Sunset magazine's food and drink section reads less like a recipe index and more like a seasonal itinerary for the American West. Its latest batch of stories, running from late 2025 through September 2026, layers together comfort-food features, restaurant picks and wine recommendations — and for travellers, that combination points to a specific kind of autumn getaway: one built around farm country, wine regions and city dining rooms from California up through the Pacific Northwest and Mountain West.
The culinary travel pieces are the most trip-relevant. Sunset's editors name their favourite "modern classic" restaurants in the West, flag hotspots worth booking ahead, and highlight bars and lounges for their drinks and atmosphere rather than just their cocktail lists. Pair those with the Sunset Wine Club's latest shipment, which spotlights some of the best wine-growing regions in the West, and you have a ready-made frame for a wine-country drive: cellar doors by day, standout restaurants by night.
The recipe and produce stories matter to travellers too, mostly because they set the seasonal calendar. October features lean hard into comfort food — roasted squash and root vegetables in salads, pomegranate seeds, warming bowls, fall baking like pies and cakes. There's a piece pushing the pumpkin beyond its predictable pumpkin-spice role, with pies, salads and mains, and a wine story jokingly declaring "move over, pumpkin spice" in favour of other autumn flavours. The timing is clear: the West's fall harvest window, roughly September through November, is when menus across the region shift to squash, stone fruit gives way to apples and pears, and wine regions hit their busiest, prettiest stretch.
There's also practical cooking content that translates to a holiday rental kitchen — grilling tips billed as year-round, weeknight meal ideas, and pro-level advice on building a better burger, from the patty to the bun. None of it is destination-specific on its own, but together it sketches what eating well looks like in the region right now.
Why should a traveller care? Because food-first travel planning works best when you know what's in season and where locals are actually eating. Sunset has covered the American West for decades, and its roundup gives you three usable threads: book tables at the modern classics it names, time your trip for the fall harvest, and build the itinerary around a wine region — Napa or Sonoma in California, the Willamette Valley in Oregon, or Washington's Columbia Valley — where the Wine Club's featured producers are based.
Who it suits: couples and friend groups planning a autumn food-and-wine road trip, especially anyone who'd rather follow an editor's shortlist than sift through review sites. Foodies who cook will get extra value from the recipe side; everyone else can treat it as a dining shortlist with a season attached. The source is Sunset.
