Kinston sits roughly halfway between Raleigh and the coast on Highway 70. This small eastern North Carolina town has gained a reputation that far exceeds its size, largely thanks to Chef and the Farmer, a nationally acclaimed restaurant on Queen Street that put Kinston on the food map. The restaurant and the surrounding downtown revival were the subject of the PBS series A Chef's Life.
Beyond the food, Kinston has a growing arts scene, a respected craft brewery in Mother Earth Brewing, and the CSS Neuse Civil War Interpretive Center, which houses the remains of a Confederate ironclad gunboat recovered from the Neuse River. A full-scale replica of the ironclad sits a few blocks away — the only such full-scale walk-aboard replica anywhere. The city also has a notable African American music heritage, with members of Parliament-Funkadelic and Maceo Parker among the local sons.