Why book a food tour when traveling? For us, it’s one of the best ways to discover a destination, experience local culture, and enjoy food we might never have tried on our own.
Joe and I didn’t set out to become food-tour people.
In fact, before our first one, I wasn’t entirely sure what a food tour involved. I pictured walking around a neighborhood, stopping at a few places, getting a couple of samples and learning a little along the way.
Then we went to Paris.
Now, when I’m planning a trip to a new city, one of the first things I search for is a food tour.
Why?
Because I’ve come to believe that food is one of the most important parts of understanding a culture.
Food tells you about a place’s history. It reflects celebrations and ordinary daily life, periods of prosperity and times when people had to make do with what they had. It shows you what grows locally, who conquered whom, who immigrated there, what traditions survived and what people still gather around a table to celebrate.
You can learn a tremendous amount about a city inside a museum.
I’d just rather learn it while eating cheese.
It All Started in Paris
Our first food tour was in Paris in October 2025.
We were planning our first trip to the city, and I had been watching approximately one million YouTube videos from Les Frenchies. If you’re planning your first visit to Paris, I highly recommend their videos. Their travel style appealed to us, and I trusted their recommendations.
One of those recommendations was Sylvia with Frenchxicans.
We booked her Eat Your Way Through the Latin Quarter tour as a way to sample some classic Parisian foods while learning a little about the neighborhood.
I expected a few samples.
I was very wrong.
Over the course of the tour, we ate our way through cheese and wine pairings, charcuterie, croissants, crêpes, macarons, fresh strawberries and boeuf bourguignon.
And we didn’t just eat.
Sylvia knew the Latin Quarter.
She knew its history. She knew the shops. She had relationships with purveyors and restaurant owners. She told stories about the neighborhood as we walked and gave context to what we were eating and why it mattered.
A Great Food Guide Isn’t Someone Who Walks You Between Restaurants
This is probably the biggest difference between an average food experience and an exceptional one.
I can find restaurants myself.
I can Google “best croissant in Paris.” I can read reviews. I can find a cheese shop.
That’s not what I’m paying a food-tour guide to do.
A great guide is a storyteller.
They understand the neighborhood and its history. They have relationships with the people who make and sell the food. They know why one bakery matters and why a certain dish became associated with that particular part of the city.
And, importantly, they genuinely love food.
There’s a noticeable difference between someone who is passionate about food and someone whose job is simply to walk a group from Stop A to Stop B.
Sylvia had that passion.
It’s one of the reasons our Paris tour remains our favorite—and why we’ve already decided that when we return to Paris in 2028, we’re booking her again.
Not for the Latin Quarter.
She offers tours in other neighborhoods, so next time we’ll eat our way through a completely different part of Paris.
Sometimes the Simplest Food Is the Most Memorable
One of my favorite stops in Paris wasn’t fancy at all.
We stopped at a small restaurant for boeuf bourguignon.
That was when I realized a great food tour isn’t really just about food.
Boeuf Bourguignon
There was nothing particularly glamorous about it. It wasn’t the sort of dining room where someone arrives with tweezers to adjust your garnish.
It was simply good food prepared in a traditional way—the kind of dish people have been cooking in one form or another for generations.
And it was wonderful.
That’s one of the things I love about food tours. When you’re visiting a city for the first time, you’ll see the same famous foods advertised everywhere.
You’ll see crêpes everywhere in Paris.
You’ll see flammekueche everywhere in Alsace.
You’ll see stroopwafels everywhere in Amsterdam.
The problem isn’t knowing what you’re supposed to eat.
The problem is knowing where you should eat it.
A good local guide has already done that work for you.
Food Tours Are Also How We Learn
Joe and I aren’t people who want to spend every day of a vacation wandering through traditional museums.
That doesn’t mean we don’t care about history or culture.
Quite the opposite.
We just tend to enjoy learning through experiences.
Give us a food tour. Let us make something. Take us into a market. Introduce us to someone who’s been making the same specialty for decades.
We absorb a place much better that way.
For us, the ideal food tour includes plenty of history—but also plenty of food.
I don’t need another bite every four minutes, but if we’ve been standing on a street corner listening to a lecture for an hour, I’m probably going to start wondering when we’re eating again.
A stop every 15 or 20 minutes feels about right.
Walk. Learn. Eat.
Repeat.
That’s my kind of museum.
Then We Ate Our Way Through Alsace
Our next guided food experience was very different.
During our Viking Rhine cruise, we booked the Flavors of Alsace excursion in Strasbourg.
