Virginia Food & Traditional Cuisine

Virginia's food is the oldest English-descended cooking in America, crossed with West African technique and ingredients brought by enslaved cooks — a combination that produced much of what is now called Southern food.

Two products define it. Country ham is dry-salt-cured and aged for months, intensely salty and nothing like a wet-cured one. Chesapeake oysters are graded by the part of the bay they grew in, and the differences between them are real and noticeable.

Peanuts are a serious regional crop, and the state has its own stew tradition and a distinctive vinegar-leaning barbecue.

Country ham and biscuits

Paper-thin slices of salt-cured aged ham in a hot buttermilk biscuit. Salty enough to surprise a first-timer, and the state's defining food.

Chesapeake oysters

Sold by growing region rather than by variety, best from September to April, and eaten raw, roasted or fried.

Brunswick stew

A thick tomato-based stew of chicken or pork with butterbeans and corn, cooked in large batches at church and fire-house fundraisers. Its origin is disputed with Georgia, firmly.

Peanut soup

A creamy soup served since colonial times and still on the menu at the historic taverns.

Spoonbread

A soft cornmeal dish somewhere between a bread and a souffle, eaten with a spoon.

Barbecue

Pork, pulled, with a vinegar-based sauce in the south and east — closer to Carolina than to the sweet styles further west.

Farmers' markets run in most towns through the growing season, and several of the city ones operate year-round.

Oyster roasts and seafood festivals along the bay in autumn are community events rather than tourist ones, and are the best way to eat the state's shellfish.

Roadside ham and peanut shops in the southeast sell the cured products that are hard to find elsewhere.

Church and fire-house stew and barbecue fundraisers are a real tradition, seasonal and open to anyone who turns up.

Virginia has around 300 wineries and is one of the most serious wine regions in the eastern United States. Thomas Jefferson tried for decades to make wine here and failed entirely; the modern industry dates only from the 1970s.

Viognier is the signature white and the state's flagship grape, and Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot do well in the humidity where thinner-skinned reds struggle.

The main concentration is in the central piedmont around Jefferson's own country, with a second cluster in the northern counties. Most are small, family-run and open for tasting without appointment.

Cider and craft beer are both strong, and the state has an old apple-growing tradition in the Blue Ridge foothills.