On your next visit to New York City do yourself a favor and take a tour with Foods of NY. This savvy tour company knows the best kept secrets of the local neighborhoods and will lead you on a culinary adventure. Foods of New York offers walking tours of various New York neighborhoods. As you gaze at the architecture and listen to the guide tell the history of the area you are also noshing on some of the best food New York has to offer. You would have to vacation for weeks in New York to try out all the great restaurants and gourmet food shops that you sample in a single day on one of their tours.
Greenwich Village has always been a trendy neighborhood in the city and it’s also at the forefront of some great dining experiences, so I chose this for my first tour with the company and it didn’t disappoint. One of the stops on the tour is Murray’s Cheese Shop which has been in business since 1940 and ships cheese all over the world to cheese lovers. Another highlight of the tour which didn’t even involve a food sample was a visit to a bar which was a speakeasy in the 1920’s and looks exactly as it must have then. Even older is Faccio’s established in 1900. When you are in this Italian Specialty Food Shop you are getting a real slice of New York, though the thick Italian accents may fool you into thinking you are in Italy. On subsequent trips to the city I have been known to cross the breadth of the city just to buy some of their rice balls with mozzarella cheese and prosciutto inside. After the tour you will be too full to want to eat until the next day, but you can certainly browse the menus on the wall for restaurants you want to return to or shop at the clothing and antique boutiques along the leafy lanes of this enclave.
The Greenwich Village tour was such a success that my travel companion and I took the Chelsea Market tour next, which is located in New York’s newest hot neighborhood, the Meatpacking District. The Meatpacking District has seen an influx of many trendy bars and restaurants and even chic condos, remember that Samantha from Sex and the City resided there! It is also the area where the infamous Hogs and Heifers is located which was the inspiration for the film “Coyote Ugly.�? Inside the Market you will find a wide variety of gourmet food shops in one condensed area. The Chelsea Market is also now the home of the Food Network so it’s even possible to catch up a glimpse of your favorite TV chef while visiting. Fat Witch Brownies which was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as one of her “Favorite Things�? is located there, though I prefer the European flair of Amy’s Breads, an artisanal French-American bakery. Anything you buy there would be well paired with a bottle of ‘coffee milk’ (like drinking melted coffee ice cream) from Ronnybrook Dairy which transports their fresh dairy products from a farm upstate. Although I don’t follow an all organic diet I would if I could eat at the Green Table every day. The Green Table is an organic restaurant located within the market with some very creative dishes where the focus is as firmly on the flavor as any health benefits of the organic food it serves.
Taking one of Food of New York’s tours will allow you to combine eating, shopping and watching how real New Yorkers live all in a single afternoon.
What a coincidenc!. My son who lives in NYC just sent me an email that one of his co-workers had gone on a “foodie” tour with her parents. It was the same one you wrote about. I’m planning another visit back east in April so will sign up for one of these. I’ve been on several walking tours, and another good one is The Enthusiastic Gourmet (www.enthusiasticgourmet.com). I went on the Melting Pot Tour that took us through the Hispanic and Jewish Lower East Side, Chinatown and Little Italy. Interesting, fun and yummy!