The Beauty of a Food Tour — It’s Not Just About the Spanakopita

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about…

I love food. I seek out certain restaurants, markets and dishes not only when I travel, but in my hometown too. When researching a destination, I want to know: What are the very best restaurants in the city? Where are the consistent, cozy places locals frequent? What’s become a social media sensation? And what are the must-try local specialties?

I want a reservation at at least one can’t-get-in-without-reserving-a-month-in-advance place. But I also want to know where I can grab a quick bite on the walk from one itinerary stop to another and what easy but delicious treats are near my hotel in case I’m really not up for venturing far after a long day of sightseeing.

I research a city’s food.

And one of the food-centric activities I’ve come to look for—and love—is a food tour.

Food tours are not just for foodies. We all eat. And a food tour is so much more than just eating.

Whether you’re like me and can explain the difference between Dutch fries and Belgian fries—and also know why Americans started calling them French fries (don’t do this in Belgium!)—or you mostly eat just to fuel up for your next activity, I highly recommend booking a food tour on your next trip.

Here’s why I love them.

A food tour gives you a local guide, a walk through neighborhoods you might not otherwise visit, a chance to chat with fellow travelers, and the opportunity to step inside local businesses—often family-run places that have been part of the neighborhood for decades—and meet some of the people behind them.

And on top of all that, a very full and happy belly!

Ask a Local (Guide)

I recommend booking your food tour early in your trip. Included in the cost of your food tour ticket is going to be three or so very valuable hours of access to a local. And not just any local, but someone who knows a lot about the city and the specific neighborhoods you’re in, likes to talk and share their knowledge, and is perfectly used to answering many of the same types of tourist questions you probably have about the city you’ve just arrived in.

Where is the best coffee shop near your hotel? What is the best way to get from a certain attraction to the next—metro or Uber? Can you walk it? Is standing in line for twenty minutes for fries doused in truffle mayo and Parmesan cheese at Fabel Friet really worth the wait?

Your guide will know and probably have strong opinions about all of these things—and much, much more. And your guide is speaking from firsthand experience. They live there!

Beyond answering these types of “insider tip” questions about a city, your guide is usually well versed in the city’s history. As you walk, your guide won’t just be explaining why feta cheese can only legally be produced in certain regions of Greece, but will also be tying that food knowledge to the city’s broader history and culture.

I still chuckle when I recall a food tour guide of mine in Rome telling us that the bridge we were using to cross the Tiber into Trastevere was “a much more modern bridge.”

It was built in the 15th century.

Ha! Modern to Rome, ancient to me.

And that’s the thing about having a local guide. You might have booked the tour for the food, but somewhere between stops you’re also learning how the city works, hearing its history and getting a local perspective on the place you’ve traveled all this way to experience.

A Neighborhood You Might Have Missed

Very often, a food tour will visit a neighborhood or two that isn’t on every tourist’s must-see list. It probably won’t be right next to the major tourist attractions and long lines. Instead, it might be a bit off the beaten path in a more local, often vibier, more artistic neighborhood—you know, where hipster chefs and their staff work and play.

In Athens, our tour centered around Psyrri. Psyrri is not at all far from the center of Athens, but it’s got an edge. A bit more graffiti, a younger crowd, Athens’ wild Central Market and great, great food! Bohemian is probably the way I’d describe it.

You won’t find the city’s best museums or ancient ruins in Psyrri, so the average traveler might spend a few days in Athens and never step foot there.

But I did.

I ate the best spanakopita of my life, saw whole goat heads hanging in market stalls and bought my daughters’ new favorite moisturizer from a shop that sold nothing but local Greek honey and honey products—all while taking in the charm of Psyrri across thousands of steps that day.

And then there was everything else I ate: bougatsa, a variety of olives, dolma, tiny breaded and fried sardines, cheese-stuffed local red peppers, keftedes, a variety of cured meats and dips with pita. I tried ouzo and Greek coffee and had both a proper olive oil and local honey tasting.

Wow! That was just one food tour, on one afternoon, in Athens.

