OMG! meals of 2015: Best of Great American Bites

Larry Olmsted | Special for USA TODAY

The scene: Great American Bites travels the backroads, highways and city streets of this country in search of the best and most unique regional foods and standout local restaurants. But some of these stand out more than others, and an elite few obtain the highest possible rating: OMG! As the year draws to a close, we look back at the very best eateries and dishes of 2015, which included some unlikely surprises such as Rocky Mountain “oysters” and cheese fritters, along with more usual suspects, such as New York pizza and Memphis barbecue.

Reason to visit: The best of America’s road food.

Buckhorn Exchange, Denver: One of the most memorable meals of the year, this Old West throwback has the oldest liquor license in Colorado, more than 200 antique weapons on display, and more than 500 mounted animals, including an African Cape Buffalo shot by President Teddy Roosevelt. Yet while it is wildly atmospheric, it was the food that carried the day, with the must-try dishes including bison prime rib, Rocky Mountain oysters, game and reptile specials such as elk and rattlesnake, and for dessert, the Dutch apple pie.

Pizzeria Bianco, Phoenix: This is the place that years ago kicked off America’s gourmet wood-fired pizza revolution, and it remains the only pizzeria (or casual restaurant of any sort) to win its owner, Chris Bianco, the James Beard Foundation’s coveted Best Chef award. A hyper focus on the best possible ingredients, with carefully chosen arugula and basil, house-made sausage and even cheese, have made this the choice of many top critics as the best pizza in America. They are right. I’m partial to the Biancoverde, a white pizza topped with explosively flavorful arugula, and Men’s Health magazine proclaimed the Wiseguy, with oven-roasted onions, smoked mozzarella and fennel sausage, to be the single best pizza in the nation. But the reality is that every pizza on the menu is a must-try.

Memphis Barbecue Co., Horn Lake, Miss.: Sitting just across the state line from its namesake Memphis, this vast modern eatery is the flagship of Melissa Cookston, the winningest woman in the history of competitive barbecue. Also a cookbook author (Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room), she has won ten world championship titles and hundreds of other awards. But oddly, her signature dish, featured on TV’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, is not barbecue at all but rather unique cheese fritters. These are a doughy take on Sicilian arancini, a thin layer of fried dough stuffed with a melted four cheese blend and set on a pool of homemade honey Dijon dressing. Delicious and addictive, they’re a must-try, along with the offbeat BBQ Spaghetti, pulled pork, corn bread, and several options for dramatic smoked meat sampler platters.

Zingerman’s Deli, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Perhaps the most famous restaurant we visited this year, Zingerman’s lived up to its widespread acclaim and ultra-loyal following that waits on long lines to eat here. The deli obsesses about using only the very best possible ingredients, from start to finish, especially the bread and meat. The in-house artisanal bakery is among the most acclaimed in the country, producing loaves that are twice baked for extra crisp crusts. This is stunning bread, hand-sliced to order for every single sandwich, about a thousand loaves a day. The roast beef and turkey are roasted daily, the pastrami and corned beef cured in-house. They use more than a dozen types of specialty mustards, each chosen for a particular flavor combo. There are 113 elaborate sandwich choices, all numbered and named, but the top four sellers are all grilled versions: the signature Reuben #2 (house corned beef, real Swiss cheese, local artisan sauerkraut and Russian dressing on rye), the Brooklyn Reuben #48 (pastrami instead of corned beef on pumpernickel), the Cuban #00 (pulled pork, peppered ham, Swiss, dill pickle slices and hot mustard on grilled paesano roll) and Pat & Dick’s Honeymooner #27 (smoked turkey, muenster, Kream mustard on challah).

Duff’s Famous Wings, Buffalo, N.Y.: Great American Bites did an extensive wing tour of Buffalo, trying the original at its birthplace, tons of hot styles, and esoteric varieties from barbecue to teriyaki to Sicilian. But the best of the traditional Buffalo hot wings, and the only ones to rate OMG, were at this beloved local institution which has been going spicy since 1969. In fact, heat is Duff’s claim to fame, and the menu clearly reads “Warning! Medium IS HOT, Medium Hot IS VERY HOT and Hot is VERY, VERY HOT.” There are several other grades including mild, mild medium and medium light, plus options for upping the ante on hot with added suicidal or death sauces. The medium and the medium light were the class of Buffalo’s hot wing field, and even President Obama tried them in 2010.

