It's Gothamist Getaways Spring Travel Week. We'll have a week of posts featuring looks at travel, food, products and tips—near and far—for making your trips more enjoyable. Then, for the rest of the year, we'll have more Getaways stories on a weekly basis. So sit back, dream of your next journey and let us know if you have any hints for us—email [email protected].
"People don’t want superficiality," says Lisa Rogovin, owner of Edible Excursions, the foremost of more than a dozen companies currently offering culinary walking tours in the San Francisco Bay area.
Rogovin—a former staffer at Gourmet magazine who went on to develop epicurean programs for the Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco—founded her business just over a decade ago. In the intervening years—for better and for worse—she’s seen food tours proliferate like morel mushrooms after a spring rain. Not just in the Bay Area, but from coast-to-coast.
A Cornucopia of Offerings
The popularity of food programming on television has whet travelers’ appetites for tours where they can sample local specialties, meet culinary craftspeople, and get an insider’s perspective on neighborhood marketplaces.
It may have never crossed your mind to savor the specialties of Saratoga Springs, ingest the indigenous ingredients of Indianapolis, or take your taste buds trekking through Tucson, but there are businesses dedicated to taking you on these very adventures.
Secret Ingredients of a Successful Tour
The quality of information, entertainment, and personnel can vary widely from one tour operator to the next.
"You’ve got to be a special type of person to give a good tour," says Robert Weinberg, a graduate of the New York Restaurant School, and owner of Philadelphia’s award-winning 8-year-old City Food Tours. "You need to be genuinely engaged with a diverse group of people and you’ve got to be ‘on’ for two-and-a-half to three hours."
An Asian food tour in Philadelphia from City Food Tours (Facebook)
At Chicago Food Planet tours, owner Shane Kost and his staff are dedicated to showcasing their city’s social history, putting a range of ethnic foods into context as they explain the impact of overlapping waves of immigration on neighborhoods like Bucktown and Wicker Park that might otherwise go unseen by tourists.
"Every operator has to be as professional as possible," says Kost. "Food tour companies should be able to depend on each other. A great customer experience in one city creates an opportunity for a tour company in the next place a traveler visits."
Tips for Tasters
Here are a few suggestions from these industry leaders on how to find high quality food tours that won’t leave you with a bitter aftertaste:
1. Look for tour websites that include original photography or video featuring groups and guides.
Stock images of iconic local tourist attractions and glossy, generic food shots can be a tip-off that a company lacks authenticity or expertise.
2. Seek operators that offer multiple, regularly scheduled itineraries.
A company’s investment in depth and breadth of culinary knowledge about the turf they cover often points to better informed, less superficial guides.
3. Inquire about your guide.
If you’re a serious gastronaut, a college student who leads a tour once a week to make extra pocket money may not be a good match for you. Many companies have experienced food writers and restaurant pros on the payroll, and its entirely reasonable to ask about who’s guiding a tour you’re considering.
4. Ask if they cater to locals.
Tour operators should be willing to let you know what percentage of their guests are visitors from out of town. If 50 percent or more of their patrons are locals, it’s a good sign that their offerings add significant value to the information you could find for yourself in a guidebook.
Jim Gladstone is a San Francisco-based writer and creative strategist.
