My 5 best meals on the road in 2010

Feast
Charlottesville, Va.

In an era of increasing giantism among food retailers — with Walmart dominating the conventional market and Whole Foods the “natural” side — locally owned and tiny Feast is a throwback. Feast is stuffed with beautifully curated foodstuffs, much of it sourced from the surrounding Virginia countryside. It also runs a terrific deli featuring sandwiches worth rhapsodizing over — and speaking of the surrounding countryside, the chicken in the chicken salad comes from Joel Salatin’s celebrated Polyface Farm.

Don’t miss: Grab sandwiches and other provisions and a bottle of Abermarle CiderWorks‘ fabulous Royal Pippen cider, and get thee to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s mansion, for a picnic in the celebrated gardens. Raise a glass in memory of the slaves who tended those fields.