I spent a year covering the nations best food. I still prefer Panera Bread.

Ten U.S. cities. A quest to document the food scene in each – and rank the places at year’s end. It was a 10-month reporting project on the newsroom’s tab.

Sounds like a food lover’s dream, right? Sure. But it wasn’t mine, because even though I was the main video journalist assigned to the project, I’m anything but a food lover.

[The 10 best food cities in America, ranked]

The thing is, I really don’t care about food. Of course, we all have to eat, and I do — with no restrictions. But I don’t even think about going out of my way to find, say, that perfect breakfast taco, Neapolitan-style pizza or chef-driven, multi-course tasting menu. No, a meal is just fuel, and I honestly don’t bother enough to distinguish fine vs. good vs. great. And since I never know when the next meal might come, when it does, I shovel it in and move on.

My job is lived on the road; it’s a life of airports, rental cars and hotel chains. This isn’t filmmaking with “craft services,” or a TV network where crews get food delivered because union contracts demand it. For me, stories don’t wind down for suppertime. So in a strange city chasing an unending story, I find that getting food is, more often than not, simply a pain.

Still, I try to eat well – and by that, I mean nutritiously. When I have time, Panera Bread is my go-to. That has become a running joke in newsrooms where I’ve worked, but unlike plenty of other reporters I’ve seen, after years of on-the-road journalism, at age 39, I’ve managed to stay the same weight.

Often, meals are a wrap in one hand, steering wheel in the other. An apple and Chex Mix from the hotel lobby — the only options after working and traveling so late that nothing else is open. Then, the low points: a United Airlines snack box. A microscopic bag of Southwest Airlines peanuts I struggle to open. Sometimes there is no chance to grab something in the concourse; my mini-mountain of video gear guarantees a glacial check-in.

You might expect that this would be the point where I say my year of shooting food changed all that, right? That the search for America’s Best Food City had me slowing down, indulging in all the culinary delights a location offered? That the hard-news guy became a food-loving softie?

I’m afraid not. After 27 restaurants and bars in seven cities (a colleague handled the other three), I’m nowhere close to being a connoisseur. Although I shot the food – and got the chance to sample some of it – the project hasn’t changed my approach back home or on the road. I’m still a grab-and-go, food-as-fuel kind of eater.

What has changed is my level of respect for the people behind the kitchen door – and those in front of it, too. Before this project, I’d never shot much food, spent any time on a kitchen line, gotten inside a chef’s (or a waiter’s) head. Now that I have, here’s what I learned:

1) People in the restaurant business are hard-wired for hospitality. A successful establishment is where food and ambiance add up to something great. I watched diners laughing while waiters hustled to keep up those smiles. Staffs continually offered me water and often wanted to feed me. If time allowed, I tried to sample what I’d just styled and shot. Avocado on toast in Los Angeles. Vietnamese crawfish in Houston. The Sazerac in New Orleans. It was sustenance, yes, but also an education: I could taste what the chefs (or bartenders) had just described on camera. The play of spices mixing with avocado, the punch of Peychaud’s Bitters in a Sazerac – my palate did start to improve, albeit slowly.

2) Many restaurant workers see it as a craft, not just a job. In New Orleans, bartenders study the history of cocktails. And staffs tend to stay.

Come along for a visual sip of New Orleans’s signature drink, the Sazerac. (Video: Lee Powell/The Washington Post)

“Being in the service industry and kind of waiting tables is seen as something you do and you do it well,” said New Orleans writer and photographer Pableaux Johnson. “You take pride in it rather than having a default job.”

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3) Kitchen staffs just want to have fun – together.

At FIG in Charleston, S.C., the cooks sing – sort of. As tickets come in, and the chef calls them out, they’re chanted back.

At FIG in Charleston, S.C., the kitchen staff has a vocal way of remembering orders of upscale local fare. (Video: Lee Powell/The Washington Post)

“It also sounds cool,” says Jason Stanhope, FIG’s executive chef. “I think it really builds a sense of camaraderie … it kind of breaks you down a little bit, pulls you outside your comfort zone. And like forces you to be a part of this bigger thing, which is our cuisine and our team.”

In Los Angeles, a huddle and then a cheer psyches the staff at Bestia before diners arrive. It prepares them for the night ahead: a service spent on feet, either cradling heavy dishes or enduring kitchen heat.

4) The hospitality industry lives and dies on the details. So many things can go wrong – from cold food to the draft of cold air in a dining room. Or go right, from an impromptu birthday cake on the house to a diner stopping a chef to say the seviche was perfect. Call it energy or good vibes – something crackled in the air when restaurants hit those high points. I saw staffs moving silverware at place settings by the slightest inch. Chefs continually tasting. Salting. And wiping down splatters on plates before they left the kitchen. In almost 30 eating establishments, I saw only one bug — and it wasn’t anywhere close to food.

5) Screaming chefs are the creations of reality TV. The most noise I heard in kitchens: sizzles, steam whooshes and saucepans scraping over burners. Voices were at a slightly raised tone just to make it over the din. Open kitchens mean diners are watching, so staffs are on their best behavior, and keep prep stations neat.

Still, chefs are a breed apart: obsessive-compulsive, with hints of crazy and a politician’s touch thrown in, working the front of the house kissing diners — and their babies. As Cedric Maupillier, the chef-owner of Convivial in the District put it, “Being part of a happy dining room and being responsible for happy stomachs has always been my goal.”

Was I ever one of those happy stomachs? Not really, I’m afraid. It’s just not who I am. I saw plenty of great food over the course of the project, but after all was said and done, the best thing I ate in those seven cities, I have to confess, was any bite that kept me from a hunger haze so I could make it to my next shoot. It was journalism on the run, as usual.

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