It was exceptional.
It was also an almost comical amount of food.
Alsace is particularly fascinating from a culinary perspective because its food reflects both French and German influences. You don’t have to sit through a history lecture to understand that cultural intersection.
You can taste it.
We sampled cheeses and wine, macarons, flammekueche, knacks and kougelhopf—the distinctive Alsatian cake traditionally baked in a tall fluted mold.
And then there were the éclairs.
Not just traditional sweet éclairs, either. We sampled savory versions, including combinations such as blue cheese and peach, along with decadent sweet versions like Ferrero Rocher.
By the time we reached the éclairs, we had encountered a serious food-tour problem:
We were too full to eat.
I didn’t know such a tragedy was possible.
Eclairs
Kougelhopf
I Got to Make My Own Flammekueche
One of my favorite parts of the Strasbourg experience wasn’t simply eating flammekueche.
I got to make one.
At one of our restaurant stops, I was able to prepare my own flammekueche before it was cooked.
Doing a happy dance!
For me, that takes an experience to another level.
I love anything hands-on when we travel. I’d much rather participate in something than simply stand there looking at it.
And making a traditional regional food in Strasbourg while learning about Alsatian culture?
That’s exactly the kind of travel experience I remember.
The Paris and Strasbourg tours were very different, but both reinforced the same idea:
You can understand a surprising amount about a place by understanding what its people eat.
Interested in a Food Tour in Strasbourg?
If you’re visiting Strasbourg independently rather than on a Viking cruise, Viator offers a traditional Alsatian food tour that looks like a wonderful way to explore the city’s culinary specialties. It’s not the same excursion we took through Viking, but it offers a similar opportunity to discover Strasbourg through its food.
Affiliate disclosure: This recommendation includes an affiliate link. If you book through it, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you.
Explore the Strasbourg Traditional Food Tour on Viator
Amsterdam: The Food Tour We Accidentally Missed
And then there was Amsterdam.
This one was entirely my fault.
I booked a tour with Hungry Birds Food Tours and somehow managed to schedule it for our arrival day when I intended to book it for the following day.
The overnight flight/date change got me.
By the time I realized what I’d done, we’d missed our tour.
Hungry Birds could have simply said, “Sorry, you missed it.”
Instead, they were incredibly gracious. They refunded half of what we’d paid and gave us a list of recommended places to visit at Albert Cuyp Market so we could create our own little food crawl.
That was extraordinarily kind, and I would recommend them based solely on how they handled my mistake.
So off we went to eat our way through the market ourselves.
We tried lumpia, Dutch apple pie, French fries, a Surinamese curry sandwich and, of course, stroopwafels.
It was delicious.
And it taught me something else about food tours.
Stroopwafels
The real Dutch apple pie
French fries with truffle mayo and joppie sauce
Yes, You Can Absolutely Do This Yourself
Our self-guided Amsterdam food crawl was a lot of fun.
We had a great list, ate excellent food and could move completely at our own pace.
So if a guided food tour isn’t in your budget—or you simply don’t have three or four hours available—you can absolutely create your own.
Find a market or a food-focused neighborhood. Research its quintessential foods. Read enough reviews to identify several well-regarded places. Then create your own route.
I’d happily do that again.
But it isn’t quite the same.
What we missed in Amsterdam were the stories.
Nobody was there to tell us why a particular food mattered, how it became part of Dutch culture or how the neighborhood had changed. We didn’t have someone pointing out buildings or introducing us to shop owners.
We ate very well.
We just didn’t learn as much.
And I’ve realized that the learning is a huge part of why I love food tours.
How I Choose a Food Tour
I research food tours much the same way I research hotels and restaurants:
I scour the reviews.
I don’t put much weight into one person saying it was the greatest experience of their life, and I don’t panic because one person hated it.
I’m looking for patterns.
What are most people saying?
Are people consistently praising the guide’s knowledge? Do reviewers talk about the quality and quantity of food? Do they mention interesting stories and local businesses?
For our Paris tour, I had the additional reassurance of Les Frenchies recommending Sylvia. I’d watched enough of their content to know that their travel style aligned with ours, so their recommendation carried weight with me.
I also look at the neighborhood, schedule and price.
But if I had to prioritize, I want the neighborhood I want to explore with an expert guide who knows it intimately.
Ready to Find a Food Tour for Your Next Trip?
One of the first things I do when planning a trip is browse the food tours available in our destination. Even before booking, I enjoy comparing neighborhoods, reading reviews and seeing which local specialties different tours feature.
