard "good food at a good price anywhere in Amereicaand a chance to sample the flavor of the place where you find yourself."
For each locale, eateries are categorized definitivelyranging from kosher or soul food to good late-night snack spots, the best places to take kids and the best places to eat when someone else is buying.
For more than two years, Wilson and her staff of eight canvassed most U.S. municipalities with populations greater than 20,000. They quizzed friends and colleagues, and scanned Web sites and local magazine and newspaper polls.
"But mostly we just asked people," she says. Her squad phoned or sent questionnaires to insurance offices, university staffers, newpaper reportersanyone who might have initimate knowledge of their local dining scene.
At the same time, Wilson was comparing paper for the optimum combination of thinness, durability and opaquness. The result is a volume that's just 4 by 9 inches, about 1 3/4 inches thick, and tips the scale at 1 3/4 pounds. "It's designed to fit into a briefcase or glove compartment," Wilson adds. "This is a travel tool."
After selling about 18,500 copies in a little more than a year, Wilson and her crew are busy assembling the next editionsoon to be an annual event, she says.
"For the new edition, 33% to 45% of the material will be reresearched and updated," she says. "We want people planning a trip to say to themselves, 'I have to get an atlas and I have to get the latest edition of Where the Locals Eat.'"
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