The Cardinal, New York

The Cardinal, named after North Carolina’s state bird, serves the region’s signature style of barbecue while hewing to a simple philosophy: traditional recipes and quality ingredients. Using free-range chicken, grass-fed beef, heritage pork, and housemade sausage, bacon, and pickles, the soulful southerners serve classic Carolinian cuisine such as pork chops in red-eye gravy and blue-crab hush puppies. The house specialty—fried chicken marinated in brine and breaded with crispy cornflakes—earned The Cardinal a spot on the _Village Voice_'s [10 Best Chicken Dishes](http://gr.pn/Xkyn1e) list in 2012. The back-to-basics ethos extends to the decor, done up with whitewash, the restaurant's name in black paint over white bricks, and a stuffed turkey in mid-flight instead of standing at a ticket counter on a layover.