Capitol Market - Charleston, WV

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A post shared by MonsterMunching (@monstermunching_oc) on Nov 18, 2018 at 6:05pm PST

I’ve been traveling a lot lately. A lot of it for pleasure and some for work. But the real reason we racked up a lot of miles and travel points was that we had a goal to visit all 50 states before the year's end.

I'm happy to report we achieved that goal last week. We flew into Cincinnati, Ohio; drove up to Indianapolis, Indiana; drove down to Louisville, Kentucky; and finally crossed over to Charleston, capital of West Virginia. These states were our Final Four.

There isn't much I can say about Charleston, though. There’s a river in front of the Capitol Building, but as far as attractions, Charleston is not exactly Travel Channel material…at least from what we saw.

We went to Capitol Market, advertised as a hip, new gathering of grocers and food vendors who all moved into a converted train station now made into something that wants to be something like Seattle’s Pike’s Place. It was, however, about a tenth the size, no bigger than a Los Angeles area Whole Foods. And around the neighborhood, we saw rows of boarded-up houses.

Upon looking online to see what food West Virginia was known for and what we could buy while we were there at Capitol Market, we found that something called “pepperoni roll” was on the top of most lists.

A pepperoni roll, it turns out, is basically a hot dog bun that's stuffed with wads of rolled up pepperoni slices and mozzarella before it's baked. We saw it in factory-wrapped plastic as though it was destined for a truck stop vending machine.

We bought it anyway. Not quite a calzone, not quite an Italian sandwich, it wasn’t what I was expecting to eat in a state I knew nothing about, except that it was the last one on our list--a list that is now complete!

Capitol Market
800 Smith St.
Charleston, WV 25301-1213

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