Boston Chinatown Market Tour

I highly recommend this tour. Our guide, Jim, had lived in China, spoke the language, and was also a chef, so he was the perfect guide for this culinary tour of Chinatown. I wish I had had a tape recorder because I will never remember all of the information he shared with us about the history, the people and their customs, the wide variety of foods we sampled. We toured and sampled food and drink in two bakeries, a pharmacy, a candy store, a grocery store, and finished the tour with a Chinese brunch. The three and a half hours literally flew by. Of all of the places in Boston we visited, this experience was my favorite, and I would do it all over again in a heartbeat!

A great overview of Chinatown, basic Chinese culture, and a lot of fun stops with food and drink samples. Dim sum was excellent too. The tour was a great primer for our upcoming trip to Hong Kong and we highly recommend it to anyone up for a culinary adventure. Thanks!

Wow! this was a great tour! My out of town guests and I were blown away by Jim's knowledge and the fascinating culture of chinatown. i would highly recommend it to anyone. We are still talking about what a great time we had in chinatown! Thanks, Jim!

Fascinating history and colorful anecdotes on Boston's Chinatown, with excellent visits to local bakeries, traditional Chinese pharmacy, BBQ, and grocery. Dim Sum was super! We would love a tour dedicated to just Chinese groceries -- how to shop for and prepare simple traditional foods.

Jim is a fascinating and knowledgeable guide. We all very much appreciated his expertise and his enthusiasm! The only suggestion our group has for Jim is that he should be willing to change the format of the tour in response to inclement weather. The day of our tour was extremely cold and we spent the first hour outside sitting on an ice cold stone wall listening to Jim's introduction to the tour. While the information he presented was interesting, it did not make up for the extreme conditions we were forced to endure. It would have been smarter to immediately take us in and out of the shops and present the information later on while we were all comfortably indoors at the dim sum restaurant.

This was such a fun informative tour!!! Jim, the tour guide is so knowledgable. The local shop visitations were a great experience. (The herbalist and the supermarket were my faves)The dim sum lunch was so great--without the tour guide we would have been too intimidated and wouldn't even know where to begin or what to eat. After Jim described wonderful Asian spring rolls, I was a bit disapointed when we didn't get to sample one.

What a morning!!! From the time we started our tour until Jim wished us all farewell the day was everything we had hoped for. Jim has an excellent understanding of the area and the people. He made our trip interesting with his knowledge of the food and culture. I would highly recommend this trip to anyone going to Boston.

I so appreciated the rich background of Jim Becker, our guide who could speak with shop keepers, the pharmacist, the bakers, etc. in Cantonese, thus opening doors to so many pleasant encounters. His knowledge, his enthusiasm, his guiding us to be culturally sensitive as we ate at the Restaurant , e.g. showing us how to place our chop sticks; the introduction to places where I am looking forward to return . These are just a few random thoughts . This was a gift for a few members in the family, and now my sister hinted at a gift for the trip for her and her husband as we discuss Christmas gifts. Thanks so much. Maureen

I liked the way the tour was set up with an introduction and history of the people and place we were touring. Descriptions and explanations of the shops and buisnesses we visited were interesting and insightful. Finishing the tour with dim sum was great. The tour guide was very knowledgeable and easy going. The one I was a little disappoined with was that the dim sum lunch was very rushed, and lots of different foods were coming all at once. However, I would rather have a rushed dim sum than none at all. Overall a wonderful experience. Very glad I did it and can't wait to go back to experience the area myself.

Informative, interesting, well worth the money. The tour guide was well versed in the cultural aspects of Chinatown: history, food, language, he had it all! He provided a brief history lesson, which made us aware of the some of the adversity the Chinese immigrants faced. During the tour, he moved us right along - but paused whenever we had questions or wanted a bit more time somewhere. The sampling of locations was great: bakeries, candy shop, restaurant, pharmacy, grocery.... And lunch was delicious! We did spend a good amount of time outside, so bad weather would have been awful. I highly recommend this tour.