The Best American Food and Travel Writing 2025: Bryant Terry curates top essays on Laotian rice, foraging, and Indigenous land—featuring Melissa Broder, Ligaya Mishan & more

“These stories remind us that food is not just fuel, nor is travel just movement,” writes Bryant Terry in his introduction. “They are acts of remembrance, resistance, and connection.” The Best American Food and Travel Writing 2025 embodies this wisdom, offering an incredible range of stories that refine and revitalize our relationship to taste, place, and the narratives that we build around them. From tracing the history and endurance of heirloom Laotian rice to investigating how foraging is transforming a city’s restaurant culture, to meditating on the significance of Indigenous communities reclaiming their ancestral lands, these works reveal how food and travel are never simply about what’s on the plate or where we go—they are about history, identity, and the power of storytelling itself.

THE BEST AMERICAN FOOD AND TRAVEL WRITING 2025 MELISSA BRODER • LIGAYA MISHAN • JEFF GORDINIER • REEM KASSIS • KAYLA STEWART • LEE ANDERSON • AND OTHERS