Bob’s Clam Hut, Kittery, Maine: We went to Bob’s for the justifiably famous fried clams, but were wowed buy just about everything — including what may be the very best lobster roll in Maine. Bob’s dates to 1956, and serves two styles of fried clams: (if you can’t choose, go half and half) Bob’s and Lillian’s, with light flour coating or heavier batter respectively. Both are delicious, but so are the fried scallops, fried haddock, fried combo plates, lobster stew, clam chowder and superlative lobster roll. This column has visited lots of Maine coastal clam and lobster shacks, but if we could eat at just one, it would be Bob’s.

Napoleon House, New Orleans: This column has consumed a lot of sandwiches, but few (maybe none) have rivaled New Orleans' favorite contribution to the genre, the muffuletta. The historic Napoleon House is among the oldest places in the city serving the specialty, but has long put a unique wrinkle on it, serving theirs warm, so the cheese is slightly melted, while everyone else does it cold. But the reality is cold or hot, a great muffuletta cannot be beat, and this is a great muffuletta. It is also a fantastic setting in which to eat one, and perhaps the best place in the country to have a traditional British Pimm’s Cup cocktail, the signature drink.

Border Grill, Southern California and Las Vegas: This was perhaps the biggest surprise of the year — we went expecting pretty good Mexican cuisine and found just about everything on the menu to be stunning, from steaks that beat top steakhouses to craft cocktails. Chef owners Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger opened the original (now closed) Chicago Border Grill in 1985, and have since become known as the “Too Hot Tamales,” with numerous cookbooks and one of the first hit shows on the then-nascent Food Network. What makes Border Grill so good is ingredients and preparation. Everything is meticulously sourced, and the most basic Mexican staples, rice and beans, are organic. Meat is all humanely processed, antibiotic- and hormone-free, and most produce grown locally. Everything possible is made from scratch, even the excellent margaritas and cocktails — all juices, including pineapple, are pressed daily from whole fruit. You cannot go wrong, but highlights include guacamole, margaritas, fish Veracruzano, and the stunning chile-rubbed ribeye steak.

John’s of Bleecker Street Pizzeria, New York: The third oldest pizzeria in New York (and the country), John’s uses a coal-fired oven to produce a hybrid American-Neapolitan pie, crisped all the way across, but not crispy, with flecks of char giving it depth of flavor, while remaining surprisingly chewy, doughy and delicious. The menu is mainly pizza in two sizes and calzones. It is some of the finest pizza you can get anywhere, but even more stunning are the calzones, a big (it serves three) oval with thicker-than-typical dough all around your choice of fillings, more like a stuffed pizza, showcasing the excellent dough. It comes cut into pieces and served with a generous bowl of delicious homemade tomato sauce for dipping. It is very hard to choose between the pizza and calzone, so go as a foursome and split both.

Bryan’s Black Mountain Barbecue, Cave Creek, Ariz: Arizona is not known as a hotbed of inventive world-class barbecue, but that is exactly what we found in the ultra-colorful Old West town of Cave Creek, a Scottsdale suburb. Culinary Institute of America grad and longtime fine dining chef Bryan Dooley tweaks traditional barbecue favorites with minor touches — almost all improvements — to create out-of-this-world results. For example, he butters and toasts the rolls for his pulled pork sandwich, providing a bit of crunchy contrast, a simple step — yet one almost no one else does. This measurably raises the deliciousness bar. His surprisingly successful signature dish is butter sautéed, then spice-rubbed frog’s legs — which always sell out. These are a must-try, along with the rotating “chalkboard pig special,” ribs, pulled pork sandwich, the amazing vegetarian “pulled’ spaghetti squash sandwich, the brisket chili, baked potato salad, and homemade ice cream sandwiches.

Larry Olmsted has been writing about food and travel for more than 15 years. An avid eater and cook, he has attended cooking classes in Italy, judged a barbecue contest and once dined with Julia Child. Follow him on Twitter, @TravelFoodGuy, and if there's a unique American eatery you think he should visit, send him an email at travel@usatoday.com. Some of the venues reviewed by this column provided complimentary services.