Overnight Stay: Charleston, West Virginia
Coffee beers, paw paw ice cream, and Appalachian fare await on a visit to West Virginia's state capital.
Welcome to the weekend! Here’s what you’ll find in this week’s newsletter:
Overnight Stay: Our Overnight Stay itineraries give you recommendations for a single great day in a destination. Today, we’re off to Charleston, West Virginia, and we’re sharing our favorite spots for coffee, breakfast, lunch, dinner, drinks, and more. Our Overnight Stay newsletters publish monthly and are available exclusively for our paid subscribers. Upgrade today!
February’s Featured Field Guide: This month’s featured Field Guide shares a weekend food and drink itinerary for Buffalo, New York. It includes all our picks for breakfast, lunch, dinner, drinks, and more. Paid subscribers get our Buffalo Field Guide plus access to our entire library of city guides for free, along with a Google Map plotting everywhere we have ever covered in this newsletter.
Weekend Reading: A getaway to Florida’s Gulf Coast, embracing the winter weather out west, plus David Wondrich asks a question on the mind of many cocktail drinkers.
Follow the Country Roads
CHARLESTON, WV — Tucked among the hills and hollers of the Allegheny Mountains you’ll find Charleston, the capital of West Virginia. It’s a small city of less than 50,000 people, first settled after the Revolutionary War in the valley where the Elk and Kanawha rivers meet. Natural beauty is abundant and the area is home to one of America’s newest National Parks. Adventurous travelers make the short drive to New River Gorge for scenic canoeing trips and whitewater rafting. Anglers seek calmer waters of the New to fly fish, catching smallmouth bass in the spring and summer and chasing the elusive muskie in the winter. Skiers hit the slopes at that area’s mountain resorts, gliding along the easy trails at Winterplace or tackling the more challenging runs at Canaan Valley and Snowshoe.
Back in the city, Charleston has a fascinating food scene, with a number of regional favorite dishes. We dug into West Virginia-style hot dogs and pepperoni rolls in a previous issue of this newsletter — you can try both in Charleston. Hit up a Sheetz gas station or any other local convenience store for pre-packaged pepperoni rolls, or visit Graziano’s Pizza for a fancy one, served hot and made to order. For a traditional slaw-topped hot dog, try the local favorite Super Weenie or the old-school Trivillian's Pharmacy and Soda Fountain. But the food scene here goes beyond these classics. You can snack on paw paw ice cream, sip beers made with locally roasted coffee, and dine on trout with hominy hash from a James Beard Award-winning chef. Let’s go spend a day in Charleston.