Year of Alabama Food campaign puts dining gems in spotlight [www.al.com]

It’s time to eat, Alabama. Again. The Alabama Tourism Department’s “The Year of Alabama Food” campaign in 2005 proved so popular that the state tourism agency is going back for seconds in 2012. The $1 million marketing effort will launch later this month at the FoodBlogSouth bloggers conference in Birmingham, and the year-long blitz will include an Alabama BBQ Hall of Fame, an Alabama Restaurant Week and an updated list of the popular “100 Dishes to Eat in Alabama Before You Die.” “People kept asking, ‘When are you going to do the year of food again?’” Lee Sentell, director of the Alabama Tourism Department, says. “We decided enough time and distance had happened.” From Fairhope to Florence, fine-dining to fried chicken, the campaign will sing the praises of such state dining treasures as Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q in Decatur, City Cafe in Northport, Martin’s Restaurant in Montgomery and the original Wintzell’s Oyster House in Mobile, among dozens and dozens of others. In recent years, the tourism department’s themed “year of” campaigns have promoted the state’s sports heroes, its small towns, its great outdoors and this past year, its music legends. Much has happened to put the state on the culinary map since the last “Year of Alabama Food” seven years ago.

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