Affiliate disclosure: This recommendation includes an affiliate link. If you book through it, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you.
Browse food tours and culinary experiences on Viator
Smaller Is Better
I strongly prefer small-group food tours.
Our guided experiences have generally had groups of around six people, and that feels about right.
Fifteen people following someone down a crowded European sidewalk isn’t my idea of a great experience.
It’s harder to hear the guide. It’s harder to ask questions. It’s harder for everyone to fit inside tiny shops and restaurants. And the entire experience starts feeling less personal.
For us, around six is the sweet spot.
Pick a Neighborhood, Not an Entire City
I also prefer food tours concentrated in one neighborhood.
This is particularly important in a city like Paris.
Paris is enormous. I don’t want to spend half of my food tour riding public transportation from one side of the city to another.
I’d rather spend three or four hours walking around the Latin Quarter and actually begin to understand the neighborhood.
Next time, we’ll choose another area and do the same thing there.
Over multiple visits, you start building your understanding of the city piece by piece.
And you eat extremely well while doing it.
How Much Should a Food Tour Cost?
Price is personal.
We typically spend somewhere around $125–$200 per person, and we’re comfortable with that.
For us, this isn’t simply paying for lunch.
It’s a meal, guided walking tour, history lesson, cultural experience and entertainment rolled into one activity.
When I think of it that way, I find good food tours well worth the money.
Especially because a proper one should replace a meal.
Which brings me to perhaps the most important advice in this entire article.
COME HUNGRY
Seriously.
Do not eat a full meal before your food tour.
And unless you know the tour is particularly light on food, I wouldn’t make a major restaurant reservation immediately afterward either.
After Paris, we didn’t need dinner.
After Strasbourg, we were so full that we couldn’t even finish the final stop.
A good food tour is not supposed to leave you wondering where you’re going for lunch.
Lunch just happened.
Possibly four times.
A Few Things I Wish Everyone Knew Before Booking
Wear comfortable walking shoes.
You’re going to be on your feet for several hours, often on cobblestones and uneven sidewalks.
Check the weather and dress appropriately. If rain is possible, bring an umbrella. Food tours generally don’t stop because the weather isn’t cooperating.
If you drink alcohol, I think tours that incorporate local wines, beers or other drinks can add another fun element. Both our Paris and Strasbourg experiences included wonderful wine-and-cheese pairings.
But alcohol isn’t essential. I wouldn’t reject an otherwise fantastic tour because drinks weren’t included.
I also like tours that mix quick stops with longer sit-down experiences.
Give me a bite from a bakery, a cheese-shop tasting and something from a market—but also let me sit down somewhere for a proper dish.
Variety keeps the experience interesting.
Food Tours Aren’t Necessarily for Everyone
If you’re extremely picky, I’d think carefully before spending a lot of money on a food tour.
The same applies if you have a very restrictive diet.
Some tour companies do an excellent job accommodating dietary restrictions, and you should always ask rather than assume. But if you’re vegan, vegetarian or unable to eat many of the foods central to a particular cuisine, you may find that a specific tour simply doesn’t offer enough value for you.
Look at what’s typically served and contact the operator before booking.
And regardless of dietary restrictions, I think the biggest mistake you can make is arriving unwilling to try anything new.
You’re on a food tour!
This is the time to taste the thing you wouldn’t normally order.
You may hate it.
That’s okay.
You’re getting another bite in 15 minutes.
Why Book a Food Tour? Here’s Why We’ll Keep Booking Them
What started as one activity in Paris has become one of our favorite ways to experience a new destination.
Three or four hours is plenty for us.
Morning, afternoon or evening doesn’t particularly matter. We fit the tour wherever it works best in our itinerary and let it replace whichever meal falls during that time.
What matters is the experience.
I want to walk through a neighborhood rather than drive through it.
I want to hear its stories.
I want someone who loves food to explain why a particular dish matters.
I want to meet the people making it.
And then I want to eat it.
When we return to Paris in 2028, we’ll book Sylvia again and explore a different neighborhood. And when I plan trips to new cities, I’ll continue searching for food tours before we’ve even packed our bags.
Because the best food tours don’t simply leave you full.
They leave you full and better informed about the culture you came all that way to experience.
And for us, that’s exactly what travel should do.
Related reading: Food experiences are some of our favorite travel memories. During our Viking Rhine cruise, we especially enjoyed discovering the flavors of Alsace in Strasbourg. Read our Viking Rhine Getaway review for more about that experience and the rest of our journey.