I’ve had similarly awesome experiences in other cities too. In Rome, our food tour through Trastevere took us into one of the oldest functioning wine cellars in Europe, dating back to 80 BC, before we headed upstairs to the restaurant above it for melt-in-your-mouth, slow-cooked pork shoulder stew from a recipe dating back more than a thousand years—and supposedly one of Julius Caesar’s favorite meals.

I mean…what more can you really ask for?

There’s also something nice about spending part of your trip somewhere that isn’t home to a landmark you’ve been waiting years to see. There’s no checklist. No famous painting you need to find or monument you need to photograph. You can just walk, look around and pay attention to what everyday life in that city actually looks like. The shops people pop into. The cafés where they meet friends. The streets they walk on their way home from work.

You’re still sightseeing. You’re just seeing a different side of the sights.

And sometimes, those end up being the parts of a city you remember best.

Getting Social with Fellow Travelers

Along with your local guide, on a food tour you’ll also meet other visitors. Most tours I’ve been on have somewhere between eight and twelve people. And while your fellow travelers might not have the same insider information that a local does, some of them might have been there a day or two longer than you have. Or this might not be their first time in the city. And they’re probably there to do a lot of the same things you are.

This might surprise you—but your local guide probably isn’t preparing to climb the Acropolis the next morning. Some of your fellow travelers, though, might have just done it the day before.

And they can tell you what it was actually like.

They might have a similar itinerary to yours but are ordering their activities just slightly differently—and suddenly their way sounds a little better. Basically, your tourmates are another set of eyes and ears on the ground in a city you’re still figuring out. You have access to them for a few hours, and you can learn a lot from them too.

But I’ve also found there’s value in simply spending time with other people who prioritize travel the way I do. Inevitably, the conversation expands beyond the particular city we’re in. Where else have you been? Where are you going next? What place completely surprised you? What trip are you already dreaming about?

Someone has been somewhere you’ve been considering. Someone else mentions a place that wasn’t even on your radar. Recommendations get exchanged. Stories get told. And occasionally, someone gives you an idea that ends up inspiring a future trip.

And I remember the people.

There was a college professor on one of our Rome tours who chatted all evening with my daughter, who had just finished her first year of college. On another Rome food tour, my partner and I ended up with a couple who were also from the DC area. We always joke that we travel partly to get away from everyone at home—and yet, somehow, they’re everywhere!

I remember a woman who was wrapping up a solo trip through Italy and had stories for days! And in Athens, there was a couple from New York who had gotten off their cruise ship for the day. They were spending those few hours exploring Athens with us before getting back onboard that evening to continue their Mediterranean cruise.

None of these interactions changed the course of my trip. Nobody gave me the secret tip that completely rearranged my itinerary. I just enjoyed talking to them.

Some were traveling differently than I was—a solo trip, a couples trip, a cruise, a family trip—but we were all people who had chosen to spend some of our time seeing somewhere new. And for three-ish hours, we got to talk about it while exploring that place together.

There’s something really enjoyable about the built-in, natural social time a food tour provides.

And usually, you’re eating something really good while you do it.

Getting Personal with Local Businesses

Another experience I find difficult to get otherwise is the opportunity to engage with the local people who own and run the places you’re visiting. Many of the stops on a food tour will include at least a little interaction with the owners themselves. They might be running an established family business that’s been around for decades—or even centuries!

In Rome, we visited the “Pork King of Trastevere” for unbeatable porchetta—tender and juicy with just a little crispiness from the skin, served simply on crostini. We spent a good fifteen minutes eating, drinking and chatting with the purveyor and his family, who worked there alongside him.

They talked about how the neighborhood had changed over the years and laughed about each others’ nicknames. A young, aproned nephew working behind the counter took a very innocent and adorable liking to one of my teenage daughters. It was a sweet little moment for the memory bank.

You simply cannot re-create this type of scenario on your own.

Locals. Porchetta. Wine. An old deli. Relatives joking. A case full of gorgeous meats, cheeses and salads. The street outside humming in the evening sun.

