When most of us think of eating on the road, we think of diners, drive-ins, fast-food joints, and the like—most of which were the result of the rise of the automobile and the highways that followed. But before automobiles, trains were the preferred mode of travel for long journeys. Sure, trains often have dining cars—but that wasn’t always the case. Just after the Civil War, newly freed slaves, looking for a living in Gordonsville, Virginia, hit on the idea of feeding hungry train passengers passing through town. As John T. Edge describes in Fried Chicken: An American Story (2004), a group of enterprising African-American women began selling batter-fried chicken (brined, dunked in a plain flour-water batter, and fried in lard), coffee, and pie to passengers through the windows of idling trains. They carried trays laden with food from their homes to the tracks. This informal concession continued for some 60 years. What better reason for the test kitchen to resurrect this American favorite for today?

Colorful stories and great road food aren’t just limited to fried chicken, of course. The test kitchen’s other stops include Baltimore, for their incomparable pit roast beef sandwich made with shaved barbecued beef slathered with tiger sauce (a garlicky, creamy sauce spiked with horseradish); St. Louis, for wafer-thin pizza topped with gooey, smoky cheese; and Cincinnati for its famous chili. What—you didn’t know Cincinnati boasts some of the country’s best chili? That’s the delight of road food; you just don’t know what’s coming around the corner until you get there.