In Athens, we met the owner of a local honey shop. After providing our group with an educational—and delicious—traditional honey tasting, with all of us gathered inside his tiny shop, we broke off into families, each interested in different products.

Some—like my daughters—were looking at the beauty supplies: face and hand creams, makeup remover, lip balm. Others were interested in the beeswax candles, raw honey or the myriad other honey products on sale.

That shopkeeper took time with each of us. Chatting, joking, explaining—yes, selling!—but on a personal, more intimate scale than you often get back home.

There’s a warmth that comes from being waited on in a small local business, especially when it’s by the actual owner—or by members of a family who have taken pride in that place for generations. You’re not just stopping somewhere to taste the food and moving on. For a little while, you’re talking to the people who make the place what it is.

Every opportunity to engage with locals adds something to your experience of a city. These interactions might be brief, but they make a place feel more personal. And they’re often the little moments you couldn’t have researched, reserved or planned in advance.

And Then There’s the Food…

I’ve spent a lot of time explaining why a food tour is about so much more than eating.

But also…the eating is pretty fantastic.

The tour will take care of two meals of your day. Depending on the time, this might be breakfast and lunch or lunch and dinner. Every food tour description says some version of the same thing: Come hungry!

They mean it.

This won’t be a few tiny tastings to whet your appetite. Yes, there will be small bites and street foods, but most tours also include some kind of sit-down stop where multiple courses are brought to the table. So, after a number of bite-sized stops, you’re also likely to get a proper—and large—meal.

You’ll have sweet and savory. Snacky foods and hearty mains. A bite of something here, a glass of something there, and then somehow another plate is being set down in front of you.

Most food tours run the gamut, fill you to the brim and leave you with absolutely no need to eat anything else for several hours.

I have a food tour coming up on my trip to Paris. It will be in Le Marais and starts at 11 a.m. So that morning, I’ll skip breakfast in favor of coffee and maybe a small pastry or juice to hold me over until the tour. Then, from 11 until about 2 in the afternoon, the tour will be all the food I need until perhaps a late, quick dinner.

I would absolutely not make a fancy dinner reservation that night.

We’ll be stuffed walking back to the hotel from Le Marais at 2:30. Maybe that night we’ll grab a sandwich after 8 or have something easy and familiar—Hello, Croatian McDonald’s!—but the point is, there will be plenty of food.

And not only will there be plenty. It will be good.

From the very best, most peppery cacio e pepe to the earthiest truffle salami of my life to deliciously sweet baklava drenched in syrupy goodness, some of my favorite bites of all time have happened on food tours.

Maybe the food is so good because it objectively is.

Or maybe it’s because you’re thousands of miles from home, eating something customary to that place, surrounded by people you didn’t know a few hours ago, in a neighborhood you might never have found on your own.

Maybe the food tastes better because of everything happening around it.

Because you’re not just eating the porchetta. You’re standing in an old deli in Rome, drinking wine while relatives joke behind the counter and the owner tells you how his neighborhood has changed.

You’re not just tasting honey. You’re crowded into a tiny shop in Athens while your daughters test face creams and the shopkeeper explains what his family makes and why.

You’re walking streets you might never have walked, talking to people you would never otherwise have met, learning things you didn’t know enough to ask about and eating things you might never have thought to order.

And that, to me, is the beauty of a food tour.

I’m a planner. I research the restaurants. I make the reservations. I know what I want to see and, yes, I usually know what I want to eat.

But some of my favorite travel memories are the things I never could have planned in the first place.

The Roman shopkeeper. The goat heads hanging in the Athens market. The stranger who tells you what you absolutely have to do tomorrow. The guide who casually refers to a 15th-century bridge as “modern.” The bite of porchetta so good that you’re still thinking about it years later.

A food tour puts you in the right place for those moments to happen.

So yes, book the food tour for the cacio e pepe. Book it for the porchetta, the baklava, the wine, the cheese, the honey and whatever else you’re going to eat along the way.

But know that somewhere between the first bite and the very full belly at the end, you might just get something even better.

For a few hours, you’re not just eating your way through a city.

Strangers, a world away, have pulled out a chair and invited you to their table.